Caseldy said, ‘The veracity of a boy possessing a friend named Clungeon is beyond contest.’ Duchess Susan opened her eyes. ‘Four miles from home! And what did his mother do to him?’ ‘Tommy’s mama,’ said Mr. Beamish, and with the resplendent licence of the period which continued still upon tolerable terms with nature under the compromise of decorous ‘Oh-fie!’ flatly declared the thing she did. ‘I fancy, sir, that I caught sight of your figure on the hill yonder about an hour or so earlier,’ said Caseldy to Mr. Camwell. ‘If it was at the time when you were issuing from that wood, sir, your surmise is correct,’ said the young gentleman. ‘You are long-sighted, sir!’ ‘I am, sir.’ ‘And so am I.’ ‘And I,’ said Chloe. ‘Our Chloe will distinguish you accurately at a mile, and has done it,’ observed Mr. Beamish. ‘One guesses tiptoe on a suspicion, and if one is wrong it passes, and if one is right it is a miracle,’ she said, and raised her voice on a song to quit the subject. ‘Ay, ay, Chloe; so then you had a suspicion, you rogue, the day we had the pleasure of meeting the duchess, had you?’ Mr. Beamish persisted. 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?’