haps, that she had lost time.

'Schreiermeyer says she sings divinely,' she said at last, looking at
Lushington and then nodding at Margaret. 'You know what that means.'

'London?' inquired Lushington, who knew the manager.

'London next year, and an appearance this season if any one breaks
down. Meanwhile he signs for her _debut_ in Belgium and a three months'
tour. Twenty-four performances in three operas, fifty thousand francs.'

'I congratulate you,' said Lushington, looking at Margaret and trying
to seem pleased.

'You seem to think it is too little,' observed Madame Bonanni.

'Little?' cried Margaret. 'It's a fortune!'

'You may talk of a fortune when you get three hundred pounds a night,'
said Lushington. 'But it is a good beginning. I wonder that
Schreiermeyer agreed to it so easily.'

'Easily!' Madame Bonanni laughed. 'I wish you had been there, my dear
boy! He kicked and screamed, and we called him bad names. The King told
him he was a dirty little Jew, which he is not, poor man, but it had a
very good effect.'

'Oh!' Lushington did not seem surprised at the royal personage's
reported language. 'Then it was the King who passed me in that smart
brougham? I thought so.'

'Yes,' answered Madame Bonanni rather brusquely, and she became very
busy with some little birds.

'It's funny,' Margaret said to Lushington. 'One always imagines a king
with a crown and a sort of ermine dressing-gown, and a sceptre like the
Lord Mayor's mace! Of course it s perfectly ridiculous, isn't it?'

'I believe His Majesty possesses those things,' answered Lushington, as
if he did not like the subject.

'He looked and talked much more like an old friend than anything else,'
Margaret went on, remembering that Madame Bonanni had used the same
expression before Schreiermeyer.

To her surprise and sudden discomfiture neither of the two paid the
least attention to her remark.

'What train shall you take, mother?' asked Lushington so abruptly upon
Margaret's speech that she understood her mistake.

Though she had guessed something, it had somehow not occurred to her to
connect the royal personage with Madame Bonanni's past; but now she
scarcely dared to glance at Lushington. When she did, he seemed to be
avoiding her eyes again, and she saw the old look of pain in his face,
though he was talking about the timetables and the turbine
channel-boat.

'You must come over to London and see me before your _debut_, my dear,'
Mada