She looked at him doubtfully.

"Ah, you don't understand," he said, gently. "It's only this, Nina: I have plenty of money; if you are a good comrade and a good friend, you will take from me what you want—always—at any moment—"

The pretty, pale-olive face flushed quickly, and for a brief second she glanced at him with grateful eyes; but it was perhaps to cover her embarrassment that she now rose from the piano, and pretended to be tired of the music and of these professional schemes.

"It is enough of booziness," she said, lightly; "come, Leo, will you go for a small walk?—have you time?"

"Oh, yes, I have time," said he, "but you must not say booziness, Nina? it is bizness."

"Beezness!—beezness!" she said, smiling. "It is enough of beezness. You go for a walk with me—yes? How beautiful the weather!" she continued, in a suddenly altered tone, as she looked out at the sunlit foliage of the Green Park; and then she murmured, almost to herself, in those soft Italian vowel sounds:

"Ah, Leo mio, che sarei felice d'essere in campagna!"

It was a kind of sigh; perhaps that was the reason she had inadvertently relapsed into her own tongue. And as they went down the stairs, and he opened the door for her, the few words he addressed to her were also in Italian.

"The country!" he said. "We will just step across the street, Nina, and you will find yourself in what is quite as pretty as the country at this time of year. You may fancy yourself sitting in the Villa Reale, if you could only have a flash of blue sea underneath the branches of the trees."

But when they had crossed over and got into the comparative quiet of the Park, she resolutely returned to her English again; and now she was telling him about the people in Naples whom he used to know, and of their various fortunes and circumstances. Sometimes neither of them spoke; for all this around them was very still and pleasant—the fresh foliage of the trees and the long lush grass of the enclosures as yet undimmed by the summer dust; the cool shadows thrown by the elms and limes just moving as the wind stirred the wide branches; altogether a world of soft, clear, sunny green, unbroken except by here and there a small copper beech with its bronze leaves become translucent in the hot light. It is true that the browsing sheep were abnormally black; and the yellow-billed starlings had perhaps less sheen on their feathers than they would have had in the country; nevertheless, for a park in the midst of a great city this place was very quiet and beautiful and sylvan; and indeed, when these two sat down on a couple of chairs under a fragrant hawthorn, Nina's lustrous dark eyes became wistful and absent, and she said,

"Yes, Leo, it is as you say in the house—it all appears a dream."

"What appears like a dream to you?" her companion asked.

"To be in London, sitting with you, Leo, and hearing you speak," she answered, in a low voice. "Often I think of it—often I think of London—wondering what it is like—and I ask myself, 'Will Leo be the same after his great renown? Are we friends as before?' and now I am here, and London is not dark and terrible with smoke, but we sit in gardens—oh, very beautiful!—and Leo is talking just as in the old way—perhaps it is a dream?" she continued, looking up with a smile. "Perhaps I wake soon?"

"Oh, no, it isn't a dream, Nina," said he, "only it might pass for one, for you haven't told me how you managed to get here. It is all a mystery to me. Where are you staying, for example?"

"My lodging?" she said. "I have an apartment in the Restaurant Gianuzzi."

"Where is that?"

"Rupert Street," she answered, with a valiant effort at the proper pronunciation.

"My goodness! what are you doing, Nina?" he said, almost angrily. "Living by yourself in a foreign restaurant, in the neighborhood of Leicester Square! You'll have to come out of that at once!"

"You must not scold me, Leo," she said, in rather a hurt way. "How am I to know?"

"I am not scolding you," he said (indeed, he knew better than to do that; if once the notion had got into her little head that he was really upbraiding her, she would have been up and off in a moment, proud-lipped, indignant-eyed, with a fierce wrong rankling in her heart; and weeks it might take him to pet her into gentleness again, even if she did not forthwith set out for the South, resolved to return to this harsh, cold England no more). "I am not scolding you, Nina," he said, quite gently. "Of course you didn't know. And of course you were attracted by the Italian name—you thought you would feel at home—"

"They are very nice people, yes, yes!" she said—and still she was inclined to hold her head erect, and her mouth was a little proud and offended.

"Very likely indeed," he said, with great consideration, "but, you see, Nina, a single young lady can't stay at a restaurant by herself, without knowing some one, some one to go about with her—"

"Why," she said, vehemently, almost scornfully, "you think I not know that! An Italian girl—and not know that! Last night, hour after hour, I sit and think, 'Oh, there is Leo singing now—if I may go to the theatre!—to sit and hear him—and think of the old days—and perhaps to write home to the maestro, and tell him of the grand fame of his scholar.' But no. I cannot go out. There is no time yet to see about chaperon. When it comes eleven hour, I say, 'The theatre is ceased;' and I go to bed. Then this morning I know no person; I say, 'Very well, I go and see Leo; he will understand;' it is how I meet him in the Chiaja, and he says, 'Good-morning, Nina; shall we go for a little walk out to Pozzuoli'—it is just the same."

"Yes, I understand well enough, Nina," said he, good-naturedly, "and I wasn't scolding you when I said you must get some better place to stay at while you are in London. Well, now, I am going to tell you something. I don't know much about what actors and actresses are in Italy, but here in England they are exceedingly generous to any of their number who have fallen into misfortune; and a case of the kind happened a little while ago. An actor, who used to be well known, died quite suddenly and left his widow entirely unprovided for; whereupon there was a subscription got up for her, and a morning performance, too, in which nearly all the leading actors and actresses managed to do something or other; and the result is that they have been able to take the lease of a house in Sloane Street, and furnish the rooms for her, and she is to earn her living by keeping lodgers. Now, if you really want to remain in London, Nina, don't you think that might be a comfortable home for you? She is a very nice, ladylike little woman; and she's a great friend of mine, too; she would do everything she could for you. There's a chaperon for you ready-made!—for I'm afraid she has only one lodger to look after as yet, though she has all the necessary servants, and the establishment is quite complete. What do you say to that, Nina?"

Her face had brightened up wonderfully at this proposal.

"Yes, yes, yes, Leo!" she said, instantly. "Tell me how I go, and I go at once, to ask her if she can give me apartments."

He glanced at his watch.

"The fact is," said he, slowly, "I was to have lunched with a very small party to-day—at a duchess's house—at a duchess's house, think of that, Nina!"

She jumped to her feet at once, and frankly held out her hand.

"Forgive me, Leo!—I retard you—I did not know."

"Don't be in such a hurry, Nina," he said, as he also rose. "I'm going to break the appointment, that's all about it; Signorina Antonia Rossi doesn't arrive in England every day. I'll tell you what we have got to do: we will get into a hansom and drive to a telegraph-office, and I'll get rid of that engagement; then we'll go on to the Restaurant Gianuzzi, and you and I will have a little luncheon by ourselves, just to prepare us for the fatigues of the day; then you will get your things ready, and I will take you down to Mrs. Grey's in Sloane Street, and introduce you to that most estimable little lady; and then, if Mrs. Grey happens to be disengaged for the evening, she might be induced to come with you to the New Theatre, and she could take you safe home after the performance. How will that do, Nina?"

"You always were kind to me, Leo," she said—though the gratitude plainly shining in the gentle, dark eyes rendered the words quite unnecessary.

And indeed she was delighted, with a sort of childish delight, to sit in this swift hansom, bowling along the smooth thoroughfare; and she chatted and chattered in her gay, rapid, disconnected fashion; and she had nothing but contempt for the shabby Neapolitan fiacre and the jolting streets that Leo of course remembered; and when at last she found herself and her companion of old days seated at a small, clean, bright window-table in the Restaurant Gianuzzi—they being the only occupants of the long saloon—she fairly clapped her little hands together in her gladness. And then how pretty she looked! She had removed her bonnet; and the light from the window, falling on the magnificent masses of her jet-black hair gave it almost a blue sheen in places; while here and there—about the wax-like ear, for example, a tiny ringlet had got astray, and its soft darkness against the olive complexion seemed to heighten the clear, pure pallor of the oval cheek. And now all doubts as to how Leo might receive her had fled from her mind; they were on the old, familiar terms again; and she followed with an eager and joyous interest all that he had to say to her. Then how easily could she accentuate her sympathetic listening with this expressive face! The mobile, somewhat large, beautifully formed mouth, the piquant little nose with its sensitive nostrils, the eloquent dark eyes could just say anything she pleased; though, to be sure, however varying her mood might be, in accordance with what she heard and what was demanded of her, her normal expression was one of an almost childish and happy content. She poured her glass of Chianti into a tumbler, and filled that up with water, and sipped it as a canary sips. She made little pellets of bread with her dainty white fingers—but that was in forgetfulness—that was in her eagerness of listening. And at last she said,

"What is it, Leo?—you wish to frighten me with your trials?—no! for now you laugh at all these—these mortifications. Then a man is proud—he is sensitive—he is not patient as a woman—oh, you think you frighten me?—no, no!"

The fact is, he began to see more and more clearly that she was resolved upon trying her fortune on the lyric stage; and he thought it his duty to let her know very distinctly what she would have to encounter. He did not exactly try to dissuade her; but he gave her a general idea of what she might expect, and that in not too roseate colors. His chief difficulty, however, was this: he was possessed by a vague feeling that there might be some awkwardness in having Antonia Rossi engaged at the same theatre with himself; and yet, looking round all the light operas then being performed, he had honestly to confess that the only part Nina could aspire to take, with her present imperfect pronunciation of English, was that of the young French officer played at the New Theatre by Mlle. Girond. Nor did it lessen his embarrassment to find, as soon as he mentioned this possibility, that to join the New Theatre was precisely what Signorina Rossi desired.

"I don't think there would be much difficulty about it, Nina," he was forced to admit—carefully concealing his reluctance the while. "Lehmann, that is our manager, is talking about getting up a second travelling company, for the opera is so popular everywhere; and there is to be a series of rehearsals of under-studies beginning next Monday, and you could see all the coaching going on. Then you could sit in front at night, and watch Mlle. Girond's 'business:' how would you like that, Nina?—whether what she does is clever or stupid, you would have to copy it? the public would expect that—"

"Why not?" Nina said, with a pleasant smile. "Why not? I learn. She knows more; why I not learn?"

"It's a shame to throw away a fine voice like yours on a small part in comic opera," he said—still with vague dreams before him of a concert-room career for her.

"But I must begin," said she, with much practical common-sense, "and while I am in the small part, I learn to act, I learn the stage-affair, I learn better English, to the end of having a place more important. Why, Leo, you are too careful of me! At Naples I work hard, I am a slave to old Pandiani—I suffer everything—can I not work hard here in London? You think I am an infant? Certainly I am not—no, no—I am old—old—"

"But light-hearted still, Nina," he said, for she was clearly bent on laughing away his fears. Then he looked at her, with a little hesitation. "There's another thing, Nina? about the costume."

"Yes?" she asked, innocently.

"I don't know—whether you would quite like—but I'll show you Mlle. Girond's dress anyway—then you can judge for yourself," said he. He called the waiter. He scribbled on a piece of paper, "Photograph of Mlle. Girond as Capitaine Crepin in 'The Squire's Daughter.'" "Send round to some stationer's shop, will you, and get me that?"

When the messenger returned with the photograph, Lionel, rather timidly, put it before her; but, indeed, there was nothing in the costume of Mlle. Girond to startle any one—the uniform of the boy-officer was so obviously a compromise. Nina glanced at it thoughtfully.

"Well, Leo," she said, looking up, "you see no harm?"

"Harm?" said he, boldly taking up his cue, "of course not! It isn't like any uniform that ever was known; I suppose it's Mlle. Girond's own invention; but, at all events, there's nothing to prevent any modest girl wearing it. Why, I know more than one fashionable lady who would think nothing of appearing as Rosalind—and Rosalind's is a real boy's dress, or ought to be—and then they haven't the excuse that an actor or actress has, that it is a necessity of one's profession. However, there's nothing to be said about that costume, anyway; I really had forgotten that Mlle. Girond had got her pretty little blue coat made with so long a skirt. Besides, Nina, with a voice like yours, you will soon be beyond having to take parts like that."

Indeed, she was so evidently anxious to obtain an engagement in the same theatre that he himself was engaged in that his vague reluctance ultimately vanished; and he began considering when he could bring her before Mr. Lehmann, the manager, and Mr. Carey, the musical conductor, so that they should hear her sing. As to their verdict, as to what the manager would do, he had no doubt whatever. She had a valuable voice, and her ignorance of stage requirements would speedily disappear. At the very time that Lehmann was trying to get new under-studies with a view to the formation of a second travelling company, why, here was a perfect treasure discovered for him. And Lionel made certain that, as soon as Antonia Rossi had had time to study Mlle. Girond's "business," and perhaps one or two chances of actually playing the part, she would be drafted into one or other of the travelling companies, and sent away through the provinces; so that any awkwardness arising from her being in the same theatre with himself, and he her only friend in England, to whom she would naturally appeal in any emergency, would thus be obviated.

"Nina," said he, as they were driving in a hansom to Sloane Street (all her belongings being on the top of the cab), "Lehmann, our manager, is to be at the theatre this afternoon, about some scenery, I fancy, and there's a chance of our catching him if we went down some little time before the performance. Would you come along and sing one or two things? you might have the arrangement made at once."

"Will you go with me, Leo?"

"Oh, yes," he said, "I mean Mrs. Grey will take you, you know; for I will try to get places for her and you in front afterwards; but I will go with you as well. You won't be afraid?"

She laughed.

"Afraid?—no, no—what I can do I can do—there is no Pandiani to scold me if they not satisfied—that is my own beezness—is it right?—oh, I say to you, Leo, if you hear Pandiani when I refuse to go to Malta—you think you know the Neapolitan deealet—dialect?—no, it is not good for you to know all the wicked words of Naples—and he is old and evil-tempered—it is no matter. But in this theatre there is no Pandiani and his curses—"

"No, no, not curses, Nina," he said. "I see old Debernardi has taught you some strange English. Of course the maestro did not use curses to his favorite pupil—oh, yes, you were, Nina, a great favorite, though he was always grumbling and growling. However, remember this, Nina, you must sing your best this evening, and impress them; and I shouldn't wonder if Lehmann gave you exceptional terms."

"More beezness?" she said, with a smile that showed a gleam of her pretty teeth; the sound of the word had tickled her ear, somehow; more than once, as the cab rolled away down Kensingtonwards, he could hear her repeat to herself—"beezness! beezness!"

This young Italian lady seemed to produce a most favorable impression on the little, pale-faced widow, who appeared to be very grateful to Lionel Moore for having thought of her. The ground-floor sitting-room and bedroom, she explained, were occupied by her sole lodger; the young lady could have the choice of any of the apartments above. The young lady, as it turned out, was startled beyond measure at the price she was asked to pay (which, in truth, was quite moderate, for the rooms were good rooms, in a good situation, and neatly furnished), and it was only on Lionel's insisting on it that she consented to take the apartments on the second floor.

"I beg you not miscomprehend," Nina said, somewhat earnestly, to the little landlady (for was she not a friend of Leo's?). "The price is, perhaps, not too large—it is to me that it is large—"

"Oh, that's all right, Nina," Lionel broke in; "that's all settled. You see, Mrs. Grey, Miss Rossi has come over here to get an engagement in comedy opera, or perhaps to sing at concerts; and if a manager calls to see her on business, why, of course, she must be in decent rooms. You can't go and live in a slum. Mrs. Grey knows what managers are, Nina; you must take up a good position and hold your own; and—and, in fact, Nina, when you are in London you can't afford to go and climb those frightful Neapolitan stairs and hide yourself in a garret. So it's settled; and I'm going out directly to hire a piano for you."

"For how much expense, Leo?" she said, anxiously.

"Oh, we'll see about that by and by," said he.

He then explained to Mrs. Grey that Miss Nina was that very evening going along to the New Theatre to be heard by the manager and the conductor; that thereafter she wished to see the performance of "The Squire's Daughter," in which she hoped ere long to take a part herself; and that, if Mrs. Grey could find it convenient to accompany the young lady, it would be a very great obligation to him, Mr. Moore. Mrs. Grey replied to this that her solitary lodger had gone down to Richmond for two or three days; she herself had no engagement of any kind for that evening; and when, she asked, did any one ever hear of an old actress refusing an invitation to go to the theatre?

"So that's all settled, too," said this young man, who seemed to be carrying everything his own way.

Then he went out and hired a piano—necessarily a small upright—which was to be taken down to Sloane Street that same evening; next he sought out a telegraph-office, and sent a message to Mr. Lehmann and to Mr. Carey; finally he called at a florist's, and bought a whole heap of flowers for the better decoration of Signorina Rossi's new apartments. In this last affair he was really outrageously extravagant, even for one who was habitually careless about his expenditure; but he said to himself,

"Well, I throw away lots of money in compliments to people who are quite indifferent to me; and why shouldn't I allow myself a little latitude when it is my old comrade Nina who has come over to England?"

When at length he got back to the house he found it would soon be time for them to be thinking of getting down to the theatre; so he said,

"Now, look here, Mrs. Grey, when Miss Nina has done with her singing and her talk with the manager, you must take her to some restaurant and get some dinner for both of you, for you can't go on without anything until eleven. You will just have time before the performance begins. I'm sorry I can't take you; but, you see, as soon as I hear what the manager says, I must be off to dress for my part. Then, at the end of the performance, I can't ask you to wait for me; you will have to bring her home, either in a cab or by the Underground, for Nina is very economical. I hope you won't think I am treating you ill in leaving you to yourselves—"

"Why, Leo, you have given up the whole day to me!" Nina exclaimed.

"You gave up many an afternoon to me, Nina," he rejoined, "when I sprained my ankle down at that confounded Castello Dell' Ovo."

The ordeal that the debutante had now to undergo was, of course, made remarkably easy for her through the intervention of this good friend of hers. When they got down to the theatre they went at once on to the stage, where Nina found herself in the midst of an old-fashioned English village, with a gayly bedecked Maypole just behind her, while in front of her was the great, gaunt, empty, musty-smelling building, filled with a dim twilight, though, also, there were here and there one or two orange-points of gas. Lionel sent a messenger to the manager's office, and also told him to ask if Mr. Carey had come; then he opened Nina's roll of music for her, and began to discuss with her which piece she should choose. Fortunately Mr. Lehmann had not yet left—here he was—a stout, clean-shaven, sharp-eyed sort of person, in a frock-coat and a remarkably shiny hat; he glanced at the young lady in what she considered a very rude and unwarrantable manner, but the fact was he was merely, from a business point of view, trying to guess what her figure was like. Lionel explained all the circumstances of the case to him, and gave it as his own confident opinion that, as soon as they had heard Mlle. Rossi sing, there would be little doubt of her being engaged. At the same moment Mr. Carey appeared—a tall, blond, extremely handsome person of the fashion-plate sort; and, at a word from the manager, two or three scene-shifters went and wheeled on to the stage a small upright piano.

Nina did not seem at all disconcerted by their business-like air and want of little formal politenesses. Quite calmly she took out "Caro nome " from her music and handed it to the conductor, who was at the piano. He glanced at the sheet, appeared a little surprised, but struck the opening chords for her. Then Nina sang; and though for a second or two the sound of her own voice in this huge, empty building seemed strange—seemed wrong almost and unnatural—she had speedily recovered confidence, and was determined she would bring no discredit upon her friend Leo. Very well indeed she sang, and Lionel was delighted; while, of course, Mr. Carey was professionally interested in hearing for the first time a voice so fresh and pure and so perfectly trained; but when she had finished the manager merely said,

"Thank you, that will do; I needn't trouble you further." Then, after a word or two, partly aside, with Mr. Carey, he turned to Lionel and abruptly asked what salary she wanted—just as if Lionel had brought him some automaton and made it work.

"I think you ought to give her a very good salary," the young man said, in an undertone; "she has studied under Pandiani at Naples. And if I were you I wouldn't ask her to sing in the chorus at all; I would rather keep a voice like that fresh and unworked until she is fit to take a part."

"Singing in the chorus won't hurt her," said he, briefly, "for a while, at least, and she'll become familiar with the stage."

But here Lionel drew the manager still further aside; and then ensued a conversation which neither Nina nor Mr. Carey could in the least overhear. At the end of it Mr. Lehmann nodded acquiescence, and said, "Very well, then;" and straightway he departed, for he was a busy man, and had little time to waste on the smaller courtesies of life—especially in the case of debutantes.

Lionel returned to the young lady whose fate had just been decided.

"That's all right, Nina," he said. "You are engaged as under-study to Mlle. Girond, and you'll have three pounds a week as soon as you have studied her business and are ready to take the part when you're wanted. I will find you a full score, and you may get up some of the other music, when you've nothing better to do. The rehearsals of the under-studies begin on Monday—but I'll see you before then and let you know all about it. You won't mind my running away?—I'm on in the first scene. There is Mrs. Grey waiting for you—you must go and get something to eat—and when you come back, call at the stage-door, and you'll find an envelope waiting for you, with two places in it—the dress circle, if it can be managed, for I want you to be some distance away from the orchestra. Good-bye, Nina!"

She held his hand for a moment.

"Leo, I thank you," she said, regarding him with her dark eyes; and then he smiled and waved another farewell to her as he disappeared; and she was left to make her way with her patient chaperon out of this great, hollow, portentous building, that was now resounding with mysterious clankings and calls.

And it was from a couple of seats in the back of the dress-circle that Mrs. Grey and her young charge heard the comedy-opera of "The Squire's Daughter;" and Lionel knew they were there; and no doubt he sang his best—for, if Nina had been showing off what she could do in the morning, why should he not show off now, amid all these added glories of picturesque costumes and surroundings? Nina was in an extraordinary state of excitement, which she was unable altogether to conceal. Mrs. Grey could hear the little, muttered exclamations in Italian; she could see how intently that expressive face followed the progress of the piece, reflecting its every movement, as it were; she caught a glimpse of tears on the long, dark lashes when Lionel was singing, with impassioned fervor, his love-lorn serenade; and then the next moment she was astonished by the vehemence of the girl's delight when the vast house thundered forth its applause—indeed, Nina herself was clapping her hands furiously, to join in the universal roar of a recall—she was laughing with joy—she appeared to have gone mad. Then, at the end of the second act, she said, quickly,

"Mrs. Grey, can I send to him a note?—is there letter-paper?"

"Well, my dear, if we go into the refreshment-room and have a cup of tea, perhaps one of the young ladies could give us a sheet of writing-paper."

And thus it was that Lionel, when he was leaving the theatre that night, found a neatly folded little note awaiting him. He was in a considerable hurry; for he had to go home and dress and get off to a crush in Grosvenor Square, where he hoped to find Lady Adela Cunyngham, her sisters, and Miss Georgie Lestrange (there was some talk of an immediate presentation of the little pastoral comedy), so that he had only time to glance over Nina's nervously pencilled scrawl. Thus it ran:

"Leo, it is magnificent, it is splendid, you are a true artist; to-morrow I write to Pandiani, he will be overjoyed as I am. But Miss Burgoyne—no, no, no—she is not artist at all—she is negligent of her part, of the others in the scene—she puts up her fan and talks to you from behind it—why you allow that?—it is insult to the public! She believes not her part and makes all the rest false. What a shame to you, Leo; but your splendid voice, your fine timbre, carries everything! Bravo, my Leo! It is a great trionf, brilliant, beautiful, and Nina is proud of her friend. Good-night from

"NINA."

As Lionel was spinning along Piccadilly in his swift hansom, it occurred to him that if Nina were going to join the "Squire's Daughter" company, it might be just as well for her not to have any preconceived antipathy against Miss Burgoyne. For Miss Burgoyne was an important person at the New Theatre.



CHAPTER IV.

COUNTRY AND TOWN.

On this Sunday morning, when all the good people had gone to church, there was no sign of life on these far-stretching Winstead Downs. The yellow roads intersecting the undulations of black-and-golden gorse were undisturbed by even a solitary tramp; so that Lionel Moore and his friend Mangan, as they idly walked along, seemed to be the sole possessors of the spacious landscape. It was a beautiful morning, warm and clear and sunny; a southerly breeze stirred the adjacent elms into a noise as of the sea, caused the chestnuts to wave their great branches bearing thousands of milky minarets, and sent waves of shadows across the silken gray-green of a field of rye. There was a windmill on a distant height, its long arms motionless. A strip of Scotch firs stood black and near at one portion of the horizon; but elsewhere the successive lines of wood and hill faded away into the south, becoming of a paler and paler hue until they disappeared in a silvery mist. The air was sweet with the resinous scent of the furze. In short, it was a perfect day in early June, on a wide, untenanted, high-lying Surrey common.

And Maurice Mangan, in his aimless, desultory fashion, was inveighing against the vanity of the life led by certain classes in the great Babylon out of which he had just haled his rather unwilling friend; and describing their mad and frantic efforts to wrest themselves free of the demon ennui; and their ceaseless, eager clamor for hurry and excitement, lest, in some unguarded moment of silence, their souls should speak.

"It is quite a fallacy," he was saying, as he walked carelessly onwards, his head thrown forward a little, his hands clasped behind his back, his stick trailing after him, "it is altogether a fallacy to talk of the 'complaining millions of men' who 'darken in labor and pain.' It is the hard-working millions of mankind who are the happiest; their constant labor brings content; the riddle of the painful earth doesn't vex them—they have no leisure; they don't fear the hour of sleep—they welcome it. It is the rich, who find time drag remorselessly on their hands, who have desperately to invent occupations and a whirl of amusements, who keep pursuing shadows they can never lay hold of, who are really in a piteous case; and I suppose you take credit to yourself, Linn, my boy, that you are one of the distractions that help them to lighten the unbearable weariness of their life. Well," he continued, in his rambling way, "it isn't quite what I had looked forward to; I had looked forward to something different for you. I can remember, when we used to have our long Sunday walks in those days, what splendid ambitions you had for yourself, and how you were all burning to begin—the organist of Winstead Church was to produce his Hallelujah Chorus, and the nations were to listen; and the other night, when I was in your room at the theatre, when I saw you smearing your face and decking yourself out for exhibition before a lot of fashionable idlers, I could not help saying to myself, 'And this is what Linn Moore has come to!'"

"Yes, that is what Linn Moore has come to," the other said, with entire good-nature. "And what has Maurice Mangan come to? I can remember when Maurice Mangan was to be a great poet, a great metaphysician, a great—I don't know what. Winstead was far too small a place for him; he was to go up and conquer London, and do great and wonderful things. And what is he now?—a reporter of the gabble of the House of Commons."

"I suppose I am a failure," said this tall, thin, contemplative-looking man, who spoke quite dispassionately of himself, just as he spoke with a transparent honesty and simplicity of his friend. "But at least I have kept myself to myself. I haven't sold myself over to the Moloch of fashion—"

"Oh, your dislike of fashionable people is a mere bundle of prejudice!" Lionel cried. "The truth is, Maurice, you don't know those fashionable people you seem to despise so heartily. If you did, you would discover that they had the ordinary human qualities of other people—only that they are better educated and more courteous and pleasant in manner. Then their benevolence—if you knew how much they give away in charity—"

"Benevolence!" Mangan broke in, impatiently. "What is benevolence? It is generally nothing more or less than an expression of your own satisfaction with yourself. You are stuffed with food and wine; your purse is gorged; 'here's a handful of sovereigns for you, you poor devil crouching at the corner!' What merit is in that? Do you call that a virtue? But where charity really becomes a heroism, Linn, is when a poor, suffering, neuralgic woman, without any impulse from abundance of health or abundance of comfort, sets laboriously to work to do what she can for her fellow-creatures. Then that is something to regard—that is something to admire—"

Lionel burst out laughing.

"A very pretty description of Francie Wright!" he cried. "Francie a poor, suffering, wretched woman—because she happened to have a touch of neuralgia the last Sunday you were down here! There's very little of the poor and suffering about Francie; she's as contented and merry a lass as you'd find anywhere."

Mangan was silent for a second or two; and then he said, with a little hesitation,

"Didn't you tell me Miss Wright had not been up yet to see 'The Squire's Daughter?'"

"No, she has not," Lionel answered, lightly. "I don't know whether you have been influencing her, Maurice, or whether you have picked up some of her highly superior prejudices; anyhow, I rather fancy she doesn't quite approve of the theatre—I mean, I don't think she approves of the New Theatre, for she'd go to any other one fast enough, I suppose, if you could only get her away from her sick children. But not the New Theatre, apparently. Perhaps she doesn't care to see me making myself a motley to the view."

"She has a great regard for you, Linn. I wouldn't call her opinions prejudices," Mangan said—but with the curious diffidence he displayed whenever he spoke of Lionel's cousin.

"Oh, Francie should have lived in the fifteenth century—she would have been a follower of Savonarola," Lionel said, with a laugh. "She's far too exalted for these present days."

"Well, Linn," said his friend, "I'm glad you know at least one person who has some notion of duty and self-sacrifice, who has some fineness of perception and some standard of conduct and aim to go by. Why, those people you associate so much with now seem to have but one pursuit—the pursuit of pleasure, the gratification of every selfish whim; they seem to have no consciousness of the mystery surrounding life—of the fact that they themselves are inexplicable phantoms whose very existence might make them pause and wonder and question. No, it is the amassing of wealth, and the expending of it, that is all sufficient. I used to wonder why God should have chosen the Jews, of all the nations of the earth, for the revelation that there was something nobler than the acquisition of riches; but I suppose it was because no race ever needed it so much. And what new revelation—what new message is coming to the multitudes here in England who are living in a paradise of sensual gratification, blinded, besotted, their world a sort of gorgeous pig-stye—"

"Oh, that's all right," Lionel said, cheerfully. "Octavius Quirk has settled all that. The cure for everything is to be a blowing of the whole social fabric to bits. Then we're going to begin again all over; and the New Jerusalem will be reached when each man has to dig for his own potatoes."

"Quirk!" said Maurice Mangan, contemptuously; and then he took out his watch. "We'd better be getting back, Linn. We'll just be in time to meet your people coming out of church."

So they turned and walked leisurely across the gorse-covered downs until they reached the broad and dusty highway leading towards Winstead village. And then again they struck into a by-lane with tall hedges, the banks underneath which were bright with stitchwort and speedwell and white dead-nettle. Now and again, through a gap or a gate, they caught a glimpse of the lush meadows golden with buttercups; in one of them there was a small black pony standing in the shadow of a wide-spreading elm. They passed some cottages with pretty gardens in front; they stopped for a second to look at the old-fashioned columbine and monkshood, the none-so-pretty, the yellow and crimson wall-flower, the peony roses. Then always around them was this gracious silence, which seemed so strange after the roar of London; and if the day promised to become still hotter, at least they had this welcome breeze, that rustled the quick-glancing poplars, and stirred the white-laden hawthorns, and kept the long branches of the wych-elms and chestnuts swaying hither and thither. They were not talking much now; one of them was thinking of a pair of gray eyes.

At last they came to a turnstile, and, passing through that, found themselves in one of those wide meadows; at the farther side of it the red-tiled roof, the gray belfry, and slated spire of Winstead Church just showed above the masses of green foliage. They crossed the meadow and entered the churchyard. A perfect silence reigned over the place; they could not hear what was going on within the small building; out here there was no sound save the chirping of the birds and the continuous murmur of the trees. They walked about, looking thoughtfully at the gravestones—many of them bearing names familiar enough to them in bygone years. And perhaps one or other of them may have been fancying that when the great, busy world had done with him—and used him up and thrown him aside—here at least there would be peace preserved for him—an ample sufficiency of rest under this greensward, with perhaps a few flowers put there by some kindly hand. The dead did not seem to need much pity on this tranquil day.

Then into this universal silence came suddenly a low, booming sound that caused Lionel Moore's heart to stand still: it was the church organ—that awakened a multitude of associations and recollections, that seemed to summon up the vanished years and the dreams of his youth, when it was he himself who used to sit at the instrument and call forth those massive chords and solemn tones. Something of his boyhood came back to him; he seemed again to be looking forward to an unknown future; wondering and eager, he painted visions; and always in them, to share his greatness and his fame, there was some radiant creature, smiling-eyed, who would be at his side in sorrow and in joy, through the pain of striving and in the rapture of triumph. And now—now that the years had developed themselves—what had become of these wistful hopes and forecasts? Boyish nonsense, he would have said (except just at such a moment as this, when the sudden sound of the organ seemed to call back so much). He had encountered the realities of life since then; he had chosen his profession; he had studied hard; he had achieved a measure of fame. And the beautiful and wonderful being who was to share his triumphs with him? Well, he had never actually beheld her. A glimmer here and there, in a face or a form, had taken his fancy captive more than once; but he remained heart-whole; he was too much occupied, he laughingly assured Maurice Mangan again and again, to have the chance of falling in love.

"Getting married?" he would say. "My dear fellow, I haven't time; I'm far too busy to think of getting married."

So the radiant bride had never been found, even as the new Hallelujah Chorus that was to thrill the hearts of millions had never been written; and Linn Moore had to be content with the very pronounced success he had attained in playing in comic opera, and with a popularity in the fashionable world of London, especially among the women-folk therein, that would have turned many a young fellow's head.

When they thought the service was about over they went round to the porch and awaited the coming out of the congregation. And among the first to make their appearance—issuing from the dusky little building into this bewilderment of white light and green leaves—were old Dr. Moore and his wife, and Miss Francie Wright, who passed for Lionel's cousin, though the relationship was somewhat more remote than that. Maurice Mangan received a very hearty welcome from these good people; and then, as they set out for home, Lionel walked on with his father and mother, while Lionel's friend naturally followed with the young lady. She was not a distinctly beautiful person, perhaps, this slim-figured young woman, with the somewhat pale face, the high-arched eyebrows, and light-brown hair; but at least she had extremely pretty gray eyes, that had a touch of shrewdness and humor in them, as well as plenty of gentleness and womanliness; and she had a soft and attractive voice, which goes for much.

"It is so kind of you, Mr. Mangan," said she, in that soft and winning voice, "to bring Linn down. You know he won't come down by himself; and who can wonder at it? It is so dull and monotonous for him here, after the gay life he leads in London."

"Dull and monotonous!" he exclaimed. "Why, I have been preaching to him all the morning that he should be delighted to come down into the quietude of the country, as a sort of moral bath after the insensate racket of that London whirl. But no one ever knows how well off he is," he continued, as they walked along between the fragrant hawthorn hedges; "it's the lookers-on who know. Good gracious, what wouldn't I give to be in Linn's place!"

"Do you mean in London, Mr. Mangan?" she asked, and for an instant the pretty gray eyes looked up.

"Certainly not!" he said, with unnecessary warmth. "I mean here. If I could run down of a Sunday to a beautiful, quiet, old-fashioned place like this, and find myself in my own home, among my own people, I wonder how many Sundays would find me in London? You can't imagine, you have no idea, what it is to live quite alone in London, with no one to turn to but club acquaintances; and I think Sunday is the worst day of all, especially if it is fine weather, and all the people have gone to the country or the seaside to spend the day with their friends."

"But, Mr. Mangan," said Miss Francie Wright, gently, "I am sure, whenever you have a Sunday free like that, we should be only too glad if you would consider us your friends—unless you think the place too dreadfully tedious, as I'm afraid my cousin finds it."

"It is very kind of you—very," said he. "And I know the old doctor and Mrs. Moore like to see me well enough, for I bring down their boy to them; but if I came by myself, I'm afraid they wouldn't care to have an idling, dawdling fellow like me lounging about the place of a Sunday afternoon."

"Will you come and try, Mr. Mangan?" said she, quietly. "For Linn's sake alone I know they would be delighted to have you here. And if it is rest and quiet you want, can't we give you the garden and a book?"

"You mustn't put such visions before me," he said. "It's too good to be true. I should be sighing for Paradise all through the week and forgetting my work. And shouldn't I hate to wake up on Monday morning and find myself in London!"

"You might wake up on Monday morning, and find yourself in Winstead," said she, "if you would take Linn's room for the night."

"Ah, no," he said, "it isn't for the like of me to try to take Linn's place in any way whatever. He has always had everything—everything seemed to come to him by natural right; and then he has always been such a capital fellow, so modest and unaffected and generous, that nobody could ever grudge him his good-fortune. Prince Fortunatus he always has been."

"In what way, Mr. Mangan?" his companion asked, rather wonderingly.

"In every way. People are fond of him; he wins affection without trying for it; as I say, it all comes to him as if by natural right."

"Yes, they say he is very popular in London, among those fine folk," observed Miss Francie, quite good-naturedly.

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of his fashionable friends," Mangan rejoined. "Being made much of by those people doesn't seem to me one of the great gifts of fortune. And yet I wonder it hasn't spoiled him. He doesn't seem the least bit spoiled, does he?"

"Really, I see so little of him," Miss Francie said, with a smile, "he honors us with so few visits, that I can hardly tell."

"No, he is not spoiled—you may take my word for it," her companion said, with decision. And then he added, "I suppose he gets too much of that petting; he is kept in such a turmoil of gayety that its evil effects have no time to sink into him. He is too busy—as he said this morning about marrying."

"What was that, Mr. Mangan?" she asked.

"He said he was too busy to think of getting married."

"Oh, indeed?" she said, with her eyes directed towards the ground. "We—we have always been expecting to hear of his being engaged to some young lady—seeing he is made so much of in London—" She could say no more, for now they were arrived at the doctor's house, which was separated from the highway by a little strip of front garden. They passed in through the gate and found the door left open for them.

"Well, Miss Savonarola," said Lionel, as he hung up his hat in the hall and turned to address her, "how have you been all this time?"

"I have been very well, Mr. Pagan," said she, smiling.

"And how are all those juvenile Londoners that you've planted about in the cottages?"

"They're getting on nicely, every one of them," said she, with quite an air of pride; and then she added, "When is your Munificence going to give me another subscription?"

"Just now, Francie," was the instant reply. "How much do you want?"

"As much as ever you can afford," said she.

He pulled from his pocket a handful of loose coin, and began to pick out the sovereigns. But Miss Francie, with a little touch of her fingers, put the money away.

"No, Linn, not from you. You've given me too much already. You give too freely; I like to have a little difficulty in obtaining subscriptions; it feels nicer somehow. But if my funds should run very low, then I'll come to you, Linn."

"Whenever you like, Francie," said he, carelessly; he poured the money into his pocket again and bade Maurice Mangan come up to his room, to get the dust of travel removed from his hands and face before going in to luncheon.

Then while Mangan was busy with his ablutions in this small upper chamber, Lionel drew a chair to the open window and gazed absently abroad on the wide stretch of country visible from the doctor's house. It was a familiar view; yet it was one not easy to get tired of; and of course on such a morning as this it lost none of its charm. Everywhere in the warm breeze and the sunshine there was a universal rustling and trembling and glancing of all beautiful things—of the translucent foliage of the limes, the pendulous blossoms of lilacs and laburnums, the swaying branches of the larch, and the masses of blue forget-me-nots in the garden below. Then there were all the hushed sounds of the country: the distant, quick footfall of a horse on some dusty road; the warning cluck of a thrush to her young ones down there among the bushes; the glad voices and laughter of some girls in an adjacent garden—they, too, likely to be soon away from the maternal nest; the crow of a cock pheasant from the margin of the wood; the clear, ringing melody of an undiscoverable lark. Everywhere white light, blue skies, and shadows of great clouds slow-sailing over the young green corn and over the daisied meadows in which the cows lay half-asleep. And when he looked beyond that low green hill, where there were one or two hares hopping about on their ungainly high haunches, and past that great stretch of receding country in which strips of red-and-white villages peeped here and there from the woods, behold! a horizon as of the sea, faint and blue and far, rising and ever rising in various hues and tones, until it was lost in a quivering mist of heat; and he could only guess that there, too, under the glowing sky, some other fair expanse of our beautiful English landscape lay basking in the sunlight and sweet air of the early summer.

Of course Lionel was the hero of the hour when they were all assembled in the dining-room—at a very sumptuously furnished board, by the way, for the hale old doctor was fond of good living and a firm believer in the virtues of port wine. Moreover, the young man had an attentive audience; for the worthy old lady at the head of the table never took her admiring eye's off this wonderful boy of hers; and Miss Francie Wright meekly listened too; while as for Maurice Mangan, who was he in his humble station to interrupt this marvellous tale of great doings and festivities? Not that Lionel magnified his own share in these things; nay, he modestly kept himself out altogether; it was merely to interest these simple country folk that he described the grand banquets, the illuminated gardens, the long marquees, and told them how the princess looked, and who it was who had the honor of taking her in to supper. But when he came, among other things, to speak of the rehearsal of the little pastoral comedy, in the clear light of the dawn, by Lady Adela Cunyngham and her friends, he had to admit that he himself was present on that occasion; and at once the fond mother took him to task.



"It's wicked, Lionel," she said, severely; "it's downright wicked to keep such hours. Look at the result of it all. You can't eat anything—you're not taking a mouthful!"

"But, you know, mother, I'm not used to luncheon," he said, cheerfully enough. "I have to dine at five every day—and I've no time to bother with luncheon, even if I could eat it."

"Take a glass of port, my lad," the old doctor said. "That will put some life into you."

"No, thanks," he said, indifferently, "I can't afford to play tricks. I have to study my throat."

"Why, what better astringent can you have than tannic acid?" the old gentleman called down the table. "I suppose you drink those washy abominations that the young men of the day prefer to honest wine; what's that I hear about lemonade? Lemonade!" he repeated, with disgust.

"It's home-brewed—it's wholesome enough; Miss Burgoyne makes some for me when she is making it for herself," the young man said; and then he turned to his mother: "Mother, I wish you would send her something from the garden—"

"Who, Lionel?"

"Miss Burgoyne—at the theatre, you know. She's very good to me—lends me her room if I have any swell friends who want to come behind—and makes me this lemonade, which is better than anything else on a hot night. Couldn't you send her something from the garden?—not flowers—she gets too many flowers, and doesn't care for them; but if you had some early strawberries or something of that kind, she would take them as a greater compliment, coming from you, than if some idiot of a young fool spent guineas on them at a florist's. And when are you coming up to see 'The Squire's Daughter,' Francie? The idea that you should never have been near the place, when I hear people confessing to each other that they have been to see it eight and ten, or even a dozen times!"

"But I am so busy, Lionel!" she said; and then perhaps an echo of something that had been said in the morning may have recurred to her mind; for she seemed a trifle confused, and kept her eyes downcast, while Lionel went on to tell them of what certain friends of his were going to do at Henley Regatta.

After luncheon they went out into the garden, and took seats in the shade of the lilac-trees, in the sweet air. Old Mrs. Moore had for form's sake brought a book with her; but she was not likely to read much when the pride of her eyes had come down on a visit to her, and was now talking to her, in his off-hand, light-hearted way. Maurice Mangan had followed the doctor's example and pulled out his pipe—which he forgot to light, however. He seemed dissatisfied. He kept looking back to the house from time to time. Was there no one else coming out? There was the French window of the drawing-room still open; was there no glimmer of a gray dress anywhere—with its ornamentation of a bunch of scarlet geraniums? At last he made bold to say to the doctor:

"Where has Miss Francie gone to? Isn't she coming out too?"

"Oh, she's away after those London brats of hers, I have no doubt," the old gentleman said. "You won't see her till teatime, if even then." Whereupon Mangan lit his pipe, and proceeded to smoke in silence, listening at times and absently to Lionel's vivacious talking to his mother.

In fact, before Miss Francie Wright returned that afternoon, Lionel found that he had to take his departure, for there are no trains to Winstead on Sunday, and he would have to walk some three miles to the nearest station. When he declared he had to go, the old lady's protests and entreaties were almost piteous.

"You come to see us so seldom, Lionel! And of course we thought you'd dine with us, at the very least; and if you could stay the night as well, you know there's a room for Mr. Mangan too. And we were looking forward to such a pleasant evening."

"But I have a long-standing engagement, mother; a dinner engagement—I could not get out of it."

"And you are dragging Mr. Mangan away up to town again, on a beautiful afternoon like this, when we know he is so fond of the country and of a garden—"

"Not at all," Lionel said. "I need not spoil Maurice's day, if I have to spoil my own; he'll stay, of course; and I suppose Francie will be back directly."

"I'm sure, Mr. Mangan," the old lady said, turning at once to her other guest, "if Lionel must really go, we shall be delighted if you will remain and dine with us—I hope you will—and you can have Lionel's room if you will stay the night as well."

"Thank you, I couldn't do that," said he, very gratefully, "but if you will have me, I shall be very glad to stay on, and go up by a late train. In the meantime, I think I'll walk to the station with Linn."

"And come back with a good appetite for dinner," said the doctor, calling after him. "We'll have something better than lemonade, I warrant ye!"

They have slow trains on these Surrey lines on Sunday; by the time that Lionel had got up to town and driven to his rooms and dressed, it was very near the hour at which he was due at the Lansdowne Gallery, where Lord Rockminster was giving a dinner-party, as a preliminary to the concert and crush that were to follow. And no sooner had he alighted from his hansom, and entered the marble vestibule of the gallery, than whom should he descry ascending the stairs in front of him but Mr. Octavius Quirk.

"Lady Adela hasn't let the grass grow under her feet," he said to himself. "Captured her first critic already!"

Lady Adela was at the head of the stairs receiving her brother's guests; and the greeting that she accorded to Mr. Octavius Quirk was of a most special and gracious kind. She was very complaisant to Lionel also, and bade him go and see if the place they had given him at dinner was to his liking. He took this as a kind of permission to choose what he wanted (within discreet limits); and as he just then happened to meet Miss Georgie Lestrange, he proposed to that smiling and ruddy-haired damsel that they should go and examine for themselves—and perhaps alter the dispositions a little. So they passed away through those brilliantly lit galleries (which served as a picture-exhibition on week-days), and at the farther end of the largest room they found the oblong dinner-table, which was brilliant with flowers and fruit, with crystal and silver. Of course Lionel and his companion had to be content with very modest places, for this was a highly distinguished company which Lord Rockminster had invited; but at all events they made sure they were to sit together, and that arrangement seemed to be satisfactory to them both.

This was rather a magnificent little banquet; and Lionel, looking down the long, richly colored table, may once or twice have thought of the quiet, small dining-room at Winstead (perhaps with the curtains still undrawn, and the evening light shining blue in the panes), and of the solitary guest whom he had left to talk to those good people; but indeed he was not permitted much time for reverie, for the young lady with the pince-nez was a most lively chatterer; she knew everything that was going on in London, and seemed to take a particularly active interest therein. Among other solemn items of information which she communicated to her companion, she mentioned that the issue of Lady Adela's novel had been postponed.

"Yes, it's quite ready, you know," she continued, in her blithe, discursive, happy-go-lucky fashion; "all quite ready; but she doesn't want it to go before the public until there has been a little talk about it, don't you understand? She wants some of the society papers to mention it; but she isn't quite sure how to get that done, and nobody seems able to help her—it's really distressing. Do you see that hideous creature down there at the corner?"

"Yes."

"He's a writer," observed this artless maiden, in mysterious tones.

"You don't say so!"

"Yes, he is—writes in all kinds of places. Why, now I think of it, Lady Adela said he was a friend of yours! I'm sure she did. So you pretend not to know him—is that on account of his complexion? Have you any more such beauties among your acquaintances, Mr. Moore? I thought he might be taking me in to dinner; and that's why I was so glad you brought me to look at the cards. Very rude, wasn't it? but you had permission, hadn't you? And there's another one coming to-night."

"Another what?"

"A writing man. But this other one is an American. Of course Lady Adela wants to have the curiosity of the American public excited just as well as the English. Have you heard Lady Sybil's marching-song yet?"

"No."

"Well, I think it is charming—really charming. Rockminster was dining with the officers of the Coldstream Guards the other evening, and he promised to send a copy to the bandmaster as soon as it is published. But Sybil wants more than that, of course; she wants to see whether the commander-in-chief wouldn't recommend it, so that it could be taken up by all the regiments. Wouldn't that be splendid?—to think that Sybil should provide a marching-song for the whole British army!"

"Yes, indeed," said he, with great politeness. "And why shouldn't the commander-in-chief recommend it? A marching-song is as important as a new button. But I must get a look at the music, if we are all to join in the chorus."

The dinner was not long-protracted, for there was to be a concert during the evening; and, indeed, people began to arrive early—strolling through the galleries, looking at the pictures, or talking together in small groups. It was during this promiscuous assembling that Octavius Quirk got hold of Lionel, and, with savage disgust, drew his attention to a hostler-looking person who had just come into the room.

"Do you see that ill-conditioned brute; what's he doing here?"

Lionel glanced in the direction indicated.

"I don't know who he is."

"Don't you know Quincey Hooper? the correspondent of the Philadelphia Roll-Call—a cur who toadies every Englishman he meets, and at the same time sneers at everything English in his wretched Philadelphia rag."

Then Lionel instantly bethought him of Miss Lestrange's hint; was this the correspondent who was to arouse the interest of the great American Continent in Lady Adela's forthcoming novel, even as Octavius Quirk was expected to write about it in England? But surely, with the wide Atlantic lying between their respective spheres of operation, there was no need for rivalry? Why did Mr. Quirk still glare in the direction of the new-comer with ill-disguised, or rather with wholly undisguised, disdain?

"Why," said he, in his tempestuously frothy fashion, "I've heard that creature actually discussing with another American what sort of air a man should assume in entering a drawing-room! Can you conceive of such a thing? Where did all that alarmed self-consciousness of the modern American come from—that unceasing self-consciousness that makes the American young man spend five sixths of his waking time in asking himself if he is a gentleman? Not from the splendid assurance, the belief in himself, the wholesome satisfaction of old John Bull. It's no use for the modern American to say he is of English descent at all!" continued this boisterous controversialist, who was still glaring at the hapless mortal at the door, as if every windy sentence was being hurled at his head. "Not a bit! there's nothing English about him, or his ways, or his sympathies, or character. Fancy an Englishman considering what demeanor he should assume before entering a drawing-room! The modern American hasn't the least idea from whom he is descended; what right has he to claim anything of our glorious English heritage?—or to say there is English blood in him at all? Why, as far back as the Declaration of Independence, the people of English birth or parentage in the Eastern States were in a distinct minority! And as to the American of the future—look at the thousands upon thousands of Germans pouring into the country as compared with the English immigration. That is the future American—a German; and it is to be hoped he will have some back-bone in him, and not alarm himself about his entering a drawing-room! America for the Americans?—it's America for the Germans! I tell you this: in a generation or two the great national poet of America will be—Goethe!"

Happily, at this moment, Lady Adela came up, and Lionel most gladly turned aside, for she had evidently something to say to him privately.

"Mr. Moore, I want to introduce you to Mr. Hooper—to Mr. Quincey Hooper—he doesn't seem to know anybody, and I want you to look after him a little—"

"No, no, Lady Adela, you must really excuse me," said he, in an undertone, but he was laughing all the same. "I can't, really. I beg your pardon, but indeed you must excuse me. I've just had one dose of literature—a furious lecture about—about I don't know what—oh, yes, immigration into America. And do you know this—that in a generation or two the great national poet of America will be Goethe?"

"What?" said she.

He repeated the statement; and added that there could be no doubt about it, for he had it on Mr. Octavius Quirk's authority.

"Well, it's a good thing to be told," she said, sweetly, "for then you know." And therewithal, as there was a sudden sound of music issuing from the next gallery, she bade Lionel take her to see who had begun—it was Lady Sybil, indeed, who was playing a solo on the violin to an accompaniment of stringed instruments, while all the crowd stood still and listened.

The evening passed pleasantly enough. There were one or two courageous amateurs who now and again ventured on a song; but for the most part the music was instrumental. A young lady, standing with her hands behind her back, gave a recitation, and attempted to draw pathetic tears by picturing the woes of a simple-minded chimney-sweep who accidentally killed his tame sparrow, and who never quite held up his head thereafter; he seemed to pine away somehow, until one morning they found him dead, his face downward on the tiny grave in which he had buried his little playfellow. Another young lady performed a series of brilliant roulades on a silver bugle, which seemed to afford satisfaction. A well-known entertainer sat down to the piano and proceeded to give a description of a fashionable wedding; and all the people laughed merrily at the clever and sparkling way in which he made a fool of—not themselves, of course, but their friends and acquaintances. And then Lionel Moore went to his hostess.

"Don't you want me to do anything?" he said.

"You're too kind," Lady Adela made answer, with grateful eyes. "It's hardly fair. Still, if I had the courage—"

"Yes, you have the courage," he said, smiling.

"If I had the courage to ask you to sing Sybil's song for her?"

"Of course I will sing it," he said.

"Will you? Will you really? You know, I'm afraid those two girls will never give enough force to it. And it is a man's song—if you wouldn't mind, Mr. Moore."

"Where can I get the music? I'll just look it over."

Quite a little murmur of interest went through the place when it was rumored that Lionel Moore was about to sing Lady Sybil's "Soldiers' Marching Song," and when he stepped on to the platform at the upper end of the gallery, people came swarming in from the other rooms. Lady Sybil herself was to play the accompaniment—the grand piano being fully opened so as to give free egress to the marshalled chords; and when she sat down to the keyboard, it was apparent that the tall, pale, handsome young lady was not a little tremulous and anxious. Indeed, it was a very good thing for the composer that she had got Lionel Moore to sing the song; for the quite trivial and commonplace character of the music was in a large measure concealed by the fine and resonant quality of his rich baritone notes. The chorus was not much of a success—Lady Sybil's promised accomplices seemed to have found their courage fail them at the critical moment; but as for the martial ditty itself, it appeared to take the public ear very well; and when Lionel finally folded the music together again, there was quite a little tempest of clapping of hands. Here and there a half-hearted demand for a repetition was heard; but this was understood to be merely a compliment to Lady Sybil; and indeed Lionel strolled out of the room as soon as his duties were over. Fortunately no one was so indiscreet as to ask him what he privately thought of the "Soldiers' Marching Song," or of its chances of being recommended to the British Army by his royal highness the commander-in-chief.

When at length Lionel thought it was about time for him to slip away quietly from these brilliant, busy, murmuring rooms, he went to bid his hostess privately good-night.

"It was so awfully kind of you, Mr. Moore," she said, graciously, "to give us the chance of making Mr. Quirk's acquaintance. He is so interesting, you know, so unconventional, so original in his opinions—quite a treat to listen to him, I assure you. I've sent him a copy of my poor little book; some time or other I wish you could get to know what he thinks of it?"

"Oh, yes, certainly. I will ask him," Lionel said; and again he bade her good-night, and took his leave.

But as he was going by the entrance into a smaller gallery, which had been turned into a sort of supper-room (there was a buffet at one end, and everywhere a number of small tables at which groups of friends could sit down, the gentlemen of the party bringing over what was wanted) he happened to glance in, and there, occupying a small table all by himself, was Mr. Octavius Quirk, Lionel at once made his way to him. He found him with a capacious plate of lobster-salad before him, and by the side of that was a large bottle of champagne.

"Going to sit down?" Quirk asked—but with no great cordiality; it was for one person, not for two, that he had secured that bottle.

"No; I dined here," said Lionel, with innocent sarcasm.

"My dear fellow," observed the other, earnestly, "a good dinner is the very best preparation in the world for a good supper."

"I hear Lady Adela has sent you her book; have you looked at it?" Lionel asked.

"Yes, I have," said the other, with his mouth full of lobster-salad. "Capital! I call it capital! Plenty of verve and go—knowledge of society—nobody can do that kind of thing like the people who are actually living in it. Her characters are the people one really meets, you know—they are in the world—they belong to life. Oh, yes, a capital novel! Light, airy, amusing, sparkling—I tell you it will be the book of the season!"

"Oh, I'm very glad to hear that," said Lionel, thoughtfully; and then he went and got his light overcoat and crush-hat, and descended the wide stone-steps, and made his way home to his rooms in Piccadilly.



CHAPTER V.

WARS AND RUMORS.

Little could Lionel Moore have anticipated what was to come of his introducing his old comrade Nina to the New Theatre. At first all went well; and even the prima-donna herself was so good as to extend her patronage to Lionel's protegee; insomuch that, arriving rather early at the theatre one evening, and encountering Nina in the corridor, she said to her,

"You come into my room, and I'll show you my make-up."

It was a friendly offer; and the young Italian girl, who was working hard in every way to fit herself for the stage, was glad to be initiated still further into these mysteries of the toilet. But when she had followed Miss Burgoyne into the sacred inner room, and when the dresser had been told she should not be wanted yet awhile, Nina, who was far from being a stupid person, began to perceive what had prompted this sudden invitation. For Miss Burgoyne, as she was throwing off her things, and getting ready for her stage-transformation, kept plying her guest with all sorts of cunning little questions about Mr. Moore—questions which had no apparent motive, it is true, so carelessly were they asked; but Nina, even as she answered, was shrewd enough to understand.

"So you might call yourself quite an old friend of his," the prima-donna continued, busying herself at the dressing-table. "Well, what do you think of him now?"

"How, Miss Burgoyne?" Nina said.

"Why, you see the position he has attained here in London—very different from what he had when he was studying in Naples, I suppose. Don't you hear how all those women are spoiling him? What do you think of that? If I were a friend of his—an intimate friend—I should warn him. For what will the end be—he'll marry a rich woman, a woman of fashion, and cease to be anybody. Fancy a man's ruining his career—giving up his position, his reputation—becoming nobody at all—in order to have splendid horses and give big dinner-parties! Of course she'll have her doll, to drive by her side in the Park; but she'll tire—and then? And he'll get sick-tired, too, and wish he was back in the theatre; and just as likely as not he'll take to drinking, or gambling, or something. Depend on it, my dear, a professional should marry in the profession; that's the only safe thing; then there is a community of interests, and they understand each other and are glad of each other's success. Don't you think so yourself?"

Nina was startled by the sudden appeal; but she managed to intimate that, on the whole, she agreed with Miss Burgoyne; and that young lady proceeded to expand her little lecture and to cite general instances that had come within her own knowledge of the disastrous effects of theatrical people marrying outside their own set. As to any lesson in the art of making-up, perhaps Miss Burgoyne had forgotten the pretext on which she asked Nina to come to her room. Her maid was called in to help her now. And at last it was time for Nina to go, for she also, in her humble way, had to prepare herself for the performance.

But this friendliness on the part of the prima-donna towards the young baritone's protegee did not last very long. For one thing, Lionel did not come to Miss Burgoyne's sitting-room as much as he used to do, to have a cup of tea and a chat with one or two acquaintances; he preferred standing in the wings with Nina, who was a most indefatigable student, and giving her whispered criticisms and comments as to what was going forward on the stage. When Miss Burgoyne came upon them so employed, she passed them in cold disdain. And by degrees she took less and less notice of Miss Ross (as Nina was now called), who, indeed, was only Miss Girond's under-study and a person of no consequence in the theatre. Finally, Miss Burgoyne ceased to recognize Miss Ross, even when they happened to be going in by the stage-door of an evening; and Nina, not knowing how she had offended, nevertheless accepted her fate meekly and without protest, nor had she any thought of asking Lionel to intervene.

But worse was to befall. One day Lionel said to her,

"Nina, I never knew any one work harder than you are doing. Of course it's very handy your having Mrs. Grey to coach you; and you can't do better than stand opposite that long mirror and watch yourself doing what she tells you to do. She's quite enthusiastic about you; perhaps it's because you are so considerate—she says you never practise until the other lodgers have gone out. By the way, that reading dialogue aloud is capital; I can hear how your English is getting freer and freer; why, in a little while you'll be able to take any part that is offered you. And in any case, you know, the English audiences rather like a touch of foreign accent; oh, you needn't be afraid about that. Well, now, all this hard work can't go on forever; you must have a little relaxation; and I'm going to take you and Mrs. Grey for a drive down to Hampton Court, and we'll dine there in the evening, in a room overlooking the river—very pretty it is, I can tell you. What do you say? Will next Friday do? Friday is the night of least consequence in a London theatre; and if you can arrange it with Mrs. Grey, I'll arrange it with Lehmann; my under-study is always glad of a chance of taking the part. You persuade Mrs. Grey, and I'll manage Lehmann. Is it a bargain?"

So it came about that on a certain bright and sunny morning in June Lionel was standing at the window of a private room in a hotel near the top of Regent Street, where he proposed (for he was an extravagant young man) to entertain his two guests at lunch before driving them down to Hampton Court. He had ordered the wine and seen that the flowers on the table were all right; and now he was looking down into the street, vaguely noticing the passers-by. But this barouche that drove up?—there was something familiar about it—wasn't it the carriage he had sent down to Sloane Street?—then the next moment he was saying to himself,

"My goodness gracious! can that be Nina?"

And Nina it assuredly was; but not the Nina of the black dress and crimson straw hat with which he had grown familiar. Oh, no; this young lady who stepped down from the carriage, who waited a second for her friend, and then crossed the pavement, was a kind of vision of light summer coolness and prettiness; even his uninstructed intelligence told him how charmingly she was dressed; though he had but a glimpse of the tight-fitting gown of cream-white, with its silver girdle, the white straw hat looped up on one side and adorned on the other with large yellow roses, the pale-yellow gloves with silver bangles at the wrists, the snow-white sunshade, with its yellow satin ribbons attached. The vision of a moment—then it was gone; but only to reappear here at the open door. And who could think of her costume at all when Nina herself came forward, with the pretty, pale, foreign face so pleasantly smiling, the liquid black eyes softly bespeaking kindness, the half-parted lips showing a glimmer of milk-white teeth.

"Good-morning, Leo!"

"Good-morning, Nina! They say that ladies are never punctual; but here you are to the moment!"

"Then you have to thank Mrs. Grey—and your own goodness in sending the carriage for us. Ah, the delightful flowers!" said she, glancing at the table, and her nostrils seemed to dilate a little, as if she would welcome all their odors at once. "But the window, Leo—you will have the window open? London, it is perfectly beautiful this morning!—the air is sweet as of the country—oh, it is the gayest city in the world!"

"I never saw London fuller, anyway," said he, as he rang the bell, and told the waiter to have luncheon produced forthwith.

Nina, seated at table in that cool summer costume, merely toyed with the things put before her (except when they came to the strawberries); she was chattering away, with her little dramatic gestures, about every conceivable subject within her recent experience, until, as she happened to say something about Naples, Lionel cruelly interrupted her by asking her if she had heard lately from her sweetheart.

"Who?" she said, with a stare; and also the little widow in black looked up from her plate and seemed to think it a strange question.

"Don't you pretend to have forgotten, Nina," Lionel said, reprovingly. "Don't you look so innocent. If you have no memory, then I have."

"But who, Leo?" she demanded, with a touch of indignation. "Who?—who?—who? What is it you mean?"

"Nina, don't you pretend you have forgotten poor Nicolo Ciana."

"Oh, Nicolo!" she exclaimed, with supreme contempt (but all the same there was a faint flush on the clear olive complexion). "You laugh at me, Leo! Nicolo! He was all, as they say here, sham—sham jewelry, sham clothes, all pretence, except the oil for his hair—that was plenty and substantial, yes. And a sham voice—he told lies to the maestro about his wonderful compass—"

"Now, now, Nina, don't be unjust," he said. "Mrs. Grey must hear the truth. Mrs. Grey, this was a young Italian who wanted to be better acquainted with Miss Nina here—I believe he used to write imploring letters to her, and that she cruelly wouldn't answer them; and then he wrote to Maestro Pandiani, describing the wonderful tenor voice he had, and saying he wanted to study. I suppose he fancied that if the maestro would only believe in the mysterious qualities of this wonderful organ of his he would try to bring them out; and in the meantime the happy Nicolo would be meeting Nina continually. A lover's stratagem—nothing worse than that! What is the harm of saying that you could take the high C if you were in ordinary health, but that your voice has been ill-used by a recent fever? It was Nina he was thinking of. Don't I remember how I used to hear him coming along the garden-paths in the Villa Reale—if there were few people about you could hear his vile falsetto a mile off—and always it was:

'Antoniella, Antonia, Antoniella, Antonia; Votate, Nenna bella, votate cca, Vedimmo a pettenessa comme te sta.'"

"Leo," she said, with proud lips, "he never called me 'Nenna mia'—never! He dared not!"

In another instant, he could see, there would have been protesting tears in her eyes; and even Mrs. Grey, who did not know the meaning of the familiar Neapolitan phrase,[1] noticed the tremulous indignation in the girl's voice.

[Footnote 1: Nenna mia or Nenna bella is the pet phrase used by the Neapolitan young man in addressing his sweetheart. Nenna has nothing to do with Nina, which is a contraction of Antonia.]

"Of course not, Nina," he said, at once; "I was only joking—but you know he did use to sing that confounded 'Antoniella, Antonia,' and it was always you he was thinking of."

"I did not think of him, then!" said she, almost instantly recovering her self-control. "Him? No! When I go out—when I was going out in the Santa Lucia, I looked at the English gentlemen—all so simple and honest in their dress—perhaps a steel watch-chain to a gold watch—not a sham gold chain to no watch! Then they looked so clean and wholesome—is it right, wholesome?—not their hair dripping with grease, as the peasant-girls love it. And then," she added, with a laugh, for her face had quickly resumed its usual happy brightness of expression, "then I grow sentimental. I say to myself, 'These are English people—they are going away back to England, where Leo is—can they take him a message?—can they tell him they were going over to Capri, and they met on the ship—on the steamer—an Italian girl, who liked to look at the English, and liked to hear the English speak?' And then I say 'No; what is the use; what would any message do; Leo has forgotten me.'"

"Oh, yes," said he, lightly, "you must have been quite certain that I had forgotten my old comrade Nina!"

They got a beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon for their drive down to Hampton Court; nor was it fated to be without incident either. They had passed along Oxford Street and were just turning out of the crowded thoroughfare to enter Hyde Park—and Lionel, as a man will, was watching how his coachman would take the horses through the Marble Arch—when Nina said, in a low voice,

"Leo!"

"Well?" said he, turning to her.

"Did you not see?"

"See what?"

"The carriage that went past." Nina said, looking a little concerned. "Miss Burgoyne was in it—she bowed to you—"

"Did she? I didn't see her—I'll have to apologize to her to-morrow," said he, carelessly. "Perhaps the compliment was meant for you, Nina."

"For me? Ah, no. Miss Burgoyne speaks no more to me."

"She doesn't speak to you? Why?" he asked, in some amazement.

The young Italian lady made a little gesture of indifference.

"How do I know? But I am not sorry. I do not like her—no! she is not—she is not—straightforward, is it right?—she is cunning—and she has a dreadful temper—oh! I have heard;—I have heard such stories! Again, she is not an artist—I said that to you from the beginning, Leo—no, not an artist: why does she talk to you from behind her fan, when she should regard the others on the stage? Why does she talk always and always to you, when she has nothing to say?"

"Oh, but she finds plenty to say!" he observed.

"Yes," said Nina, contemptuously, "she has always plenty to say to you on the stage, if she has not a word the moment the scene is over. Why? You don't understand! You don't reflect! I will tell you, Leo, if you are so simple. You think she does not know that the public can see she talks to you? She knows it well; and that is why she talks. It is to boast of her friendship with you, her alliance with you. She says to the ladies in the stalls, 'See here, I can talk to him when I please—you are away—you are outside.' It is her vanity. She says to them, 'You can buy his portrait out of the shop-window perhaps—you can ask him to your house perhaps—and he goes for an hour, among strangers—but see here—every night I am talking to him'—"

"Yes, and see here, Nina," he said, with a laugh, "how about my vanity?—don't you think of that? Who could have imagined I was so important a person! But the truth is, Nina, they've lengthened out that comic scene inordinately with all that gagging, and Miss Burgoyne has nothing to do in it; if she hides her talking behind her fan—"

"Hides?" said Nina, with just a trace of scorn. "No; she shows! It is display! It is vanity! And you think a true artist would so forget her part—would wish to show the people that she talks privately—"