Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/265

Rh "Mr. Attree, what is the meaning of this?"

I could not tell her. Bensberg came to my rescue with, it struck me, something of malice.

"Since Mr. Goad so curiously resembles Mr. Groome, possibly, madam, you will suffer me to introduce to you your husband's double?"

Mrs. Groome looked at Bensberg in a manner which suggested that, after all, one touch of nature does make the whole world kin, and that well-bred ladies can behave like ill-bred ones now and then.

"My husband's double? My good sir, do you suppose that I don't know my own husband? Come, girls, let us go to him."

Mrs. Groome dashed into the crowd, and we dashed after her, the Misses Groome and Bensberg and I. I should have liked to check the impetuous lady, but I felt that, in her present excited state, she was beyond my checking. She, metaphorically, collared the pianist as he stood in the centre of a little group at the foot of the platform.

"Papa!" she exclaimed, brushing the people aside as though they were so many flies. "What can you be thinking of? My dear Everard, pray come away with us at once. The girls and I have been suffering agonies; I did not think you could have been so inconsiderate, really. That you should ever have concealed from me your knowledge of the instrument was bad enough, but that you should ever have dreamed of a public performance! My dear Everard, I must beg of you to come at once."

The excited lady poured forth her grievances with a volubility of which, I am persuaded, she would have been incapable—at least, in public—if she