Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: even when he cared little or nothing for their society. Without wishing to do him any injustice, I believe that one of the reasons why he cared for me, as he seemed to do, was that he had got accustomed to me. He knew my father from their having for a time been in the same regiment, and so got to take an interest in my mother; and through my mother, or through both of them, he gradually acquired a friendly feeling for me. He behaved very kindly to me on all possible occasions, except, perhaps (as I used to think at the time), when Laura Maxwell was present. Probably she encouraged him, and he was one of those men who need a little helping on. I noticed, in any case, that on this particular day, as on several previous ones, he was very attentive to Laura;and this annoyed me, because, although there was no understanding between us, I had got to look upon him as more or less my property. Occupied, first, by what I had heard about Maurice, and next by Captain Langton's eager attentions (eager, at least, for him) to Laura Maxwell, I was beginning to forget the object of my visit to the Imperial Opera House, when suddenly I heard a splash and a bang on the piano, and, looking up, saw that Lucy Griffiths was already on the stage, while by her side stood Captain Faulkner, whom, not to employ a more appropriate word, I will call her guardian " angel." Mr. Larose meanwhile had come into the audience department, and had taken his seat by my side. Signor Cavalieri, the maestro al piano, was playing the introduction to Dinorah's Shadow Song; and when the voice part began Mr. Larose listened attentively?at least, during the first eight bars. But the warbling of the little canary, though it pleased him, did not satisfy him, and he whispered to me that he did not think she'd "do." Thi...