"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Lambert; I didn't intend to embarrass your daughter."
"She is very nervous--"
"I understand. Being a complete stranger, I should not have insisted. One of the best singers I ever knew was so morbidly shy that on the platform she was an absolute failure. Her vocal chords became so contracted that she sang quite out of tune, and yet among friends she was magnificent."
The mother's voice was quite calm. "It was not your fault, sir. Sometimes she's this way, even when her best friends ask her to play. That's why I fear she will never be able to perform in concerts--she is liable to these break-downs."
He was puzzled by something concealed in the mother's tone, and pained and deeply anxious to restore the peaceful charm of the home into which he had, in a sense, unbiddenly penetrated. "I am guilty--unpardonably guilty. I beg you to tell her that my request was something more than polite seeming--I was sincerely eager to hear her play. Perhaps at another time, when she has come to know me better, she will feel like trying again. I don't like to think that our acquaintance has ended thus--in discord. May I not come in again, now that I am, in a sense, explained?"
He blundered on from sentence to sentence, seeking to soften the stern, straight line on the mother's lips--a line of singular repression, sweet but firm.
"I wish you would come again. I should really like your advice about Viola's future. Can't you come in this evening?"
"I shall be very glad to do so. At what hour?"
"At eight. Perhaps she will be able to play for you then."
With a feeling of having blundered into a most unpleasant predicament, through a passing interest in a pretty girl, Serviss retreated to his hotel across the river.