ad lately come
into his possession, and which he could see at the end of the room on a
slightly raised platform. Its beautiful shape, and the shape of the old
instruments, vaguely perceived, lent an enchantment to the darkness. In
the corner was a viola da gamba, and against the walls a harpsichord and
a clavichord.

Above the virginal on which Mr. Innes was playing there hung a portrait
of a woman, and, happening to look up, a sudden memory came upon him,
and he began to play an aria out of _Don Giovanni_. But he stopped
before many bars, and holding the candle end high, so that he could see
the face, continued the melody with his right hand. To see her lips and
to strike the notes was almost like hearing her sing it again. Her voice
came to him through many years, from the first evening he had heard her
sing at La Scala. Then he was a young man spending a holiday in Italy,
and she had made his fortune for the time by singing one of his songs.
They were married in Italy, and at the end of some months they had gone
to Paris and to Brussels, where Mrs. Innes had engagements to fulfil. It
was in Brussels that she had lost her voice. For a long while it was
believed that she might recover it, but these hopes proved illusory,
and, in trying to regain what she had lost irrevocably, the money she
had earned dwindled to a last few hundred pounds. The Innes had returned
to London, and, with a baby-daughter, settled in Dulwich. Mr. Innes
accepted the post of organist at St. Joseph's, the parish church in
Southwark, and Mrs. Innes had begun her singing classes.

Her reputation as a singer favoured her, and an aptitude for teaching
enabled her to maintain, for many years, a distinguished position in the
musical world. Mr. Innes's abilities contributed to their success, and
he might have become a famous London organist if he had devoted himself
to the instrument. But one day seeing in a book the words "viola
d'amore," he fancied he would like to possess an instrument with such a
name. The instrument demanded the music that had been written for it.
Byrd's beautiful vocal Mass had led him to Palestrina and Vittoria, and
these wakened in him dreams of a sufficient choir at St. Joseph's for a
revival of their works.

So when Evelyn clambered on her father's knee, it was to learn the
chants that he hummed from old manuscripts and missals, and it was the
contrapuntal fancies of the Elizabethan composers that he gave her to
play on the