We relinquished the stream of an epic in turning away from these mighty drums.

Mr. Pole stood questioning all who surrounded him:  “What could I do?  I couldn’t subscribe to both.  They don’t expect that of a lord, and I’m a commoner.  If these fellows quarrel and split, are we to suffer for it?  They can’t agree, and want us to pay double fines.  This is how they serve us.”

Mr. Barrett, rather at a loss to account for his excitement, said, that it must be admitted they had borne the trick played upon them, with remarkable good humour.

“Yes, but,” Mr. Pole fumed, “I don’t.  They put me in the wrong, between them.  They make me uncomfortable.  I’ve a good mind to withdraw my subscription to those rascals who came first, and have nothing to do with any of them.  Then, you see, down I go for a niggardly fellow.  That’s the reputation I get.  Nothing of this in London! you make your money, pay your rates, and nobody bothers a man.”

“You should have done as our darling here did, papa,” said Adela.  “You should have hinted something that might be construed a promise or not, as we please to read it.”

“If I promise I perform,” returned Mr. Pole.

“Our Hillford people have cause for complaint,” Mr. Barrett observed.  And to Emilia:  “You will hardly favour one party more than another, will you?”

“I am for that poor man Jim,” said Emilia, “He carried my harp evening after evening, and would not even take sixpence for the trouble.”

“Are you really going to sing there?”

“Didn’t you hear?  I promised.”

“To-night?”

“Yes; certainly.”

“Do you know what it is you have promised?”

“To sing.”

Adela glided to her sisters near at hand, and these ladies presently hemmed Emilia in.  They had a method of treating matters they did not countenance, as if nature had never conceived them, and such were the monstrous issue of diseased imaginations.  It was hard for Emilia to hear that what she designed to do was “utterly out of the question and not to be for one moment thought of.”  She reiterated, with the same interpreting stress, that she had given her promise.

“Do you know, I praised you for putting them off so cleverly,” said Adela in tones of gentle reproach that bewildered Emilia.

“Must we remind you, then, that you are bound by a previous promise?” Cornelia made a counter-demonstration with the word.  “Have you not promised to dine with us at Lady Gosstre’s to-night?”

“Oh, of course I shall keep that,” replied Emilia.  “I intend to.  I will sing there, and then I will go and sing to those poor people, who never hear anything but dreadful music—­not music at all, but something that seems to tear your flesh!”

“Never mind our flesh,” said Adela pettishly:  melodiously remonstrating the next instant:  “I really thought you could not be in earnest.”

“But,” said Arabella, “can you find pleasure in wasting your voice and really great capabilities on such people?”