ery soon.'

'I am not hungry. I would so much rather talk--hear you. But you are
hungry? You have been singing twice: three times! Opera singers, they
say, eat hot suppers; they drink stout. And I never heard your voice
more effective. Yours is a voice that... something of the feeling one
has in hearing cathedral voices: carry one up. I remember, in Dresden,
once, a Fraulein Kuhnstreich, a prodigy, very young, considering her
accomplishments. But it was not the same.'

Nesta wondered at Dartrey Fenellan for staying so long with Mr. and Mrs.
Blathenoy.

'Ah, Mr. Sowerby, if I am to have flattery, I cannot take it as a
milliner's dumb figure wears the beautiful dress; I must point out my
view of some of my merits.'

'Oh! do, I beg, Miss... You have a Christian name and I too: and once
... not Mr. Sowerby: yes, it was Dudley!

'Quite accidentally, and a world of pardons entreated.'

'And Dudley begged Dudley might be Dudley always!'

He was deepening to the Barmby intonation--apparently Cupid's; but a
shade more airily Pagan, not so fearfully clerical.

Her father had withdrawn Dartrey Fenellan from Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy.
Dr. Schlesien was bowing with Dartrey.

'And if Durandarte would only--but you are one with Miss Graves to
depreciate my Durandarte, in favour of the more classical Jachimo; whom
we all admire; but you shall be just,' said she, and she pouted. She had
seen her father plant Dartrey Fenellan in the midst of a group of City
gentlemen.

Simeon touched among them to pluck at his brother. He had not a chance;
he retired, and swam into the salmon-net of seductive Mrs. Blathenoy's
broad bright smile.

'It's a matter of mines, and they're hovering in the attitude of
the query, like corkscrews over a bottle, profoundly indifferent to
blood-relationships,' he said to her.

'Pray, stay and be consoled by me,' said the fair young woman. 'You
are to point me out all the distinguished people. Is it true, that your
brother has left the army?'

'Dartrey no longer wears the red. Here comes Colonel Corfe, who does.
England has her army still!'

'His wife persuaded him?'

'You see he is wearing the black.'

'For her? How very very sad! Tell me--what a funnily dressed woman
meeting that gentleman!'

'Hush--a friend of the warrior. Splendid weather, Colonel Corfe.'

'Superb toilettes!' The colonel eyed Mrs. Blathenoy dilatingly,
advanced, bowed, and opened the siege.

She decided a calculation upon h