If there had been any means, however desperate, of putting off the crisis for another ten seconds, the musician would have stooped to it. But he realized that there was none, and with the same flash of consciousness as he realized it he braced himself to meet the event as manfully as such a pitiful situation would allow.
"Norah," he said sternly, putting her off his knee and standing up in front of her, "I have something to say to you. Will you be brave and hear me? It may all come right, of course, but--this lady was kind to my boy--and to me, when no one else would hold out a hand to us; and I thought you had forgotten me, and so--I asked her to marry me. It was only this afternoon, and of course--"
The noisy peals of laughter came right into the room through the inner door, and Lady Joan stood in the dull glow which was all that remained of the sunlight.
"Oh, daddy, what do you think Sonny said? Why--who--what is it?"
Something white, and quivering, and small, had fallen with a thud across her feet, and again the low, long child's cry with the joy gone out of it sounded in the stillness of the summer evening.
The musician had sunk on a chair with his face in his hands.
"My engagements never do seem to go right," sighed the musician.
He was sitting in the little bedroom upstairs by the side of his sleeping son, with his thumb tightly clasped in a fat brown hand. But he was not thinking of Sonny, although the clasp of the tiny fingers was comforting, as betokening some one who still believed in him.
"There is a curse upon my love affairs," said the musician. "Why should those letters never reach her? And why did she choose that moment of all others to come back? Another man might do a dirty trick and not be found out. God knows I never wanted to harm a woman in my life, least of all those two; and yet I've blundered in and got engaged to both of them at once; and I've broken the heart of the purest and most innocent child--merciful heavens, what haven't I done? And here I am, left up here like a great fool, while they are tearing my character to ribbons downstairs. Was there ever such an unfortunate brute as myself?"
The musician's voice became husky, whether from self-pity, or from the recollection of the poor little scared face of the child who had found her happiness only to lose it again, it would be impossible to say.