—­and Damon had replied (not mumbling his lines, as a privileged actor sometimes does at rehearsal, but addressing them properly to the hapless Laura)—­

   “Consider, fair, the ever-restless pow’r,
    Shifts with the breeze, and changes with the hour: 
    Above restraint, he scorns a fixt abode,
    And on his silken plumes flies forth the rambling god.”

Then Lady Sybil took out her violin from its case and drew the bow across the strings.

“We’ll let you off the song, if you like, Mr. Moore,” Lady Adela said to the young baritone, but in a very half-hearted kind of way.

“Oh, no,” said he, pleasantly, “perhaps this may be my only rehearsal.”

“The audience,” observed Lord Rockminster, who, at a little distance, was lying back in a garden-chair, smoking a cigarette—­“the audience would distinctly prefer to have the song sung.”

Lady Sybil again gave him the key-note from the violin; and, without further accompaniment, he thus addressed his forsaken sweetheart: 

   “You say at your feet that I wept in despair,
    And vow’d that no angel was ever so fair? 
    How could you believe all the nonsense I spoke? 
    What know we of angels?  I meant it in joke,
        I meant it in joke;
    What know we of angels?  I meant it in joke.”

When, in his rich, vibrating notes, he had sung the two verses, all the ladies rewarded him by clapping their hands, which was an exceedingly wrong thing to do, considering that they formed no part of the audience.  Then Damon says,

   “To-day Demaetus gives a rural treat,
    And I once more my chosen friends must meet: 
    Farewell, sweet damsel, and remember this,
    Dull repetition deadens all our bliss.”

And Laura sadly answers,

   “Where baleful cypress forms a gloomy shade,
    And yelling spectres haunt the dreary glade,
    Unknown to all, my lonesome steps I’ll bend,
    There weep my suff’rings, and my fate attend.”

Here Laura ought to sing the song “Vain is every fond endeavor;” but Lady Adela said to the violinist,

“No, never mind, Syb; no one wants to hear me sing, until the necessity of the case arises.  Let’s get on to the feast; I think that will be very popular; for we must have lots of shepherds and shepherdesses; and the people will be delighted to recognize their friends.  Where’s your sketch, Rose?  I would have groups round each of the willows, and occasional figures coming backwards and forwards through those rhododendrons.”

“You must leave the principal performers plenty of stage,” Lionel Moore interposed, laughing.  “You mustn’t hem us in with supers, however picturesque their dress may be.”