er. The apartment was hung
with pale green satin; the furniture was mostly Chippendale, upholstered
in the same shade. A magnificent grand piano stood open in a smaller
room, just visible beyond. Only one thing seemed strange to the two
newly arrived guests. The room was entirely lit with shaded candles,
giving a certain mysterious but not unpleasant air of obscurity to the
whole suite of apartments. Through the gloom the jewels and eyes of the
women seemed to shine with a new brilliance. Slight eccentricities of
toilette--for a part of the gathering was distinctly Bohemian--were
softened and subdued. The whole effect was somewhat weird, but also
picturesque.

Andrea Korust advanced from a little group to meet his guests. Off the
stage he seemed at first sight frailer and slighter than ever. His dress
coat had been exchanged for a velvet dinner jacket, and his white tie
for a drooping black bow. He had a habit of blinking nearly all the
time, as though his large brown eyes, which he seldom wholly opened,
were weaker than they appeared to be. Nevertheless, when he came to
within a few paces of his newly arrived visitors, they shone with plenty
of expression. Without any change of countenance, however, he held out
his hand.

"Dear Andrea," Mademoiselle Celaire exclaimed, "you permit me that I
present to you my dear friend, well known in Paris--alas! many years
ago--Monsieur le Baron de Grost. Monsieur le Baron was kind enough to
pay his respects to me this evening, and I have induced him to become my
escort here."

"It was my good fortune," Peter remarked, smiling, "that I saw
Mademoiselle Celaire's name upon the bills this evening--my good
fortune, since it has procured for me the honour of an acquaintance with
a musician so distinguished."

"You are very kind, Monsieur le Baron," Korust replied.

"You stay here, I regret to hear, a very short time?"

"Alas!" Andrea Korust admitted, "it is so. For myself, I would that it
were longer. I find your London so attractive, the people so friendly.
They fall in with my whims so charmingly. I have a hatred, you know, of
solitude. I like to make acquaintances wherever I go, to have delightful
women and interesting men around, to forget that life is not always gay.
If I am too much alone I am miserable, and when I am miserable I am in a
very bad way indeed. I cannot then make music."

Peter smiled gravely and sympathetically.

"And your brother? Does he, too, share your g