Apparently he did not hear her, for he asked abruptly:—­

“Are you prepared to give up everything—­everything in the world for art?  She is no easy task-mistress, remember!  She will want a great deal of your time, and she will rob you of your pleasures, and for her sake you will haf to take care of your body—­to guard your physical health—­as though it were the most precious thing on earth.  To become a great singer, a great artiste, means a life of self-denial.  Are you prepared for this?”

“But—­but—­” stammered Diana in astonishment.  “If my voice is not even pretty—­if it is no good—­”

“No good?” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet with a rapidity of movement little short of marvellous in a man of his size and bulk. “Gran Dio!  No good, did you say?  But, my child, you haf a voice of gold—­pure gold.  In three years of my training it will become the voice of the century.  Tchut!  No good!”

He pranced nimbly to the door and flung it open.

“Giulia!  Giulia!” he shouted, and a minute later a fat, amiable-looking woman, whose likeness to Baroni proclaimed them brother and sister, came hurrying downstairs in answer to his call.  “Signora Evanci, my sister,” he said, nodding to Diana.  “This, Giulia, is a new pupil, and I would haf you hear her voice.  It is magnificent—­epatant!  Open your mouth, little singing-bird, once more.  This time we will haf some scales.”

Bewildered and excited, Diana sang again, Baroni testing the full compass of her voice until quite suddenly he shut down the lid of the piano.

“It is enough,” he said solemnly, and then, turning to Signora Evanci, began talking to her in an excited jumble of English and Italian.  Diana caught broken phrases here and there.

“Of a quality superb! . . .  And a beeg compass which will grow beeger yet. . . .  The contralto of the century, Giulia.”

And Signora Evanci smiled and nodded agreement, patting Diana’s hand, and reminded Baroni that it was time for his afternoon cup of consomme.  She was a comfortable feather-bed of a woman, whose mission in life it seemed to be to fend off from her brother all sharp corners, and to see that he took his food at the proper intervals and changed into the thick underclothing necessitated by the horrible English climate.

“But it will want much training, your voice,” continued Baroni, turning once more to Diana.  “It is so beeg that it is all over the place—­it sounds like a clap of thunder that has lost his way in a back garden.”  And he smiled indulgently.  “To bee-gin with, you will put away all your songs—­every one.  There will be nothing but exercises for months yet.  And you will come for your first lesson on Thursday.  Mondays and Thursdays I will teach you, but you must come other days, also, and listen at my lessons.  There is much—­very much—­learned by listening, if one listens with the brain as well as with the ear.  Now, little singing-bird, good-bye.  I will go with you myself to the door.”