"Oh yes," said Miss Wix. "Don't you remember you told us the story at tea, and then you told it again to your father at dinner? But do tell Cynthia and Humphrey!" "I--er--dined with Pincocca last night at his rooms," he drawled. "One or two men came in afterwards. He introduced me. I didn't pay much attention to the names--you know what it is--and by-and-by Pincocca pressed me to sing. He said I was 'a pupil,' and I could see that one of the men was prepared to be bored.... This really is so very personal that----" "No, no, no! go on. What nonsense!" said his mother. "I could see he was prepared to be bored; so I made up my mind to--_sing!_ I was nettled--very childish, I admit it--but I was nettled. I didn't watch him while I sang--I couldn't. I did better than I expected. "You forgot _everything_," cried Sam Walford, "_I_ know!" "I did, yes. I didn't think of Pincocca, or of him, or of anybody in the room. When I had finished, he came up to me, and said, 'Mr. Walford, I am green with jealousy. Ah, Heaven! if _I_ could command such a career!' The man was Lassalle." "Flattering?" shouted his father to Kent. "Flattering? 'If _I_ could command such a career!' Eh?" Kent asked himself speechlessly if this thing could be. "If _I_ could command such a career!'" declaimed Mr. Walford. "What do you think of that? He's coming out in the spring, you know." "Yes, so I've heard," said Humphrey. "Where?" "That's not settled; here in town, I expect, at Covent Garden. He sang to the manager last week. The man was--was staggered." "Ha!" said Kent perfunctorily. "There's never been anything heard like it. I tell you, he'll take London by storm." "What _I_ can't understand," said Miss Wix, her mouth pursed to a buttonhole, "is how it was you didn't know Lassalle directly he came in. Is he the only musical celebrity you aren't intimate with?" Her nephew looked momentarily disconcerted. "One doesn't know everybody," he said feebly; "Lassalle happened to be a man I hadn't met." "What do you mean, Emily?" flared Mrs. Walford. "You don't imagine that Cæsar made the story up, I suppose?" "'Mean'?" said Miss Wix with wonder. "'Make it up'? Why should he make it up? I said I 'didn't understand,' that is all. Quite a simple observation." She rose, and seated herself stiffly on a distant couch. Mrs. Walford panted, and turned to Humphrey, who she was afraid had overheard. "How very absurd," she said jerkily--"how _very_ absurd of her to make such a remark! So liable to misconstruction. By the way, do you see anything of that Mr. Turkey--Turquand--what was he called?--now? Has he--er--er--any influence with the Press?" "He knows a good many people of a kind. Why?"