Sylvia considered.  “What do you want to know?” she asked finally.

“Well, I’d like to know everything,” said the man gaily.  “My curiosity has been aroused to an almost unappeasable pitch.  But of course I’ll take any information you feel like doling out.  In the first place, how, coming from such a ...”  He checked himself and changed the form of his question:  “I overheard you speaking to Victoria’s maid, and I’ve been lying awake nights ever since, wondering how it happened that you speak French with so pure an accent.”

“Oh, that’s simple!  Professor and Madame La Rue are old friends of the family and I’ve spent a lot of time with them.  And then, of course, French is another mother-language for Father.  He and Aunt Victoria were brought up in Paris, you know.”

Morrison sighed.  “Isn’t it strange how all the miracles evaporate into mere chemical reactions when you once investigate!  All the white-clad, ghostly spirits turn out to be clothes on the line.  I suppose there’s some equally natural explanation about your way on the piano—­the clear, limpid phrasing of that Bach the other day, and then the color of the Bizet afterwards.  It’s astonishing to hear anybody of your crude youth playing Bach at all—­and then to hear it played right—­and afterwards to hear a modern given his right note....”

Sylvia was perfectly aware that she was being flattered, and she was immensely enjoying it.  She became more animated, and the peculiar sparkle of her face more spirited.  “Oh, that’s old Reinhardt, my music teacher.  He would take all the skin off my knuckles if I played a Bach gigue the least bit like that Arlesienne Minuet.  He doesn’t approve of Bizet very much, anyhow.  He’s a tremendous classicist.”

“Isn’t it,” inquired Morrison, phrasing his question carefully, “isn’t it, with no disrespect to La Chance intended, isn’t it rather unusually good fortune for a smallish Western city to own a real musician?”

“Well, La Chance bears up bravely under its good fortune,” said Sylvia dryly.  “Old Mr. Reinhardt isn’t exactly a prime favorite there.  He’s a terribly beery old man, and he wipes his nose on his sleeve.  Our house was the only respectable one in town that he could go into.  But then, our house isn’t so very respectable.  It has its advantages, not being so very respectable, though it ’most killed me as a young girl to feel us so.  But I certainly have a choice gallery of queer folks in my acquaintance, and I have the queerest hodge-podge of scraps of things learned from them.  I know a little Swedish from Miss Lindstroem.  She’s a Swedish old maid who does uplift work among the negroes—­isn’t that a weird combination?  You just ought to hear what she makes of negro dialect!  And I know all the socialist arguments from hearing a socialist editor get them off every Sunday afternoon.  And I even know how to manage planchette and write mediumistically—­save the mark!—­from Cousin Parnelia, a crazy old cousin of Mother’s who hangs round the house more or less.”