Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/68

60 not unacquainted with the practice of music. He had been employed to teach the harmonium to Miss Neville-Nugent and she had profited by his lessons. If his daughter is like him—and she is not like her mother—he was darkly and dangerously handsome. So I venture rapidly to reconstruct the situation."

A silence, for the moment, had fallen upon Lady Agnes and her other two children, so that Mr. Nash, with his universal urbanity, practically addressed these last remarks to them as well as to his other auditors. Lady Agnes looked as if she wondered whom he was talking about, and having caught the name of a noble residence she inquired—

"Castle Nugent—where is that?"

"It's a domain of immeasurable extent and almost inconceivable splendour, but I fear it isn't to be found in any prosaic earthly geography!" Lady Agnes rested her eyes on the tablecloth, as if she were not sure a liberty had not been taken with her, and while Mr. Nash continued to abound in descriptive suppositions—"It must be on the banks of the Manzanares or the Guadalquivir"—Peter Sherringham, whose imagination appeared to have been strongly kindled by the sketch of Miriam Rooth, challenging him sociably, reminded him that he had a short time before assigned a low place to the dramatic art and had not yet answered his question as to whether he believed in the theatre. This gave Nash an opportunity to go on:

"I don't know that I understand your question; there are different ways of taking it. Do I think it's important? Is that what you mean? Important, certainly, to managers and stage-carpenters who want to make money, to ladies and