He waited, in a serene confidence. Lady Chesterfield looked at her brother. “What is it, Richard?” His lordship giggled, “hem’d,” pulled at his cravat, and spoke. “Nothing in the world, thithter Kit.” “O!” she said, “nothing is easily granted. I give you the case, your Highness.” “He rates his own genius too lightly,” cried the Duke. “I see that, for the sake of his modesty, I must reverse the parts. Take me for advocate, then, and hear my plea. It is that, saving one factor, your brother is the most accomplished guitarist at Court.” “O, fie, your Highneth!” said Arran, squirming in every limb. “Think of Corbetti.” “A master, I grant,” said the Duke, “but with the faults incident to professionalism. A perfect executant, art hath yet despoiled him of nature. For pure sympathy, give me your born musician before your trained.” Again Arran squirmed. “O, your Highneth, your Highneth!” The Duke turned to Kate. “Do you not love your brother’s playing?” “Indeed,” answered the girl, perplexed, “Richard plays well.” “Well?” he echoed, protesting. “Have you heard him in the new saraband?” She shook her head. “Ah!” he said: “not Corbetti himself could so interpret the loveliness of his own composition. I speak as one who knows. My lord’s performance, to eschew superlatives, was divine. Yet there was a flaw. The perfect master lacked the perfect instrument. To attain the latter, or at least more nearly approximate it, only one resource offered. Your ladyship, as he informed me, was owner of the finest guitar in all England. To hear him on that guitar became then a necessity with me--a fever, a passion. It was to entreat that opportunity that I ventured this descent upon your ladyship’s privacy.” She heard; she opened her eyes in ingenuous wonder. Before she could consider the words, they were on her lips. “Is that all?” “Nay, not all,” he answered softly--“not all. But that _you_ might hear and feel.” Involuntarily she shrank away a little. “Richard knew,” she said, “that he could always have my guitar for the asking.” “Is that so?” said his Highness. “But he did not tell me--perchance because he would have his sister learn the estimate in which he is held by others, to show his power to move me in your presence. Ah!” he waved a playful hand--a very white and shapely one: “relations are notoriously grudging critics of their own.” Still she struggled faintly. “This is a poor room for resonance, my lord Duke. The audience-chamber would have been better chosen.” “Nay,” he said; “are we not private here?” “Private, Sir?” “Is not privacy the very essence of all sweet sounds and thoughts? To risk interruption is to risk the jarring of their lovely sequence. No, we are happiest where we are, apart and secluded. The loneliest bower is that where the bird sings his song to an end.” She rose hastily, and with an effort to control her agitation. “I will go and fetch it,” she said. “It is not here.” He sought to detain her.