“Lord Barrington then, who, we found, was an intimate acquaintance of the ambassador’s, attempted to seize the waving hand; conjuring her to consent to let him lead her to the instrument.
“But she hastily drew in her hand, and exclaimed: ‘Fie, fie, my lord Barrington!—so ill natured!—I should not think was you! Besides, you have heard me so often.’
“‘Madame la Baronne,’ replied he, with vivacity, ‘I want you to play precisely because Lord Sandwich has not heard you, and because I have!’
“All, however, was in vain, till the Baron came forward, and said to her, ‘_Ma chère_—you had better play something—anything—than give such a trouble.’
“She instantly arose, saying with a little reluctant shrug, but accompanied by a very sweet smile, ‘Now this looks just as if I was like to be so much pressed!’
“She then played a slow movement of Abel’s, and a minuet of Schobert’s, most delightfully, and with so much soul and expression, that your Hettina could hardly have played them better.
“She is surely descended in a right line from Ophelia! only, now I think of it, Ophelia dies unmarried. That is horribly unlucky. But, oh Shakespeare!—all-knowing Shakespeare!—how came you to picture just such female beauty and sweetness and harmony in a Danish court, as was to be brought over to England so many years after, in a Danish ambassadress?
“But I have another no common thing to tell you. Do you know that my Lord Barrington, from the time that he addressed the Baroness Deiden, and that her manner shewed him to stand fair in her good opinion, wore quite a new air? and looked so high-bred and pleasing, that I could not think what he had done with his original appearance; for it then had as good a Viscount mien as one might wish to see on a summer’s day. Now how is this, my dear Daddy? You, who deride all romance, tell me how it could happen? I know you formerly were acquainted with Lord Barrington, and liked him very much—pray, was it in presence of some fair Ophelia that you saw him?”
But highest, at this season, in the highest circles of society, from the triple bewitchment of talents, beauty, and fashion, stood the fair Linley Sheridan; who now gave concerts at her own house, to which entrance was sought not only by all the votaries of taste, and admirers of musical excellence, but by all the leaders of _ton_, and their numerous followers, or slaves; with an ardour for admittance that was as eager for beholding as for listening to this matchless warbler; so astonishingly in concord were the charms of person, manners, and voice, for the eye and for the ear, of this resistless syren.