Happily for decency, Mrs. Chump had not participated in the fact presented by ocular demonstration.  She turned about comfortably to greet Wilfrid, uttering the inspired remark:  “Ye look red from a sly kiss!”

“For one?” said he, sharpening his blunted wits on this dull instrument.

The ladies talked down their talk.  Then Wilfrid and Mr. Pericles interchanged quasi bows.

“Oh, if he doesn’t show his upper teeth like an angry cat, or a leopard I’ve seen!” cried Mrs. Chump in Adela’s ear, designating Mr. Pericles.  “Does he know Mr. Wilfrud’s in the British army, and a new lieuten’t, gazetted and all?”

Mr. Pericles certainly did not look pleasantly upon Wilfrid:  Emilia received his unconcealed wrath and spite.

“Go and sing a note!” he said.

“At the piano?” Emilia quietly asked.

“At piano, harp, what you will—­it is ze voice I want.”

Emilia pitched her note high from a full chest and with glad bright eyes, which her fair critics thought just one degree brazen, after the revelation in the doorway.

Mr. Pericles listened; wearing an aching expression, as if he were sending one eye to look up into his brain for a judgement disputed in that sovereign seat.

Still she held on, and then gave a tremulous, rich, contralto note.

“Oh! the human voice!” cried Adela, overcome by the transition of tones.

“Like going from the nightingale to the nightjar,” said Arabella.

Mrs. Chump remarked:  “Ye’ll not find a more susceptible woman to musuc than me.”

Wilfrid looked away.  Pride coursed through his veins in a torrent.

When the voice was still, Mr. Pericles remained in a pondering posture.

“You go to play fool with zat voice in Milano, you are flogged,” he cried terribly, shaking his forefinger.

Wilfrid faced round in wrath, but Mr. Pericles would not meet his challenge, continuing:  “You hear? you hear?—­so!” and Mr. Pericles brought the palms of his hands in collision.

“Marcy, man!” Mrs. Chump leaped from her chair; “d’ye mean that those horrud forr’ners’ll smack a full-grown young woman?—­Don’t go to ’m, my dear.  Now, take my ’dvice, little Belloni, and don’t go.  It isn’t the sting o’ the smack, ye know—­”

“Shall I sing anything to you?” Emilia addressed Mr. Pericles.  The latter shrugged to express indifference.  Nevertheless she sang.  She had never sung better.  Mr. Pericles clutched his chin in one hand, elbow on knee.  The ladies sighed to think of the loss of homage occasioned by the fact of so few being present to hear her.  Wilfrid knew himself the fountain of it all, and stood fountain-like, in a shower of secret adulation:  a really happy fellow.  This:  that his beloved should be the centre of eyes, and pronounced exquisite by general approbation, besides subjecting him to a personal spell:  this was what he wanted.  It was mournful to think that Circumstance had not at the same time created the girl of noble birth, or with an instinct for spiritual elegance.  But the world is imperfect.