‘Come down,’ said Mrs. Cameron; and in answer to this summons a solemn footstep was heard upon the stair. Barbara heard the sound of a whispered conference outside, and then, the door being opened, Mrs. Cameron ushered in a gentleman tall and lank and sombre, like Mrs. Cameron, he was very pale, but in his case the pallor of his cheeks was intensified by the blackness of his hair and the purple-black bloom upon his chin and upper lip. He looked to Barbara like an undertaker who mourned the stagnation of trade. To you or me he would have looked like what he was, a second or third-rate tragedian. ‘I have not yet the pleasure of your name,’ said Mrs. Lochleven Cameron, addressing Barbara. ‘My name is Barbara Allen,’ said Barbara, speaking it unconsciously as though it were a line of an old ballad. ‘This, Miss Allen,’ said Mrs. Cameron with a sweep of the right hand which might have served to introduce a landscape, ‘is Mr. Lochleven Cameron.’ Barbara rose and curtsied, and Mr. Lochleven Cameron bowed. Barbara concluded that this was _not_ the gentleman who had been called downstairs as ‘Joe.’ ‘Will you’ sing that little ballad over again, Miss Allen?’ asked Mrs. Cameron, gravely seating herself. Barbara sang the ballad over again, and sang it rather better than before. Mrs. Cameron cried again, and Mr. Cameron said ‘Bravo!’ at the finish. ‘Now,’ said Mrs. Cameron, ‘do you know anything sprightly?’ she pronounced it ‘sproightly,’ but she was off her guard. Barbara, by this time only enough excited to do her best, sang ‘Come lasses and lads,’ and sang it like herself, with honest mirth and rural roguishness. For without knowing it, this young lady was a born actress, and did by nature and beautifully what others are taught to do awkwardly. ‘You’ll have to broaden the style a little for the theatre,’ said the tragédienne, ‘but for a small room nothing could be better.’ ‘I venture to predict,’ said the tragedian, ‘that Miss Allen will become an ornament to the profession.’ ‘I am afraid,’ said Barbara, rising from the piano, ‘that after all I may be only wasting your time. I have not asked your terms, and--I am--I have not much money.’ ‘Miss Allen,’ said the tragedian, ‘unless I am much mistaken, you will not long have to mourn that unpleasant condition of affairs.’ ‘Are your parents aware of your design, Miss Allen?’ This from the lady. ‘I have no parents,’ faltered Barbara. ‘I am living with my uncle.’ ‘Does he know your wishes in this matter?’ ‘No,’ said Barbara, and the feeling of guilt returned. ‘If he is willing to entrust you to my tuition,’ said Mrs. Lochleven Cameron, ‘I should be willing to instruct you without charge on condition that you bound yourself to pay to Mr. Cameron one-third of your earnings for the first three years.’ This opened up a vista to Barbara, but she was certain that her uncle would give his consent to no such arrangement.