He remembered very well; but he also remembered that when he left Naples, Signorina Rossi was laboring away with the most pertinacious assiduity at cavatinas full of runs and scales and _fiorituri_ generally; and he was quite willing to believe that such diligence had met with its due reward. But when the young lady modestly hinted that she had left her music in the hall below, and would like Leo to hear whether she had not acquired a good deal more of flexibility than her voice used to possess, and when he had fetched the music and taken it to the piano for her, he was not a little surprised to see her select Ambroise Thomas's "Io son Titania." And he was still more astonished when he found her singing this difficult piece of music with a brilliancy, an ease, a _verve_ of execution that he had never dreamed of her being able to reach. "Brava! Brava! Bravissima!--Well, you _have_ improved, Nina!" he exclaimed. "And it isn't only in freedom of production, it is in quality, too, in _timbre_--my goodness, your voice has ever so much more volume and power! Come, now, try some big, dramatic thing--" She shook her head. "No, no, Leo, I know what I do," she said. "I shall never have the grand style--never--but you think I am improved? Yes. Well, now, I sing something else." He forgot all about her lack of a chaperon; they were fellow-students again, as in the old days at Naples, when they worked hard (and also played a little), when they comforted each other, and strove to bear with equanimity the grumbling and querulousness of that always-dissatisfied old Pandiani. Signorina Rossi now sang the Shadow Song from "Dinorah;" then she sang the Jewel Song from "Faust;" she sang "Caro nome" from "Rigoletto," or anything else that he could suggest; and her runs and shakes and scale passages were delivered with a freedom and precision that again and again called forth his applause. "And you have never sung in public, Nina?" he asked. "At one concert, yes, in Naples," the young lady made answer. "And at two or three _matinees_" And then she turned to him, with a bright look. "You know this, Leo?--I am offered--no--I was offered--an engagement to sing in opera; oh, yes; it was the _impresario_ from Malta--he comes to Naples--Pandiani makes us all sing to him--then will I go to Malta, to the opera there? No!" "Why not, Nina? Surely that was a good opening," he said. She turned away from him again, and her fingers wandered lightly over the keys of the piano. "I always say to me, 'Some day I am in England; the English give much money at concerts; perhaps that is better.'" "So you've come over to England to get a series of concert-room engagements; is that it, Nina?" She shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly. "Perhaps. One must wait and see. It is not my ambition. No. The light opera, that is--popular?--is it right?" "Yes, yes."