morning, Mrs. Sharp, then a blooming abigail of
three-and-thirty, entered her lady's private room and said, 'If you
please, my lady, there's the frowsiest, shabbiest man you ever saw,
outside, and he's told Mr. Warren as the singing-master sent him to see
your ladyship. But I think you'll hardly like him to come in here. Belike
he's only a beggar.'

'O yes, show him in immediately.'

Mrs. Sharp retired, muttering something about 'fleas and worse'. She had
the smallest possible admiration for fair Ausonia and its natives, and
even her profound deference for Sir Christopher and her lady could not
prevent her from expressing her amazement at the infatuation of
gentlefolks in choosing to sojourn among 'Papises, in countries where
there was no getting to air a bit o' linen, and where the people smelt o'
garlick fit to knock you down.'

However she presently reappeared, ushering in a small meagre man, sallow
and dingy, with a restless wandering look in his dull eyes, and an
excessive timidity about his deep reverences, which gave him the air of a
man who had been long a solitary prisoner. Yet through all this squalor
and wretchedness there were some traces discernible of comparative youth
and former good looks. Lady Cheverel, though not very tender-hearted,
still less sentimental, was essentially kind, and liked to dispense
benefits like a goddess, who looks down benignly on the halt, the maimed,
and the blind that approach her shrine. She was smitten with some
compassion at the sight of poor Sarti, who struck her as the mere
battered wreck of a vessel that might have once floated gaily enough on
its outward voyage to the sound of pipes and tabors. She spoke gently as
she pointed out to him the operatic selections she wished him to copy,
and he seemed to sun himself in her auburn, radiant presence, so that
when he made his exit with the music-books under his arm, his bow, though
not less reverent, was less timid.

It was ten years at least since Sarti had seen anything so bright and
stately and beautiful as Lady Cheverel. For the time was far off in which
he had trod the stage in satin and feathers, the _primo tenore_ of one
short season. He had completely lost his voice in the following winter,
and had ever since been little better than a cracked fiddle, which is
good for nothing but firewood. For, like many Italian singers, he was too
ignorant to teach, and if it had not been for his one talent of
penmanship, he and his