ce.

An irreproachable man-servant, with the face of a sphinx, opened the door.

Diana tried to speak, failed, then, moistening her lips, jerked out the
words:--

"Signor Baroni?"

"Have you an appointment?" came the relentless inquiry, and Diana could
well imagine how inexorably the greatly daring who had come on chance
would be turned away.

"Yes--oh, yes," she stammered. "For three o'clock--Miss Diana Quentin."

"Come this way, please." The man stood aside for her to enter, and a
minute later she found herself following him through a narrow hall to the
door of a room whence issued the sound of a softly-played pianoforte
accompaniment.

The sphinx-like one threw open the door and announced her name, and with
quaking knees she entered.

The room was a large one. At its further end stood a grand piano, so
placed that whoever was playing commanded a full view of the remainder of
the room, and at this moment the piano-stool was occupied by Signor
Baroni himself, evidently in the midst of giving a lesson to a young man
who was standing at his elbow. He was by no means typically Italian in
appearance; indeed, his big frame and finely-shaped head with its
massive, Beethoven brow reminded one forcibly of the fact that his mother
had been of German origin. But the heavy-lidded, prominent eyes, neither
brown nor hazel but a mixture of the two, and the sallow skin and long,
mobile lips--these were unmistakably Italian. The nose was slightly
Jewish in its dominating quality, and the hair that was tossed back over
his head and descended to the edge of his collar with true musicianly
luxuriance was grizzled by sixty years of strenuous life. It would seem
that God had taken an Italian, a German, and a Jew, and out of them
welded a surpassing genius.

Baroni nodded casually towards Diana, and, still continuing to play with
one hand, gestured towards an easy-chair with the other.

"How do you do? Will you sit down, please," he said, speaking with a
strong, foreign accent, and then apparently forgot all about her.

"Now"--he turned to the young man whose lesson her entry had
interrupted--"we will haf this through once more. Bee-gin, please: '_In
all humility I worship thee_.'"

Obediently the young man opened his mouth, and in a magnificent baritone
voice declaimed that reverently, and from a great way off, he ventured to
worship at his beloved's shrine, while Diana listened spell-bound.

If this were the only