with her, she took me down to the little house
where the Signora lives and left me to my fate after she had introduced
us. Picture to yourself, Margaret, a little woman with hair and eyes of
almost coal-like blackness, and a little sallow, eager face, and you have
the once great Madame Martelli to the life. Though she has lived in
England for a great many years she does not talk English very well, and
her foreign accent is very strong. She thought, of course, that singing
and music were only to be my secondary subjects, and that I had come to
her principally to study Italian, and at first I did not undeceive her,
but got out my grammar and exercise-books, and did dictations and
translations as if I aspired to learn nothing more from her. For two
hours we kept at it, and then she looked at her watch.

"Your grandfather wishes, too, that we do a little singing and playing,"
she said, and a distinct sigh of resignation came from her. "Which do you
like best, the playing or the singing?"

"Singing," I answered. "I love singing, Madame Martelli, more than I love
anything else in the whole wide world."

"Indeed," she said politely and kindly. "Zat is vary nice. Your
grandfather, he say through Mrs. Murray to me that you have ze pretty
little drawing-room voice, and would I kindly teach it. And so," again
that sigh of resignation, "will you please sit down to ze piano, and sing
me ze leetle song? Hey, is it not so that you have ye nice leetle voice?"

At that, Margaret, I really don't know what came over me, for supposing
Signor Vanucci had been wrong, and I had no voice, she would have thought
me mad, but truth to say, I simply did not feel I was risking anything
when I turned, and looking at her across the big grand piano that fills
up her little drawing-room, and said, "No, it is not true, I have not a
nice little drawing-room voice."

"Of course she thought I was shy and modest, and was nervous at the
thought of singing before her, and her face, when I went on in a calm,
matter-of-fact voice, 'No, I have not a little drawing-room voice, but
I have a voice which, with your training, is going to be one of the
greatest and best voices that has been heard in Europe this century,' was
a study."

Margaret gasped, "Oh, Eleanor, how could you! for supposing--supposing it
had all been a mistake. What did she think of you?"

"I gave her no time to think of me," said Eleanor. "I simply sat down and
sang, and then all she thou