“Anything to please you,” said the young man. “That wasn’t how I intended to end my sentence. I love to--chatter, if you like, as long as you will listen--or play, or do anything; as long as----” “You must allow,” said Constance, “that I listen admirably. I am thoroughly well up in all your subjects. I know the station as well as if I lived there.” “Don’t say that,” he cried; “it makes a man beside himself. Oh, if there was any chance that you might ever----! I think--I’m almost sure--you would like the society in India--it’s so easy; everybody’s so kind. A--a young couple, you know, as long as the lady is--delightful.” “But I am not a young couple,” said Constance, with a smile. “You sometimes confuse your plurals in the funniest way. Is that Indian too? Now come, Captain Gaunt, let us get on. Begin at the andante. One, two--three! Now, let’s get on.” And then a few bars would be played, and then she would turn sharp round upon the music-stool and take the violin out of his astonished hands. “Oh, what a shriek! It goes through and through one’s head. Don’t you think an instrument has feelings? That was a cry of the poor ill-used fiddle, that could bear no more. Give it to me.” She took the bow in her hands, and leaned the instrument tenderly against her shoulder. “It should be played like this,” she said. “Miss Waring, you can play the violin too?” “A little,” she said, leaning down her soft cheek against it, as if she loved it, and drawing a charmingly sympathetic harmony from the ill-used strings. “I will never play again,” cried the young man. “Yes, I will--to touch it where you have touched it. Oh, I think you can do everything, and make everything perfect you look at.” “No,” said Constance, shaking her head as she ran the bow softly, so softly over the strings; “for you are not perfect at all, though I have looked at you a great deal. Look! this is the way to do it. I am not going to accompany you any more. I am going to give you lessons. Take it now, and let me see you play that passage. Louder, softer--louder. Come, that was better. I think I shall make something of you after all.” “You can make anything of me,” said the poor young soldier, with his lips on the place her cheek had touched--“whatever you please.” “A first-rate violin-player, then,” said Constance. “But I don’t think my power goes so high as that. Poor General, what does he say when you grind, as you call it, all the morning?” “Oh, mother smooths him down--that is the use of a mother.” “Is it?” said Constance, with an air of impartial inquiry. “I didn’t know. Come, Captain Gaunt, we are losing our time.” And then _tant bien que mal_, the sonata was got through.