opinion that we're born buffoons.'

His happy conscience enabled him to court his wife with assiduity and
winsomeness, and the ladies were once more elated by seeing how
chivalrously lover-like an Irish gentleman can be after years of wedlock.

Patrick was asked to sing. Miss Mattock accompanied him at the piano.
Then he took her place on the music-stool, and she sang, and with an
electrifying splendour of tone and style.

'But it's the very heart of an Italian you sing with!' he cried.

'It will surprise you perhaps to hear that I prefer German music,' said
she.

'But where--who had the honour of boasting you his pupil?'

She mentioned a famous master. Patrick had heard of him in Paris. He
begged for another song and she complied, accepting the one he selected
as the favourite of his brother Philip's, though she said: 'That one?'
with a superior air. It was a mellifluous love-song from a popular
Opera somewhat out of date. 'Well, it's in Italian!' she summed up her
impressions of the sickly words while scanning them for delivery.
She had no great admiration of the sentimental Sicilian composer, she
confessed, yet she sang as if possessed by him. Had she, Patrick
thought, been bent upon charming Philip, she could not have thrown more
fire into the notes. And when she had done, after thrilling the room,
there was a gesture in her dismissal of the leaves displaying critical
loftiness. Patrick noticed it and said, with the thrill of her voice
lingering in him: 'What is it you do like? I should so like to know.'