Here was a shoal to be avoided.

“No, you mustn’t think of tempting him to come up to town,” said Michael.  “Give me some tea for Aunt Barbara.”

This answer entranced Lady Ashbridge; she had to nudge Michael several times to show that she understood the brilliance of it, and put lump after lump of sugar into Barbara’s cup in her rapt appreciation of it.  But very soon she turned to Sylvia again.

“And your brother is a friend of Michael’s, too, isn’t he?” she said.  “Some day perhaps he will come to see me.  We don’t see many people, Michael and I, for we find ourselves very well content alone.  But perhaps some day he will come and play his concert over again to us; and then, perhaps, if you ask me, I will sing to you.  I used to sing a great deal when I was younger.  Michael—­where has Michael gone?”

Michael had just left the room to bring some cigarettes in from next door, and Lady Ashbridge ran after him, calling him.  She found him in the hall, and brought him back triumphantly.

“Now we will all sit and talk for a long time,” she said.  “You one side of me, Miss Falbe, and Michael the other.  Or would you be so kind as to sing for us?  Michael will play for you, and would it annoy you if I came and turned over the pages?  It would give me a great deal of pleasure to turn over for you, if you will just nod each time when you are ready.”

Sylvia got up.

“Why, of course,” she said.  “What have you got, Michael?  I haven’t anything with me.”

Michael found a volume of Schubert, and once again, as on the first time he had seen her, she sang “Who is Sylvia?” while he played, and Lady Ashbridge had her eyes fixed now on one and now on the other of them, waiting for their nod to do her part; and then she wanted to sing herself, and with some far-off remembrance of the airs and graces of twenty-five years ago, she put her handkerchief and her rings on the top of the piano, and, playing for herself, emitted faint treble sounds which they knew to be “The Soldier’s Farewell.”

Then presently her nurse came for her to lie down before dinner, and she was inclined to be tearful and refuse to go till Michael made it clear that it was his express and sovereign will that she should do so.  Then very audibly she whispered to him.  “May I ask her to give me a kiss?” she said.  “She looks so kind, Michael, I don’t think she would mind.”

Sylvia went back home with a little heartache for Michael, wondering, if she was in his place, if her mother, instead of being absorbed in her novels, demanded such incessant attentions, whether she had sufficient love in her heart to render them with the exquisite simplicity, the tender patience that Michael showed.  Well as she knew him, greatly as she liked him, she had not imagined that he, or indeed any man could have behaved quite like that.  There seemed no effort at all about it; he was not trying to be patient;