The Splendid Folly | Page 5

In three years of my training it will become the voice
of the century. Tchut! No good!"
He pranced nimbly to the door and flung it open.
"Giulia! Giulia!" he shouted, and a minute later a fat, amiable-looking
woman, whose likeness to Baroni proclaimed them brother and sister,
came hurrying downstairs in answer to his call. "Signora Evanci, my
sister," he said, nodding to Diana. "This, Giulia, is a new pupil, and I
would haf you hear her voice. It is magnificent--_épatant_! Open your
mouth, little singing-bird, once more. This time we will haf some

scales."
Bewildered and excited, Diana sang again, Baroni testing the full
compass of her voice until quite suddenly he shut down the lid of the
piano.
"It is enough," he said solemnly, and then, turning to Signora Evanci,
began talking to her in an excited jumble of English and Italian. Diana
caught broken phrases here and there.
"Of a quality superb! . . . And a beeg compass which will grow beeger
yet. . . . The contralto of the century, Giulia."
And Signora Evanci smiled and nodded agreement, patting Diana's
hand, and reminded Baroni that it was time for his afternoon cup of
consommé. She was a comfortable feather-bed of a woman, whose
mission in life it seemed to be to fend off from her brother all sharp
corners, and to see that he took his food at the proper intervals and
changed into the thick underclothing necessitated by the horrible
English climate.
"But it will want much training, your voice," continued Baroni, turning
once more to Diana. "It is so beeg that it is all over the place--it sounds
like a clap of thunder that has lost his way in a back garden." And he
smiled indulgently. "To bee-gin with, you will put away all your
songs--every one. There will be nothing but exercises for months yet.
And you will come for your first lesson on Thursday. Mondays and
Thursdays I will teach you, but you must come other days, also, and
listen at my lessons. There is much--very much--learned by listening, if
one listens with the brain as well as with the ear. Now, little
singing-bird, good-bye. I will go with you myself to the door."
The whole thing seemed too impossibly good to be true. Diana felt as if
she were in the middle of a beautiful dream from which she might at
any moment waken to the disappointing reality of things. Hardly able
to believe the evidence of her senses, she found herself once again in
the narrow hall, shepherded by the maestro's portly form. As he held
the door open for her to pass out into the street, some one ran quickly

up the steps, pausing on the topmost.
"Ha, Olga!" exclaimed Baroni, beaming. "You haf returned just too late
to hear Mees Quentin. But you will play for her--many times yet." Then,
turning to Diana, he added by way of introduction: "This is my
accompanist, Mees Lermontof."
Diana received the impression of a thin, satirical face, its unusual pallor
picked out by the black brows and hair, of a bitter-looking mouth that
hardly troubled itself to smile in salutation, and, above all, of a pair of
queer green eyes, which, as the heavy, opaque white lids above them
lifted, seemed slowly--and rather contemptuously--to take her in from
head to foot.
She bowed, and as Miss Lermontof inclined her head slightly in
response, there was a kind of cold aloofness in her bearing--a
something defiantly repellent--which filled Diana with a sudden sense
of dislike, almost of fear. It was as though the sun had all at once gone
behind a cloud.
The Baroni's voice fell on her ears, and the disagreeable tension
snapped.
"A rivederci, little singing-bird. On Thursday we will bee-gin."
The door closed on the _maestro's_ benevolently smiling face, and on
that other--the dark, satirical face of Olga Lermontof--and Diana found
herself once again breasting the March wind as it came roystering up
through Grellingham Place.
CHAPTER II
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
"Look sharp, miss, jump in! Luggage in the rear van."
The porter hoisted her almost bodily up the steps of the railway
carriage, slamming the door behind her, the guard's whistle shrieked,

and an instant later the train started with a jerk that sent Diana
staggering against the seat of the compartment, upon which she finally
subsided, breathless but triumphant.
She had very nearly missed the train. An organised procession of some
kind had been passing through the streets just as she was driving to the
station, and her taxi had been held up for the full ten minutes' grace
which she had allowed herself, the metre fairly ticking its heart out in
impotent rage behind the policeman's uplifted hand.
So it was with a sigh of relief that she found