The door opened. Madame Frabelle came in, dressed in a violet tea-gown.

'Tea?' said Edith, holding out a cup.

'Yes, indeed! I'm always ready for tea, and you have such delightful tea, Edith dear!' (They had already reached the point of Christian names, though Edith always found Eglantine a little difficult to say.) 'It's nice to see you back so early, Mr Ottley.'

'Wouldn't you like a slice of lemon?' said Bruce.

To offer her a slice of lemon with tea was, from Bruce, a tribute to the lady's talents.

'Oh no! Cream and sugar, please.'

Madame Frabelle was looking very pleasant and very much at her ease as she sat down comfortably, taking the largest chair.

'I'm afraid that Archie has been bothering you today,' Edith said, as she poured out tea.

'What!' exclaimed Bruce, with a start of horror.

'Oh no, no, no! Not the least in the world, Mr Ottley! He's a most delightful boy. We were only having some fun together--about my mandolin; that was all!'

(Edith thought of the sounds she had heard on the stairs.)

'I'm afraid I got a little cross. A thing I very seldom do.' Madame Frabelle looked apologetically at Edith. 'But we've quite made it up now! Oh, and by the way, I want to speak to you both rather seriously about your boy,' she went on earnestly. She had a rather powerful, clear, penetrating voice, and spoke with authority, decision, and the sort of voluble fluency generally known as not letting anyone else get a word in edgeways.

'About our boy?' said Bruce, handing the toast to her invitingly, while Edith put a cushion behind her back, for which Madame Frabelle gave a little gracious smile.

'About your boy. Do you know, I have a very curious gift, Mr Ottley. I can always see in children what they're going to make a success of in life. Without boasting, I know you, Edith, are kind enough to believe that I'm an extraordinary judge of character. Oh, I've always been like that. I can't help it. I'll tell you now what you must make of your boy,' she pursued. 'He is a born musician!'

'A musician!' exclaimed both his parents at once, in great astonishment.

Madame Frabelle nodded. 'That boy is a born composer! He has genius for music. Look at his broad forehead! Those grey eyes, so wide apart! I know, just at first one thinks too much from the worldly point of view of the success of one's son in life. But why go against nature? The boy's a genius!'

'But,' ventured Edith, 'Archie hasn't the slightest ear for music!'

'He dislikes music intensely,' said Bruce. 'Simply loathes it.'

'He cried so much over his piano lessons that we were obliged to let him give them up. It used to make him quite ill--and his music mistress too,' Edith said. 'I remember she left the last time in hysterics.'

'Yes, by Jove, I remember too. Pretty girl she was. She had a nervous breakdown afterwards,' said Bruce rather proudly.

'No, dear; you're thinking of the other one--the woman who began to teach him the violin.'

'Oh, am I?'

Madame Frabelle nodded her head with a smile.

'Nothing on earth to do with it, my dear! The boy's a born composer all the same. With that face he must be a musician!'

'Really! Funny he hates it so,' said Bruce thoughtfully. 'But still, I have no doubt--'

'Believe me, you can't go by his not liking his lessons,' a.s.sured Madame Frabelle, as she ate a m.u.f.fin. 'That has nothing to do with it at all.

The young Mozart--'

'Mozart? I thought he played the piano when he was only three?'

'Handel, I mean--or was it Meyerbeer? At any rate you'll see I'm right.'

'You really think we ought to force him against his will to study music seriously, with the idea of his being a composer when he grows up, though he detests it?' asked his mother.

Madame Frabelle turned to Edith.

'Won't you feel proud when you see your son conducting his own opera, to the applause of thousands? Won't it be something to be the mother of the greatest English composer of the twentieth century?'

'It would be rather fun.'

'We shan't hear quite so much about Strauss, Elgar, Debussy and all those people when Archie Ottley grows up,' declared Madame Frabelle.

'I hear very little about them now,' said Bruce.

'Well, how should you at the Foreign Office, or the golf-links, or the club?' asked Edith.

Bruce ignored Edith, and went on: 'Perhaps he'll turn out to be a Lionel Monckton or a Paul Rubens. Perhaps he'll write comic opera revues or musical comedies.'

'Oh dear, no,' said their guest, shaking her head decidedly. 'It will be the very highest cla.s.s, the top of the tree! The real thing!'

'Madame Frabelle _may_ be right, you know,' said Bruce.

She leant back, smiling.

'I _know_ I'm right! There's simply no question about it.'

'Well, what do you think we ought to do about it?' said Edith. 'He goes to a preparatory school now where they don't have any music lessons at all.'

'All the better,' she answered. 'The sort of lessons he would get at a school would be no use to him.'

'So I should think,' murmured Edith.

'Leave it, say, for the moment, and when he comes back for his next holidays put him under a good teacher--a really great man. And you'll see!'

'I daresay we shall,' said Bruce, considerably relieved at the postponement. 'Funny though, isn't it, his not knowing one tune from another, when he's a born musician?'

It flashed across Edith what an immense bond of sympathy it was between Bruce and Madame Frabelle that neither of them was burdened with the slightest sense of humour.

When he presently went out (each of them preferred talking to Her alone, and She also enjoyed a _tete-a-tete_ most) Madame Frabelle drew up her chair nearer to Edith and said:

'My dear, I'm going to tell you something. Don't be angry with me, or think me impertinent, but you've been very kind to me, and I look upon you as a real friend.'

'It's very sweet of you,' said Edith, feeling hypnotised, and as if she would gladly devote her life to Madame Frabelle.

'Well, I can see something. You are not quite happy.'