anything so comfortable or civilised. How preposterous it is
to hear an Irishman sing Scotch songs. If an Irishman had a plaidie, he
would pawn it for a dhrop o' the cratur."

Later Violet and Lord Mallow sang a little duet by Masini, "_O, que la
mer est belle!_" the daintiest, most bewitching music--such a melody as
the Loreley might have sung when the Rhine flowed peacefully onward
below mountain-peaks shining in the evening light, luring foolish
fishermen to their doom. Everybody was delighted. It was just the kind
of music to please the unlearned in the art. Mrs. Carteret came to the
piano to compliment Violet.

"I had no idea you could sing so sweetly," she said. "Why have you
never sung to us before?"

"Nobody ever asked me," Vixen answered frankly. "But indeed I am no
singer."

"You have one of the freshest, brightest voices I ever had the
happiness of hearing," Lord Mallow exclaimed enthusiastically.

He would have liked to go on singing duets for an indefinite period. He
felt lifted into some strange and delightful region--a sphere of love
and harmony--while he was mingling his voice with Violet's. It made the
popular idea of heaven, as a place where there is nothing but
singing--an eternal, untiring choir--clearer and more possible to him
than it had ever seemed before. Paradise would be quite endurable if he
and Violet might stand side by side in the serried ranks of choristers.
There was quite a little crowd round the piano, shutting in Violet and
Lord Hallow, and Roderick Vawdrey was not in it. He felt himself
excluded, and held himself gloomingly apart, talking hunting talk with
a man for whom he did not care twopence. Directly his carriage was
announced--_sotto voce_ by the considerate Forbes, so as not to wound
anybody's feelings by the suggestion that the festivity was on its last
legs--Mr. Vawdrey went up to Mrs. Winstanley and took leave. He would
not wait to say good-night to Violet. He only cast one glance in the
direction of the piano, where the noble breadth of Mrs. Carteret's
brocaded amber back obscured every remoter object, and then went away
moodily, denouncing duet-singing as an abomination.

When Lady Mabel asked him next day what kind of an evening he had had
at the Abbey House, in a tone which implied that any entertainment
there must be on a distinctly lower level as compared with the
hospitalities of Ashbourne, he told her that it had been uncommonly
slow.

"How was that? You ha