‘Don’t stint on advertisements,’ she said.

‘No fear!  Leave that to me,’ answered Felix, with a smile of infinite meaning.

Ada Wellington could not afford to risk much money, and Alma thought her announcements in the papers worth nothing at all.  However, the pianist was fairly successful; a tolerable audience was scraped together (at Steinway Hall), and press notices of a complimentary flavour, though brief, appeared in several quarters.  With keen anxiety Alma followed every detail.  She said to herself that if her appearance in public made no more noise than this, she would be ready to die of mortification.  There remained a fortnight before the ordeal; had they not better begin to advertise at once?  Thus she wrote to Dymes, who replied by sending her three newspapers, in each of which a paragraph of musical gossip informed the world that Mrs. Harvey Rolfe was about to give her first public violin recital at Prince’s Hall.  Mrs. Rolfe, added the journalists in varying phrase, was already well known to the best musical circles as an amateur violinist, and great interest attached to her appearance in public, a step on which she had decided only after much persuasion of friends and admirers.  Already there was considerable demand for tickets, and the audience would most certainly be both large and distinguished.  Alma laughed with delight.

The same day, by a later post, she received a copy of a ‘society’ journal, addressed in a hand unknown to her.  Guided by a red pencil mark, she became aware of no less than a quarter of a column devoted to herself.  From this she might learn (if she did not already know it) that Mrs. Harvey Rolfe was a lady of the utmost personal and social charm; that her beauty was not easily described without the use of terms that would sound extravagant; that as a violinist she had stood for a year or two facile princeps amid lady amateurs; that she had till of late lived in romantic seclusion ‘amid the noblest scenery of North Wales’, for the sole purpose of devoting herself to music; and that only with the greatest reluctance had she consented to make known to the public a talent —­ nay, a genius —­ which assuredly was ‘meant for mankind’.  She was the favourite pupil of that admirable virtuoso, Herr Wilenski.  At Prince’s Hall, on the sixteenth of May, all lovers of music would have, &c, &c.

This batch of newspapers Alma laid before dinner on Harvey’s desk, and about an hour after the meal she entered the library.  Her husband, smoking and meditating, looked up constrainedly.

‘I have read them,’ he remarked, in a dry tone.

Alma’s coldness during the last few weeks he had explained to himself as the result of his failure to take interest in her proceedings.  He knew that this behaviour on his part was quite illogical; Alma acted with full permission, and he had no right whatever to ‘turn grumpy’ just because he disliked what she was doing.  Only today he had rebuked himself, and meant to make an effort to restore goodwill between them; but these newspaper paragraphs disgusted him.  He could not speak as he wished.