and Mr. Pericles
interchanged quasi bows.

"Oh, if he doesn't show his upper teeth like an angry cat, or a leopard
I've seen!" cried Mrs. Chump in Adela's ear, designating Mr. Pericles.
"Does he know Mr. Wilfrud's in the British army, and a new lieuten't,
gazetted and all?"

Mr. Pericles certainly did not look pleasantly upon Wilfrid: Emilia
received his unconcealed wrath and spite.

"Go and sing a note!" he said.

"At the piano?" Emilia quietly asked.

"At piano, harp, what you will--it is ze voice I want."

Emilia pitched her note high from a full chest and with glad bright
eyes, which her fair critics thought just one degree brazen, after the
revelation in the doorway.

Mr. Pericles listened; wearing an aching expression, as if he were
sending one eye to look up into his brain for a judgement disputed in
that sovereign seat.

Still she held on, and then gave a tremulous, rich, contralto note.

"Oh! the human voice!" cried Adela, overcome by the transition of tones.

"Like going from the nightingale to the nightjar," said Arabella.

Mrs. Chump remarked: "Ye'll not find a more susceptible woman to musuc
than me."

Wilfrid looked away. Pride coursed through his veins in a torrent.

When the voice was still, Mr. Pericles remained in a pondering posture.

"You go to play fool with zat voice in Milano, you are flogged," he
cried terribly, shaking his forefinger.

Wilfrid faced round in wrath, but Mr. Pericles would not meet his
challenge, continuing: "You hear? you hear?--so!" and Mr. Pericles
brought the palms of his hands in collision.

"Marcy, man!" Mrs. Chump leaped from her chair; "d'ye mean that those
horrud forr'ners'll smack a full-grown young woman?--Don't go to 'm, my
dear. Now, take my 'dvice, little Belloni, and don't go. It isn't the
sting o' the smack, ye know--"

"Shall I sing anything to you?" Emilia addressed Mr. Pericles. The
latter shrugged to express indifference. Nevertheless she sang. She had
never sung better. Mr. Pericles clutched his chin in one hand, elbow on
knee. The ladies sighed to think of the loss of homage occasioned by
the fact of so few being present to hear her. Wilfrid knew himself
the fountain of it all, and stood fountain-like, in a shower of secret
adulation: a really happy fellow. This: that his beloved should be the
centre of eyes, and pronounced exquisite by general approbation, besides
subjecting him to a personal spell: this was what he wanted. It was
mourn