“My dear, I assure you I gasped,” she said to Karl Rusoff. “There he was in a poky little room, furnished entirely with prayer-books, in a dreadful parsonage, playing on a cracked tin-kettle of a piano, and playing as he played to-night. Then in the middle his father came in and said, ‘Go and do your Hebrew-Greek, instead of wasting your time at the Jew’s-harp.’ Such a strange man, Flints’s brother, you know, and lives, I believe, entirely on locusts and wild-honey and wears broadcloth, or is it sack-cloth? Something very thick and imperishable, anyhow. Such a beautiful life, but ascetic, not artistic,--Mendelssohn and pitch-pine, you know. Of course, I saw at once how priceless Martin was; but we had the greatest difficulty in persuading his father to let him come up to London. He thinks all artists will go to hell, if they have not already gone there. Yes. I didn’t bring my darlings to-night, because they always bark when anyone plays the piano, and Suez Canal is so shrill. But, is not my monster too wonderful? And now I must go. I never get to bed till it is time to get up, and I shan’t sleep one wink after the music. I never do. Where is Helen? Yes, she is Martin’s twin. Why aren’t we all twins like that? Supper? How nice! I am famishing. Music always takes so much out of one. Yes, pray take me into supper, Monsieur Rusoff, and let us put it back. Martin, don’t dare to leave my side for a single moment.” Frank, in the mean time, had found a chair next Helen. The girl looked divinely happy. Her pride in Martin, her intense pleasure in the wonderful reception he had been given, flushed her cheek with excitement and sparkled in her eyes. Frank had not had an opportunity of speaking to her the whole evening, and now, as he was making his way towards her through the crowd, delayed every other moment by some acquaintance or friend, he met her eye long before he was within speaking distance, and as he smiled in response to her, something suddenly thumped softly and largely on his heart, as if demanding admittance. At last he reached her, and she looked at him with her direct, child-like gaze. “Thank you,” she said, “thank you most awfully.” He laughed, not pretending not to know what she meant. “Ah, we are all thanking Martin,” he said, “and those who know best, I think, thank him most. Karl Rusoff, for instance.” “Then, you were right?” she asked. “There is no mistake? He is really of the best?” “Yes, that is Monsieur Rusoff’s opinion.” “I should like to kiss him,” said Helen. “Shall I fetch him?” asked Frank. “Not this moment. Go on, Lord Yorkshire.” “That is a good deal already. And he will take him as a pupil, he says. He has not consented to take a pupil for years. Now we have to consult---- How is that to be managed?” Helen’s face fell for a moment.