‘As for bracing air, my love, I think there is nothing like St. Moritz. Do you remember how it set me up after that--that----’ ‘Give him a big, well-sounding name, doctor,’ said Mrs. Beresford, laughing; ‘it was only a bilious attack. But talking of the sea, there is Biarritz--that would do, don’t you think? It is warm, and it _was_ gay. After all, however, I don’t think I care for the sea. The Italian lakes are fine in the autumn, and as it gets cooler we might get on perhaps to Florence, or even Rome--or Kamtschatka, or Timbuctoo, or the Great Sahara,’ she said, with a burst of laughter. ‘You are complaisance itself, you gentlemen. Now I’ll go and sing you something to reward you for humouring me to the top of my bent, and licensing me to go where I please.’ She had a pretty voice and sang well. The piano was at the other end of the room, the ‘back drawing-room’ of the commonplace London house. The two men kept their places while she went away into the dim evening, and sat down there scarcely visible, and sang. The soft, sweet voice, not powerful, but penetrating, rose like a bird in the soft gloom. James Beresford looked at the doctor with an entreating look of secret anguish as the first notes rose into the air, so liquid, so tender, so sweet. ‘Are you afraid? tell me!’ he said, with pathetic brevity. Maxwell could not bear this questioning. He started up, and went to look this time at a picture on the wall. ‘I don’t know that I have any occasion to be afraid,’ he said, standing with his back turned to his questioner, and quite invisible from the piano. ‘I’m--a nervous man for a doctor when I’m interested in a case----’ Here there was a pause, for she had ended the first verse of the song, and the low warble of the symphony was not enough to cover their voices. ‘Don’t speak of her as a case,’ said Beresford, low but eager, as the singing recommenced: ‘you chill my very blood.’