Do you remember your father's voice? Shall I ever forget it! He sang to
me only last night, and in the midst of my harrowing anxiety about you I
was beguiled into listening outside the window. He sang Rossini's
_'Cujus Animam.'_ He _was_ the nightingale; that was his vocation, if he
could but have known it. And you are my brother Bohemian; that is
_yours!_ ... Ah, _my_ vocation! It was to be the wife of some busy
brain-worker--man of science--conspirator--writer--artist--architect,
if you like; to fence him round and shield him from all the little
worries and troubles and petty vexations of life. I am a woman of
business _par excellence_--a manager, and all that. He would have had a
warm, well-ordered little nest to come home to after hunting his idea!

"Well, I thought myself the most unhappy woman alive, and wrapped myself
up in my affection for my much-afflicted little son; and as I held him
to my breast, and vainly tried to warm and mesmerize him into feeling
and intelligence, Gogo came back into my heart, and I was forever
thinking, 'Oh, if I had a son like Gogo what a happy woman I should be!'
and pitied Madame Pasquier for dying and leaving him so soon, for I had
just begun to dream true, and had seen Gogo and his sweet mother
once again.

"And then one night--one never-to-be-forgotten night--I went to Lady
Gray's concert, and saw you standing in a corner by yourself; and I
thought, with a leap of my heart, 'Why, that must be Gogo, grown dark,
and with a beard and mustache like a Frenchman!' But alas, I found that
you were only a Mr. Ibbetson, Lady Cray's architect, whom she had asked
to her house because he was 'quite the handsomest young man she had
ever seen!'

"You needn't laugh. You looked very nice, I assure you!