She had but one pleasure--that of bringing together great artists, and causing Harrenden House to be renowned for something better than the usual display and expenditure of “new” houses. She had difficulty in making her father pay the singers and musicians as she wished them to be paid, for he who would give two guineas a bottle for a rare Comet-wine, or waste many thousands of pounds in receiving a sporting prince at Vale Royal, grudged their fees to what he contemptuously called “professionals.” But when he saw how greatly these musical entertainments “took on,” and how much they did to raise the tone of his house, he gave her large credit and discretion, and the reputation for the weekly chamber-music at Harrenden House soon attracted to it those choicer souls whom millions and Richemont could not alone have drawn there. Sometimes she wished she could invite that lover of music who had listened to the sonata in B flat at Bedlowes. She would sooner have seen him there than his sister, who showed for an hour at these concerts, and then took herself off to some gayer form of entertainment. “It is intensely classic and correct, but deadly dull,” said Lady Kenilworth, although she was, on occasion, a musical composer herself, and wrote little songs which, with many corrections and additions from Delkass and other salon-singers and fashionable pianists, passed muster and were published as her own. Once, to please her, Massarene bade his daughter have one of these ballads sung at the next Harrenden House concert. “My dear father, get someone else to manage these things,” she answered. “Or let us give them up altogether. But bad amateur music I will not have sung or played whilst I am responsible for the selection.” She was quite resolute on the point, and, as he did not wish concerts which were so admired to be abandoned, he could not please his idol in this matter. “She says your songs ain’t good enow, my lady,” he announced grimly, with that relish in annoying her which occasionally overcame his submissiveness, at such times as he remembered the diplomatist and the Bird rooms, or saw a bevy of men round her as she donned her evening cloak. The announcement did not lessen the impatient aversion which she felt for his heiress. “Are you afraid of your own daughter, Billy?” she asked very contemptuously. “I ain’t afraid of nobody,” said Mr. Massarene; and there was an ugly look for a moment on his face. “What an odious man he was!” she thought. “What a lout, what a bore, and, no doubt, what a bully too where he could be so!” Sometimes a gleam of good sense made her afraid of him; afraid of all the obligations which she was under to him; afraid of some future reprisal he might take for all her insolence. But she was utterly careless and extremely imprudent, and she dismissed the fear as soon as it assailed her.