Baroni regarded her seriously.

“Is that so?  Good!  Then I will talk to the young man, so that he may realise that he is not marrying just Mees Diana Quentin, but a voice—­a heaven-bestowed voice.  What is his name?”

“You know him,” she answered smilingly.  “It’s Max Errington.”

She was utterly unprepared for the effect of her words.  Baroni’s face darkened like a stormy sky, and his eyes literally blazed at her from beneath their penthouse of shaggy brow.

“Max Errington! Donnerwetter!  But that is the worst of all!”

Diana stared, at him in mute amazement, and, despite herself, her heart sank with a sudden desperate apprehension.  What did it mean?  Why should the mere mention of Max’s name have roused the old maestro to such a fever of indignation?

Presently Baroni turned to her again, speaking more composedly, although little sparks of anger still flickered in his eyes ready to leap into flame at the slightest provocation.

“I haf met Mr. Errington.  He is a charming man.  But if you marry him, my dear Mees Quentin—­good-bye to your career as a world-artiste, good-bye to the most marvellous voice that the good God has ever let me hear.”

“I don’t see why.  Max thoroughly understands professional life.”

“Nevertheless, believe me, there will—­there must come a time when Max Errington’s wife will not be able to appear before the world as a public singer.  I who speak, I know.”

Diana flashed round upon him suddenly.

“You—­you know his secret?”

“I know it.”

So, then, the secret which must be hidden from his wife was yet known to Carlo Baroni!  Diana felt her former resentment surge up anew within her.  It was unfair—­shamefully unfair for Max to treat her in this way!  It was making a mockery of their love.

Baroni’s keen old eyes read the conflict of emotions in her face, and he laid his finger unerringly upon the sore spot.  His one idea was to prevent Diana from marrying, to guard her—­as he mentally phrased it—­for the art he loved so well, and he was prepared to stick at nothing that might aid his cause.

“So he has not told you?” he said slowly.  “Do you not think it strange of him?”

Diana’s breast rose and fell tumultuously.  Baroni was turning the knife in the wound with a vengeance.

“Maestro, tell me,”—­her voice came unevenly—­“tell me.  Is it”—­she turned her head away—­“is it a . . . shameful . . . secret?”

Inwardly she loathed herself for asking such a thing, but the words seemed dragged from her without her own volition.

Baroni hesitated.  All his hopes and ambitions centred round Diana and her marvellous voice.  He had given of his best to train it to its present perfection, and now he saw the fruit of his labour about to be snatched from him.  It was more than human nature could endure.  Errington meant nothing to him, Diana and her voice everything; and he was prepared to sacrifice no matter whom to secure her career as an artiste.  By implication he sacrificed Errington.