Three Cousins Performed at the Pianoforte for the Duke — He Asked for the Girl Turning the Pages
Chapter 13
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He looked at the page again and then at her, and he asked the question that the whole county repeated afterwards in exactly the same words because thirty-one people heard it:"Then why are you turning the pages?"And Cecily Broome answered him:"Because somebody has to, Your Grace."There was a silence after that of the kind that has weight in it.The Duke set the music down on the stand. Then he did the thing that made the county repeat this story for a decade, which was not a grand gesture at all: he turned to Honoria Sowerby, and he said, perfectly courteously, "Mrs. Sowerby, you have given us a delightful evening, and I have enjoyed it very much. Would you permit me one more piece of it?"She could not say no. That is the whole of the cruelty of good manners: he used it, and she knew he was using it, and she said, "Of course, Your Grace."He asked Cecily to play. He asked it plainly and without ceremony, in the way he did everything, and the request went through that drawing room like cold water.Honoria said, "Oh, Cecily does not perform."The Duke said, "Does not, or has not been asked?"Nobody answered that either. It was becoming a feature of the evening.And then Georgiana Sowerby, nineteen years old, in the best dress she had ever owned, in front of her mother, did the bravest thing anybody at Wraysbury did that spring: she picked up the music, and she carried it three steps, and she put it on the stand, and she said: