Victor checked him:  it was to ask whether this Jarniman had specified one, any one of the numerous diseases afflicting his aged mistress.

Now Jarniman had shocked Skepsey with his blunt titles for a couple of the foremost maladies assailing the poor lady’s decayed constitution:  not to be mentioned, Skepsey’s thought, in relation to ladies; whose organs and functions we, who pay them a proper homage by restricting them to the sphere so worthily occupied by their mothers up to the very oldest date, respectfully curtain; their accepted masters are chivalrous to them, deploring their need at times for the doctors and drugs.  He stood looking most unhappy.  ’She was to appear, sir, in a few—­perhaps a week, a month.’

A nod dismissed him.

The fun of the expedition (and Dudley Sowerby had wound himself up to relish it) was at night in the towns, when the sound of instrumental and vocal music attracted crowds beneath the windows of the hotel, and they heard zon, zon, violon, fete et basse; not bad fluting, excellent fiddling, such singing as a maestro, conducting his own Opera, would have approved.  So Victor said of his darlings’ voices.  Nesta’s and her mother’s were a perfect combination; Mr. Barmby’s trompe in union, sufficiently confirmed the popular impression, that they were artistes.  They had been ceremoniously ushered to their carriages, with expressions of gratitude, at the departure from Rouen; and the Boniface at Gisors had entreated them to stay another night, to give an entertainment.  Victor took his pleasure in letting it be known, that they were a quiet English family, simply keeping-up the habits they practiced in Old England:  all were welcome to hear them while they were doing it; but they did not give entertainments.

The pride of the pleasure of reversing the general idea of English dulness among our neighbours, was perceived to have laid fast hold of Dudley Sowerby at Dreux.  He was at the window from time to time, counting heads below.  For this reason or a better, he begged Nesta to supplant the flute duet with the soprano and contralto of the Helena section of the Mefistofele, called the Serenade:  La Luna immobile.  She consulted her mother, and they sang it.  The crowds below, swollen to a block of the street, were dead still, showing the instinctive good manners of the people.  Then mademoiselle astonished them with a Provencal or Cevennes air, Huguenot, though she was Catholic; but it suited her mezzo-soprano tones; and it rang massively of the martial-religious.  To what heights of spiritual grandeur might not a Huguenot France have marched!  Dudley Sowerby, heedlessly, under an emotion that could be stirred in him with force, by the soul of religion issuing through music, addressed his ejaculation to Lady Grace Halley.  She did nor shrug or snub him, but rejoined:  ’I could go to battle with that song in the ears.’  She liked seeing him so happily transformed; and liked the effect of it on Nesta when