to pursue the conversation. Politeness, however,
forbade such a thing, and he consoled himself with the reflection that,
after dinner, he would ask old Valpy about the ballet-dancer whose name
caused Mark Frettlby to exhibit such strong emotion. But, to his
annoyance, when the gentlemen went into the drawing-room, Frettlby took
the old colonist off to his study, where he sat with him the whole
evening talking over old times.

Fitzgerald found Madge seated at the piano in the drawing-room playing
one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words.

"What a dismal thing that is you are playing, Madge," he said lightly,
as he sank into a seat beside her. "It is more like a funeral march
than anything else."

"Gad, so it is," said Felix, who came up at this moment. "I don't care
myself about 'Op. 84' and all that classical humbug. Give me something
light--'Belle Helene,' with Emelie Melville, and all that sort of
thing."

"Felix!" said his wife, in a stern tone.

"My dear," he answered recklessly, rendered bold by the champagne he
had taken, "you observed--"

"Nothing particular," answered Mrs. Rolleston, glancing at him with a
stony eye, "except that I consider Offenbach low."

"I don't," said Felix, sitting down to the piano, from which Madge had
just risen, "and to prove he ain't, here goes."

He ran his fingers lightly over the keys, and dashed into a brilliant
Offenbach galop, which had the effect of waking up the people in the
drawing-room, who felt sleepy after dinner, and sent the blood tingling
through their veins. When they were thoroughly roused, Felix, now that
he had an appreciative audience, for he was by no means an individual
who believed in wasting his sweetness on the desert air, prepared to
amuse them.

"You haven't heard the last new song by Frosti, have you?" he asked,
after he had brought his galop to a conclusion.

"Is that the composer of 'Inasmuch' and 'How so?'" asked Julia,
clasping her hands. "I do love his music, and the words are so sweetly
pretty."

"Infernally stupid, she means," whispered Peterson to Brian. "They've
no more meaning in them than the titles."

"Sing us the new song, Felix," commanded his wife, and her obedient
husband obeyed her.

It was entitled, "Somewhere," words by Vashti, music by Paola Frosti,
and was one of those extraordinary compositions which may mean
anything--that is, if the meaning can be discovered. Felix had a
pleasant voice, though it was not very stron