r for years--four, at least; and he wants to speak to me, and
must obtain the "privilege" by special appointment! What can be the
meaning of it?'

'You will hear to-morrow afternoon,' Nataly said, seeing one paved way
to the meaning--a too likely meaning... 'He hasn't been... nothing about
Fredi, surely!'

'I have had no information.'

'Impossible! Barmby has good sense; Bottesini can't intend to come
scraping on that string. But we won't lose him; he's one of us. Barmby
counts for more at a Charity Concert than all the catalogue, and
particularly in the country. But he's an excellent fellow--eh?'

'That he is,' Nataly agreed.

Victor despatched a cheerful curt consent to see Mr. Barmby privately on
the late afternoon of the day to follow.

Nesta, returning home from the park at that hour of the interview,
ignorant of Mr. Barmby's purpose though she was, had her fires
extinguished by the rolling roar of curfew along the hall-passage, out
of the library.

CHAPTER XVIII. SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA

When, upon the well-known quest, the delightful singer Orpheus took that
downward way, coming in sight of old Cerberus centiceps, he astutely
feigned inattention to the hostile appearances of the multiple beast,
and with a wave of his plectrum over the responsive lyre, he at the
stroke raised voice. This much you know. It may be communicated to you,
that there was then beheld the most singular spectacle ever exhibited
on the dizzy line of division between the living and the dead. For those
unaccustomed musical tones in the last thin whiff of our sustaining air
were so smartingly persuasive as to pierce to the vitals of the faithful
Old Dog before his offended sentiments had leisure to rouse their heads
against a beggar of a mortal. The terrible sugariness which poured into
him worked like venom to cause an encounter and a wrestling: his battery
of jaws expressed it. They gaped. At the same time, his eyeballs gave
up. All the Dog, that would have barked the breathing intruder an
hundredfold back to earth, was one compulsory centurion yawn. Tears,
issue of the frightful internal wedding of the dulcet and the sour (a
ravishing rather of the latter by the former), rolled off his muzzles.

Now, if you are not for insisting that a magnificent simile shall be
composed of exactly the like notes in another octave, you will catch
the fine flavour of analogy and be wafted in a beat of wings across
the scene of