, and his easy confidence, his assumption
of dominancy had its advantage.

"I'll say it in a different way to you, but it will be the same thing.
I shall not sing to-night," she retorted, obstinately.

"Then a hundred people will go hungry to bed," he rejoined. "Hunger is
a dreadful thing--and there are only three minutes left out of the
five," he added, looking at his watch.

"I am not the baker or the butler," she replied with a smile, but her
firm lips did not soften.

He changed his tactics with adroitness. If he failed now, it would be
final. He thought he knew where she might be really vulnerable.

"Byng will be disappointed and surprised when he hears of the famine
that the prima donna has left behind her. Byng is one of the best that
ever was. He is trying to do his fellow-creatures a good turn down
there at the mine. He never did any harm that I ever heard of--and this
is his house, and these are his guests. He would, I'll stake my life,
do Al'mah a good turn if he could, even if it cost him something quite
big. He is that kind of a man. He would be hurt to know that you had
let the best people of the county be parched, when you could give them
drink."

"You said they were hungry a moment ago," she rejoined, her resolution
slowly breaking under the one influence which could have softened her.

"They would be both hungry and thirsty," he urged. "But, between
ourselves, would you like Byng to come home from a hard day's work, as
it were, and feel that things had gone wrong here while he was away on
humanity's business? Just try to imagine him having done you a
service--"

"He has done me more than one service," she interjected. "You know it
as well as I do. You were there at the opera, three years ago, when he
saved me from the flames, and since then--"

Stafford looked at his watch again with a smile. "Besides, there's a
far more important reason why you should sing to-night. I promised some
one who's been hurt badly, and who never heard you sing, that he should
hear you to-night. He is lying there now, and--"

"Jigger?" she asked, a new light in her eyes, something fleeing from
her face and leaving a strange softness behind it.

"Quite so," he replied. "That's a lad really worth singing for. He's an
original, if ever there was one. He worships you for what you have done
for his sister, Lou. I'd undergo almost any humiliation not to
disappoint Jigger. Byng would probably get over his
disappointment