"
"Have you learned from him that I could sing at all?"
"To confess the strange truth, he never told me you were musical."
"Very well?"
"I beg your pardon."
"I mean, how then do you know I am not a professional singer?"
"All London would have known it."
This second reply, better conceived, soothed Hester's vanity--of which
she had more than was good for her, seeing the least speck of it in the
noblest is a fly in the cream.
"What would you say," she rejoined, "if Corney were to tell to you that
the reason of his silence was that, while I was in training, we judged
it more prudent, with possible failure ahead, to be silent?"
"I should say you cherished a grand ambition, and one in which you could
not fail of success," replied Vavasor, who began to think she was
leading him gently to the truth.
But Hester was in a wayward mood, and inclined to _prospect_.
"Suppose such was not really Corney's reason," she resumed, "but that he
thought it degraded him to be the brother of an intended
professional--what would you say to that?"
"I should tell him he was a fool. He cannot know his Burke," he added
laughingly, "to be ignorant of the not inconsiderable proportion of
professional blood mixed with the blue in our country.
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