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 on the walls. Many of these she remembered in the English and Colonial illustrated papers. One from the Sketcher—one that occupied a place of honour 'on the line'—she remembered particularly well; for it represented a scene from an opera of which she was passionately fond, in her passionate little way. The opera was La Traviata. In a twinkling Verdi's airs were chasing each other in her ears. Half unconsciously she began humming the one that came first. This was the duet beginning 'Parigi, o cara,' which had made a great impression on Miss Jenny once (nay, many times more than once), all because of the soulful tenor who had played Alfred. With this tenor, in fact—one Signor Roberto—Miss Howard, in common with other little sentimentalists, had fallen innocently and entirely in love during the run of Traviata at the opera-house.

But before she had hummed the second bar of that duet, Miss Jenny turned sharply round—with animation practically suspended; for from some quarter of the hut, as if by magic, a tenor voice like unto the divine Roberto's