“Which would you like, Evelyn?”

“You, dear; I should be too nervous with Madame Savelli.”

Owen explained, and madame gave him her place at the piano with alacrity, and took a seat far away by the fireplace.  Evelyn sang Purcell’s beautiful wedding song, full of roulades, grave pauses and long-sustained notes, and when she had finished Owen signed to madame not to speak.  “Now, the song from the ‘Indian Queen.’  You sang capitally,” he whispered to Evelyn.

And, thus encouraged, she poured all her soul and all the pure melody of her voice into this music, at once religious and voluptuous, seemingly the rapture of a nun that remembrance has overtaken and for the moment overpowered.  When she had done, Madame Savelli jumped from her chair, and seizing her by both hands said,—­

“If you’ll stop with me for a year, I’ll make something wonderful of you.”

Then without another word she ran out of the room, leaving the door open behind her, and a few moments after they heard her calling on the stairs to her husband.

“Come down at once; come down, I’ve found a star.”

“Then she thinks I’ve a good voice?”

“I should think so indeed.  She won’t get over the start you’ve given her for the next six months.”

“Are you sure, Owen?  Are you sure she’s not laughing at us?”

“Laughing at us?  She’s calling for her husband to come down.  She’s shouting to him that she’s found a star.”

Then the joy that rose up in Evelyn’s heart blinded her eyes so that she could not see, and she seemed to lose sense of what was happening.  It was as if she were going to swoon.

“I have told her,” Madame Savelli said to her husband, who followed her into the room, “that, if she will remain a year with me, I’ll make something wonderful of her.  And you will stay with me, my dear....”

Owen thought that this was the moment to mention the fact that Evelyn was the daughter of the famous Madame Innes.

Monsieur Savelli raised his bushy eyebrows.

“I knew your mother, mademoiselle.  If you have a voice like hers—­”

“In a year, if she will remain with me, she will have twice the voice her mother had.  Mademoiselle must go into the opera class at once.”

“I thought you said that such a thing could not be; that no pupil of yours had ever gone straight into the opera class?”

Madame Savelli’s grey eyes laughed.

“Ah!  I was mistaken....  I had forgotten that all the other classes are full.  There is no room for Miss Innes in the other classes.  It is against all precedence; it will create much jealousy, but it can’t be helped.  She must go straight into the opera class.  When will mademoiselle begin?  The sooner the better.”

“Next Monday.  Will that be soon enough?”

“On Monday I’ll begin to teach her the role of Marguerite.  Such a thing was never heard of; but then mademoiselle’s voice is one such as one never hears.”