“Ah, professore!  You come just in time,” said she.  “I am trying to sing such a pretty song to myself, and I cannot pronounce the words.  Come and teach me.”  Nino contrasted the whole air of this luxurious retreat with the prim, soldierly order that reigned in the count’s establishment.

“Indeed, signora, I come to teach you whatever I can.  Here I am.  I cannot sing, but I will stand beside you and prompt the words.”

Nino is not a shy boy at all, and he assumed the duties required of him immediately.  He stood by her side, and she just nodded and began to sing a little song that stood on the desk of the piano.  She did not sing out of tune, but she made wrong notes and pronounced horribly.

“Pronounce the words for me,” she repeated every now and then.

“But pronouncing in singing is different from speaking,” he objected at last, and, fairly forgetting himself and losing patience, he began softly to sing the words over.  Little by little, as the song pleased him, he lost all memory of where he was, and stood beside her singing just as he would have done to De Pretis, from the sheet, with all the accuracy and skill that were in him.  At the end, he suddenly remembered how foolish he was.  But, after all, he had not sung to the power of his voice, and she might not recognise in him the singer of last night.  The baroness looked up with a light laugh.

“I have found you out,” she cried, clapping her hands.  “I have found you out!”

“What, signora?”

“You are the tenor of the Pantheon—­that is all.  I knew it.  Are you so sorry that I have found you out?” she asked, for Nino turned very white, and his eyes flashed at the thought of the folly he had committed.

CHAPTER V

Nino was thoroughly frightened, for he knew that discovery portended the loss of everything most dear to him.  No more lessons with Hedwig, no more parties to the Pantheon, no more peace, no more anything.  He wrung his fingers together and breathed hard.

“Ah, signora!” he found voice to exclaim, “I am sure you cannot believe it possible—­”

“Why not, Signor Cardegna?” asked the baroness, looking up at him from under her half-closed lids with a mocking glance.  “Why not?  Did you not tell me where you lived?  And does not the whole neighbourhood know that you are no other than Giovanni Cardegna, commonly called Nino, who is to make his debut in the Carnival season?”

“Dio mio!” ejaculated Nino in a hoarse voice, realising that he was entirely found out, and that nothing could save him.  He paced the room in an agony of despair, and his square face was as white as a sheet.  The baroness sat watching him with a smile on her lips, amused at the tempest she had created, and pretending to know much more than she did.  She thought it not impossible that Nino, who was certainly poor, might be supporting himself by teaching Italian while studying for the stage, and she inwardly admired his sense and twofold talent if that were really the case.  But she was willing to torment him a little, seeing that she had the power.