'How complicated you are!' he exclaimed, when Margaret laughed.
'I was just thinking how simple I am compared with you,' she answered
serenely; 'I mean, when you talk,' she added.
'Thank you for the distinction! "Oliver Goldsmith, for shortness called
Noll, Who writes like an angel but talks like poor Poll." That sort of
thing, I suppose?' 'I did not say that you write like an angel,' answered Margaret, in a
tone of reflection.
'You do not talk like one,' observed Mr. Lushington bitterly. 'Are you
going to Paris to-day?' he inquired after a pause; and he looked at his
watch.
'No. I had my lesson yesterday. But I am going in to-morrow.' Lushington knew that she had only two lessons a week, and wondered why
she was going to Paris on the following day. But he was offended and
would not ask questions; moreover he did not at all approve of her
studying singing as a profession, and she knew that he did not.
His disapproval did not disturb her, though she should have liked him
to admire her voice because he was really a good judge, and praise from
him would be worth having. He often said sharp things that he did not
mean, but on the other hand, when he said that anything was good, he
always meant that it was first-rate. She wondered where he had learned
so much about music.
After all, she knew very little of his life, and as he never said
anything about his family she was inclined to think that he had no
relations and that he came of people anything but aristocratic. He had
worked his way to the front by sheer talent and energy, and she had the
good sense to think better of him for that, and not less well of him
for his reticence.
Mrs. Rushmore knew no more about Lushington's family than Margaret. The
latter was spending the spring in Versailles with the elderly American
widow, and the successful young writer had been asked to stop a week
with them. Mrs. Rushmore did not care a straw about the family
connections of celebrities, and she knew by experience that it was
generally better not to ask questions about them, as the answers might
place one in an awkward position. She had always acted on the principle
that a real lion needs no pedigree, and belongs by right to the higher
animals. Lushington was a real lion, though he was a young one. His
roar was a passport, and his bite was dangerous. Why make unnecessary
inquiries about his parents? They were probably dead, and, socially,
they had never been alive, since Society had never heard of them. It
was quite possible, Mrs. Rushmore said, that his name was not his own,
for she had met two or three celebrities who had deliberately taken
names to which they did not pretend any legal claim, but which sounded
better than their own.