Duchess Susan interposed.  ’Such a pretty song! and you to stop her, sir!’

Caseldy took up the air.

‘Oh, you two together!’ she cried.  ’I do love hearing music in the fields; it is heavenly.  Bands in the town and voices in the green fields, I say!  Couldn’t you join Chloe, Mr ....  Count, sir, before we come among the people, here where it ’s all so nice and still.  Music! and my heart does begin so to pit-a-pat.  Do you sing, Mr. Alonzo?’

‘Poorly,’ the young gentleman replied.

’But the Count can sing, and Chloe’s a real angel when she sings; and won’t you, dear?’ she implored Chloe, to whom Caseldy addressed a prelude with a bow and a flourish of the hand.

Chloe’s voice flew forth.  Caseldy’s rich masculine matched it.  The song was gay; he snapped his finger at intervals in foreign style, singing big-chested, with full notes and a fine abandonment, and the quickest susceptibility to his fair companion’s cunning modulations, and an eye for Duchess Susan’s rapture.

Mr. Beamish and Mr. Camwell applauded them.

‘I never can tell what to say when I’m brimming’; the duchess let fall a sigh.  ’And he can play the flute, Mr. Beamish.  He promised me he would go into the orchestra and play a bit at one of your nice evening delicious concerts, and that will be nice—­Oh!’

‘He promised you, madam, did he so?’ said the beau.  ’Was it on your way to the Wells that he promised you?’

‘On my way to the Wells!’ she exclaimed softly.  ’Why, how could anybody promise me a thing before ever he saw me?  I call that a strange thing to ask a person.  No, to-day, while we were promenading; and I should hear him sing, he said.  He does admire his Chloe so.  Why, no wonder, is it, now?  She can do everything; knit, sew, sing, dance—­and talk!  She’s never uneasy for a word.  She makes whole scenes of things go round you, like a picture peep-show, I tell her.  And always cheerful.  She hasn’t a minute of grumps; and I’m sometimes a dish of stale milk fit only for pigs.

With your late hours here, I’m sure I want tickling in the morning, and Chloe carols me one of her songs, and I say, “There’s my bird!"’

Mr. Beamish added, ‘And you will remember she has a heart.’

‘I should think so!’ said the duchess.

‘A heart, madam!’

‘Why, what else?’

Nothing other, the beau, by his aspect, was constrained to admit.

He appeared puzzled by this daughter of nature in a coronet; and more on her remarking, ‘You know about her heart, Mr. Beamish.’

He acquiesced, for of course he knew of her life-long devotion to Caseldy; but there was archness in her tone.  However, he did not expect a woman of her education to have the tone perfectly concordant with the circumstances.  Speaking tentatively of Caseldy’s handsome face and figure, he was pleased to hear the duchess say, ‘So I tell Chloe.’