He would have liked to go on singing duets for an indefinite period. He felt lifted into some strange and delightful region--a sphere of love and harmony--while he was mingling his voice with Violet's. It made the popular idea of heaven, as a place where there is nothing but singing--an eternal, untiring choir--clearer and more possible to him than it had ever seemed before. Paradise would be quite endurable if he and Violet might stand side by side in the serried ranks of choristers. There was quite a little crowd round the piano, shutting in Violet and Lord Hallow, and Roderick Vawdrey was not in it. He felt himself excluded, and held himself gloomingly apart, talking hunting talk with a man for whom he did not care twopence. Directly his carriage was announced--_sotto voce_ by the considerate Forbes, so as not to wound anybody's feelings by the suggestion that the festivity was on its last legs--Mr. Vawdrey went up to Mrs. Winstanley and took leave. He would not wait to say good-night to Violet. He only cast one glance in the direction of the piano, where the noble breadth of Mrs. Carteret's brocaded amber back obscured every remoter object, and then went away moodily, denouncing duet-singing as an abomination. When Lady Mabel asked him next day what kind of an evening he had had at the Abbey House, in a tone which implied that any entertainment there must be on a distinctly lower level as compared with the hospitalities of Ashbourne, he told her that it had been uncommonly slow. "How was that? You had some stupid person to take into dinner, perhaps?" "No; I went in with Violet." "And you and she are such old friends. You ought to get on very well together." Rorie reddened furiously. Happily he was standing with his back to the light in one of the orchid-houses, enjoying the drowsy warmth of the atmosphere, and Mabel was engrossed with the contemplation of a fine zygopetalum, which was just making up its mind to bloom. "Oh, yes, that was well enough; but the evening was disgustingly slow. There was too much music." "Classical?" "Lord knows. It was mostly French and German. I consider it an insult to people to ask them to your house, and then stick them down in their chairs, and say h--sh--h! every time they open their months. If people want to give amateur concerts, let them say so when they send out their invitations, and then one would know what one has to expect." "I am afraid the music must have been very bad to make you so cross," said Lady Mabel, rather pleased that the evening at the Abbey House should have been a failure. "Who were the performers?" "Violet, and an Irish friend of Captain Winstanley's--a man with a rosy complexion and black whiskers--Lord Mallow." "Lord Mallow! I think I danced with him once or twice last season. He is rather distinguished as a politician, I believe, among the young Ireland party. Dreadfully radical."