,
Margarita's, who loves music, more than most--and _toute la boutique_.
Then there are also those of all the musicians, and--but you will see
to-morrow."

He had brought his violin-case upstairs, and now opened it and took out
his Amati. "I will play for you, _ma chere fille_," he declared.

And he played. Brigit watched him, amazed. Where was the rowdy,
loud-voiced, amusing and almost ridiculously boyish middle-aged man with
whom she had come to town?

This man's face was that of a priest adoringly performing the rites of
his religion. His head thrown back, his fine mouth set in lines of
ecstatic reverence, he played on and on, his eyes unseeing, or rather
the eyes of one seeing visions.

He was a creature of no country, no age. His grey hair failed to make
him old, big unwrinkled face failed to make him young. And as he
played--to _her_, she knew--years of imprisonment and sorrow seemed to
drop from the girl; she forgot all the bitterness, all the resentment
that had spoiled her life hitherto, and she felt as she leaned back in
her chair and listened as if she had at last come to a haven and found
youth awaiting her there.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It is pleasant to wake to the sound of exquisite--and sufficiently
distant--music. It is also pleasant to wake to the odour of good--and
sufficiently distant--coffee.

The morning after her remarkable arrival in Golden Square Brigit Mead
awoke to both these pleasant things. Somewhere downstairs someone was
playing a simple, plaintive air on a violin, and still further away
someone was making coffee--delicious coffee.

The girl for a moment could not remember where she was; the room, with
its dark-grey paper and stiff black-walnut furniture, was
foreign-looking, so were the coloured pictures of religious subjects on
the walls. On the chimney-piece stood two blue glass vases filled with
dried grasses, and the lace curtains flaunted their stiff cleanliness
against otherwise unshaded windows.

Where was she?

And then, as the music broke off suddenly, she remembered, and smiled in
delighted recollection of the evening before. Waking was usually such a
bore; the thought of breakfast, always a severe test to the unsociable,
was horrid to her. There would be either a solitary meal in the big dark
dining-room, or what was worse, guests to entertain (for Lady Kingsmead
never appeared until after eleven), and the disagreeable hurry and
scurry contingent on the catching o