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  “There’s a very good concert going on in the drawing-room, sir, if you enjoy music. No admittance, you know; just a plate at the door as you leave—quite optional.”

Appleton bowed his thanks, filled his pipe, and taking up his newspaper with a sensation of comfortable idleness, was beginning an article on the situation in the Balkans, when a voice floated out from the distant drawing-room, down the long corridor, through the writing-room into the lounge. It was not a little voice nor a big voice, it seemed to have no extraordinarily high notes and no low ones, it did not arrest attention by the agility of its use; but it was as fresh and young as a bird’s and sweeter than honey in the comb. It began by caroling “My Love’s an Arbutus,” went on to “The Little Red Lark” and “The Low-Backed Car,” so that Appleton, his head thrown back in the easy-chair, the smoke wreaths from his pipe circling in the air, the Balkans forgotten, decided that the singer was Irish.

“A pretty voice, sir,” remarked the god-