“That lovely _Là ci darem!_ Ah, Alice! if we had but a gentleman’s voice to take the second! Why _don’t_ you sing, Mr. Coverdale?” exclaimed Emily, turning over the pages of the duet. “I’ll try what I can do if _you_ wish it,” was Coverdale’s quiet answer. Alice, to whom he spoke, glanced at him in speechless surprise; but Emily, at once making up her mind that he was attempting a hoax, and eager to turn the tables upon him, resumed-- “Bravo! give me your seat, Alice, I’ll play the accompaniment for you both.” Now the truth was, that Harry had been gifted by nature with a rich powerful voice and excellent ear, qualities which the admiration of his “set” at Cambridge had induced him to cultivate. When he first started on his grand tour, he encountered at Florence the mother and sisters of an old college friend, and those being the days before he had foresworn young ladies’ society, he was let in for a mild flirtation with one of the daughters. The “emphatic she” happened to be _fanatica per la musica_. Accordingly for three months Harry took lessons of the best master in the place, and sang duets morning, noon, and night; at the end of which period the “loved one” bolted with a black-bearded native, who called himself a count, and _was_ a courier. Since which episode, Harry, disgusted with the whole affair, and all connected with it, had chiefly confined his singing to lyrical declarations that he would “not go home till morning.” It will therefore be less a matter of surprise to the reader, than it was to his audience at the Grange, that Coverdale performed his part in the duet with equal taste and skill, and very much better than Alice did hers--that young lady pronouncing her Italian with rather a midland-county accent than otherwise, although her sweet, fresh, young voice, in great measure atoned for this little peculiarity. “Why, Mr. Coverdale, what a charming voice you have, and how beautifully you sing!” exclaimed Emily, looking at him as if she could not even yet believe that it was possible he should have so distinguished himself. “I thought you were hoaxing us, and I sat down to play the duet for the amiable purpose of exposing your ignorance.” “How did you acquire such a pure Italian accent?” asked Mrs. Hazlehurst; “it will be of the greatest advantage to my girls to sing with _you_.” “I learned of an Italian fellow when I was at Florence, and I suppose he taught me to do the business all right,” was the careless reply. “And you have been here more than a week,” continued Mrs. Hazlehurst, “and allowed Mr. D’Almayne to monopolise both the reading and singing department, though he cannot fill either one quarter as efficiently as you are able to do. You really are too diffident.” “I don’t imagine diffidence to have had very much to do with it,” observed Kate Marsden, quietly raising her eyes from her work (a crochet purse with steel beads), and fixing them on Coverdale.