‘And he—­did he?—­vowed to you he could not take No for an answer?’

At this ingenuous question, woefully uttered, mademoiselle was pricked, to smile pointedly.  Nesta had a tooth on her under-lip.  Then, shaking vapours to the winds, she said:  ’It is an honour, to be asked; and we cannot be expected to consent.  So I shall wear through it.—­Only I do wish that Mr. Fenellan would not call him The Inchcape Bell!’ She murmured this to herself.

Mr. Barmby was absent for two weeks.  ‘Can anything have offended him?’ Victor inquired, in some consternation, appreciating the man’s worth, and the grand basso he was; together with the need for him at the Lakelands Concert in August.

Nataly wrote Mr. Barmby a direct invitation.  She had no reply.  Her speculations were cut short by Victor, who handed her a brief note addressed to him and signed by the Rev. Septimus, petitioning for a private interview.

The formality of the request incensed Victor.  ’Now, dear love, you see Colney’s meaning, when he says, there are people who have no intimacy in them.  Here’s a man who visits me regularly once a week or more, has been familiar for years—­four, at least; and he wants to speak to me, and must obtain the “privilege” by special appointment!  What can be the meaning of it?’

‘You will hear to-morrow afternoon,’ Nataly said, seeing one paved way to the meaning—­a too likely meaning. . .  ’He hasn’t been . . . nothing about Fredi, surely!’

‘I have had no information.’

’Impossible!  Barmby has good sense; Bottesini can’t intend to come scraping on that string.  But we won’t lose him; he’s one of us.  Barmby counts for more at a Charity Concert than all the catalogue, and particularly in the country.  But he’s an excellent fellow—­eh?’

‘That he is,’ Nataly agreed.

Victor despatched a cheerful curt consent to see Mr. Barmby privately on the late afternoon of the day to follow.

Nesta, returning home from the park at that hour of the interview, ignorant of Mr. Barmby’s purpose though she was, had her fires extinguished by the rolling roar of curfew along the hall-passage, out of the library.

CHAPTER XVIII

SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA

When, upon the well-known quest, the delightful singer Orpheus took that downward way, coming in sight of old Cerberus centiceps, he astutely feigned inattention to the hostile appearances of the multiple beast, and with a wave of his plectrum over the responsive lyre, he at the stroke raised voice.  This much you know.  It may be communicated to you, that there was then beheld the most singular spectacle ever exhibited on the dizzy line of division between the living and the dead.  For those unaccustomed musical tones in the last thin whiff of our sustaining air were so smartingly persuasive as to pierce to the vitals of the faithful Old Dog before his offended sentiments