accent, yet with great kindness. "Milano did not prepare me for this.
Sit there, little one, while I look thee over."

She pushed Patricia to the piano bench, and settled herself on the
opposite settee by the music stand, and though her scrutiny was
amazingly thorough, Patricia was surprised to find that it did not
disconcert her in the least. Madame Tancredi was the exact opposite of
her friend Milano in all save the kindly spirit of the true artist. She
was stout and heavy, where Milano was swift and graceful; she was
frankness itself where Milano was cryptic; and, finally, she was the
owner of a very lively curiosity.

Patricia feared lest her precious half hour go by in catechism, and was
beginning to feel a bit downcast over the length and variety of the
questions put to her by the smiling Tancredi, when suddenly, with a
jingle of her chatelaines and bangles, she rose and beckoned to a
screened corner where, unnoticed by Patricia, a dark-haired young woman
had been copying music.

"The Heather Song, Marcon," she said briefly. "This young lady requests
the Heather Song."

As a matter of fact, Patricia had done no more than to confess with
reluctance that she had tried it by herself at Greycroft, strumming the
accompaniment with careless fingers. She heard, with a sort of dismay,
the dashing introduction rendered faultlessly by the competent Marcon,
and she stood beside the shining grand piano in no very pleasant frame
of mind.

Her throat grew dryer with every moment and when it was her time to
burst into the rippling, tender song, she heard a trembling little
voice, which she could hardly recognize for her own, stumble faintly
into the melody.

It was too much for her tried nerves. She broke down utterly, turning
away from the piano with a sob, and, flinging out her hands in a
despairing gesture, cried out that she could not sing, that she never
should be able to sing and that she might as well go.

Tancredi was too much used to the emotions of the geniuses and
near-geniuses, whose temperamental outbreaks she had learned by heart,
not to understand what was the matter.

Waving the composed Marcon out of her room, she pushed Patricia to the
stool with no very gentle hand. "There now, my little one. Sing for me
in your own way," she commanded. "Rome was not builded in one day. You
are too much excited--and you so young," she ended with a softening of
pity in her rich tones.

Somehow that accusation of y