Randall was a somewhat erratic and unaccountable fellow, careful and economical about money on certain lines, and recklessly prodigal in others. Where the indulgence of his love for music was concerned, he never counted it, and this evening, after reading the programme and seeing several favorites among the selections, he felt inclined to do his very utmost to get pleasure out of this concert by hearing it under the best conditions that he could secure. The chief of these was either sympathetic companionship, or solitude, and as he could not command the first, he would the latter, so he got a small curtained box in good sight and sound of the stage, and took his place in it alone. The concert opened with a very good performance of violin and violoncello, with piano accompaniment. The players were not great artists, but Randall got enough out of it to stir the deep, emotional feelings within, that made him simply yearn and hunger for more--more music and sweeter, more life and fuller! The next performance was to introduce the new singer, Miss Bianca May. He sat quite screened from view behind his curtain, and waited with mingled hope and doubting for her to come out. And now she appeared, Mensenn leading her. She was tall, she was dressed in white, she was supremely beautiful. His heart gave a great leap; the blood seemed to surge forward in his veins, and then to rush back in a way that gave him a sense of suffocation. She was walking forward with a step and a carriage that he recognized. She was looking around the house with great, pure, innocent and timid eyes that he had looked into before! She was his opposite neighbor--Tommy’s little mistress! Her beauty was positively enthralling, but oh, her voice! At the thought of that, he turned cold with dread, and then hot with angry protest. What _did_ Mensenn mean? How _could_ he let her adorn her loveliness like this, to be led as a victim to the sacrifice? He knew the character of the audience assembled, and he knew that they were not people to be inveigled into the toleration of such a voice by mere beauty. The very fact that she had such a beautiful and correct method would make the thing all the more an insult to their intelligence. He was almost beside himself with anger and mortification. He longed passionately to rush upon the stage and drag her away, and to hide her beautiful, unconscious face against his heart, before she had come to feel the contempt and indignation which the audience, now spellbound by her beauty, would very soon have ready for her.