He mechanically stretched across the sofa for the violin. Crash went the pegs, drooping with the neck by the catgut strings, against the hollow body of the instrument. He started up as if he had become aware of the disaster for the first time. For some moments he stood handling the wreck, and then he laid it down very gently on the sofa. He went with the bowed head of a father in the death-chamber of his child, to the door; but when he had opened it, and was in the act of departing, he turned and stood up straight like a man; his hands were clenched, his eyes were blazing, while he cried:
"Curse Dick Sheridan! he has done it all. Curse him! Curse him!"
He banged the door behind him, leaving the girls white and awed. They had never before witnessed a really tragic scene ending up with a curse, and they felt that it was very awful.
"Yes," said Mr. Linley quietly, "we can all join in his prayer and say, 'Bless Dick Sheridan! Bless Dick Sheridan!'--that will be poor Tom's prayer in another month--perhaps another week."
"Oh, no, no! not another week," said Betsy. "I should be sorry to think that Tom could be himself within a week. Tom has too deep feeling for that."
"Let us return to our lesson," said her father. "Dwell lightly on 'deceivers ever,' Maria; and I think, Betsy, you might give full value to the minim rest before 'Sigh no more,' after the 'hey nonny!' I think I see the delicate humour of the composer's treatment of the song better now than I did ten minutes ago."
But the girls were too unnerved to be able to return to their lesson just then. They remonstrated with their father.
"Well, perhaps one lesson in the day is enough," said he, "and Tom has just had his."
It was altogether very amusing and quite infamous, Bath said. Heavens! the way in which that woman pursued her course, being on with a new love quite two days before she was off with the old, was absolutely shameless.
"A female comet with an ardent train--no fixed star in the firmament," said Mr. Walpole, when it was found that Mrs. Abington had discarded Tom Linley and had taken on Dick Sheridan. It was found that she had done so within an hour of Tom's dismissal.
"The comet has in all ages been looked on as a portent of disaster," said George Selwyn. "I wonder what does this particular heavenly body portend?"