The theatre-bills? Well, sit down, Nina, and tell me how you come to be
in London."

She had by this time quite forgiven or forgotten his first dismay on
finding her there; and now she took a chair with much quiet
complaisance, and sat down, and put her black silk sunshade across her
knees.

"It is simple," she said, and from time to time she regarded him in a
very frank and pleased and even affectionate way, as if the old
comradeship of the time when they were both studying in Naples was not
to be interfered with by the natural timidity of a young and extremely
pretty woman coming as a stranger into a strange town. "You remember
Carmela, Leo? Carmela and her--her spouse--they have great
good-fortune--they get a grand prize in the lottery--then he says,
'Carmeluccia, we will go to Paris--we will go to Paris, Carmeluccia--and
why not Nina also?' Very kind, was it not?--but Andrea is always kind, so
also Carmela, to me. Then I am in Paris. I say, 'It is not far to
London; I go to London; I go to London and see Leo.' Perhaps I get an
engagement--oh, no, no, no, you shall not laugh!" she broke in--though
it was she herself who was laughing, and not he at all. "I am
improved--oh, yes, a little--a little improved--you remember old
Pandiani he always say my voice not bad, but that _agilita_ was for me
very difficult."

He remembered very well; but he also remembered that when he left
Naples, Signorina Rossi was laboring away with the most pertinacious
assiduity at cavatinas full of runs and scales and _fiorituri_
generally; and he was quite willing to believe that such diligence had
met with its due reward. But when the young lady modestly hinted that
she had left her music in the hall below, and would like Leo to hear
whether she had not acquired a good deal more of flexibility than her
voice used to possess, and when he had fetched the music and taken it to
the piano for her, he was not a little surprised to see her select
Ambroise Thomas's "Io son Titania." And he was still more astonished
when he found her singing this difficult piece of music with a
brilliancy, an ease, a _verve_ of execution that he had never dreamed of
her being able to reach.

"Brava! Brava! Bravissima!--Well, you _have_ improved, Nina!" he
exclaimed. "And it isn't only in freedom of production, it is in
quality, too, in _timbre_--my goodness, your voice has ever so much more
volume and power! Come, now, try some big, dramatic thing--"

She shoo