ogitate.

The men smiled and looked vacuous.

Music was proposed. There are times when soft music hath not charms;
when it is put to as base uses as Imperial Caesar's dust and is taken to
fill horrid pauses. Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang: "I'm
a laughing Gitana, ha-ha! ha-ha!" Matilda Forey and her cousin Mary
Branksburne wedded their voices, and songfully incited all young people
to Haste to the bower that love has built, and defy the wise ones of the
world; but the wise ones of the world were in a majority there, and very
few places of assembly will be found where they are not; so the glowing
appeal of the British ballad-monger passed into the bosom of the
emptiness he addressed. Clare was asked to entertain the company. The
singular child calmly marched to the instrument, and turned over the
appropriate illustrations to the ballad-monger's repertory.

Clare sang a little Irish air. Her duty done, she marched from the
piano. Mothers are rarely deceived by their daughters in these matters;
but Clare deceived her mother; and Mrs. Doria only persisted in feeling
an agony of pity for her child, that she might the more warrantably pity
herself--a not uncommon form of the emotion, for there is no juggler
like that heart the ballad-monger puts into our mouths so boldly.
Remember that she saw years of self-denial, years of a ripening scheme,
rendered fruitless in a minute, and by the System which had almost
reduced her to the condition of constitutional hypocrite. She had enough
of bitterness to brood over, and some excuse for self-pity.

Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria's energetic nature prevented
her from giving up. Straws were straws, and the frailer they were the
harder she clutched them.

She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to Adrian to follow
her.

"Adrian," she said, turning upon him in the passage, "you mentioned a
house where this horrible cake...where he was this morning. I desire you
to take me to that woman immediately."

The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude. He had hoped
he should be in time for the last act of the opera that night, after
enjoying the comedy of real life.

"My dear aunt"...he was beginning to insinuate.

"Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat," said Mrs. Doria.

There was nothing for it but to obey. He stamped his assent to the
Pilgrim's dictum, that Women are practical creatures, and now reflected
on his own account,