"I remember," she said, "that the first night I saw you, you spoke of
my sister as your friend. Have you seen much of her lately?"

"Nothing at all," he answered.

The small grey feathers of her exquisitely shaped fan waved gently
backwards and forwards. She was watching him intently.

"Do you know," she said, "that every one is remarking how ill you
look. I too can see it. What has been the matter?"

"Toothache," he answered laconically.

She looked away.

"You might at least," she murmured, "have invented a more romantic
reason."

"Oh, I might," he answered, "have gone further still. I might have
told you the truth."

"Has my sister been unkind to you?"

"The family," he declared, "has not treated me with consideration."

She looked at him doubtfully.

"You promised faithfully to be there," he said slowly. "I loathe
afternoon concerts, and----"

She was really like her sister he thought, impressed for a moment by
the soft brilliancy of her smile. Her fingers rested upon his.

"You were really at Moulton House," she exclaimed penitently. "I am so
sorry. I had a perfect shoal of callers. People who would not go. I
only arrived when everybody was coming away."

A little murmur of expectation, an audible silence announced the
coming of "Alcide." Then a burst of applause. She was standing there,
smiling at the audience as at her friends. From the first there had
always been between her and her listeners that electrical sympathy
which only a certain order of genius seems able to create. Then she
sang.

Ennison listened, and his eyes glowed. Lady Ferringhall listened, and
her cheeks grew pale. Her whole face stiffened with suppressed anger.
She forgot Anna's sacrifices, forgot her own callousness, forgot the
burden which she had fastened upon her sister's shoulders. She was
fiercely and bitterly jealous. Anna was singing as she used to sing.
She was _chic_, distinguished, unusual. What right had she to call
herself "Alcide"? It was abominable, an imposture. Ennison listened,
and he forgot where he was. He forgot Annabel's idle attempts at
love-making, all the _cul-de-sac_ gallantry of the moment. The
cultivated indifference, which was part of the armour of his little
world fell away from him. He leaned forward, and looked into the eyes
of the woman he loved, and it seemed to him that she sang back to him
with a sudden note of something like passion breaking here and there
through the gay mocking words wh