And there the Kings
of the East passed by. But there, also, the sea was as the blood of a
dead man.

"Well, what do you think of her?" Sir Hilary was speaking.

He had a face like a fairly good-natured bulldog, and, like the bulldog,
looked as if, once fastened on an enemy, he would not easily be
detached.

"I think it's a very beautiful voice and remarkably trained."

"Do you? Well, now I don't think she's a patch on Dantini."

The Admiral was wholly unmusical, but, having married an accomplished
violinist, he was inclined to lay down the law about music.

"Don't you?"

"No, I don't. No lightness, no agility; too heavy."

"There are holes in her voice," observed a stout musical critic
standing beside him. "The middle register is all wrong."

"That's it," said the Admiral, snapping his jaws. "Holes in the voice
and the--the what you may call it all wrong."

"I wonder what Adelaide Shiffney thinks?" said a small, dark, and
shrewish-looking woman just behind them. "I must go and find out."

"My wife won't have her. I'm dead certain of that," said the Admiral.

"She ought to start again with De Reszke," said the musical critic,
puffing out his fat cheeks and looking suddenly like a fish.

"Well, I must go down. It's getting late," said Mrs. Mansfield.

"It isn't a real soprano," said someone in a husky voice. "It's a
forced-up mezzo."

Beneath them Millie Deans was standing by Mrs. Shiffney, who was saying:

"Charming! No, I haven't heard _Crepe de Chine_. I don't care much for
Fournier's music. He imitates the Russians. Such a pity! Are you really
going back to-morrow? Good-bye, then! Now, Rades, be amiable! Give us
_Enigme_." Mr. Brett had disappeared.

"No, Mr. Elliot, it's no use talking to me, not a bit of use!" Millie
Deans exclaimed vehemently in the hall as Rades began _Enigme_ in his
most velvety voice. "London has no taste, it has only fashions. In Paris
that man is not a singer at all. He is merely a _diseur_. No one would
dream of putting him in a programme with me."

"But, my dear Miss Deans, you knew he was singing to-night. And my
programmes are always eclectic. There is no intention--"

"I don't know anything about eplectic," said Millie Deans, whose
education was one-sided, but who had temperament and talent, and also a
very strong temper. "But I do know that Mr. Brett, who seems to rule you
all here, is as ignorant of music as--as a carp, isn't it? Isn't it, I
say!"

"I daresay it