Lady Holme's voice was like honey as she sang, and tears were in her eyes too. Each time the refrain fell from her heart she seemed to see another world, empty of gossamer threads, a world of spread wings, a world of--but such poetry and music do not tell you! Nor can you imagine. You can only dream and wonder, as when you look at the horizon line and pray for the things beyond.

"Tutto--tutto al mondo a vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

"Why do you sing like that to-day?" said Lady Cardington, wiping her eyes gently.

"I feel like that to-day," Lady Holme said, keeping her hands on the keys in the last chord. There was a vagueness in her eyes, a sort of faint cloud of fear. While she was singing she had thought, "Have I known the love that shows the vanity of the world? Have I known the love in which alone all sweetness lives?" The thought had come in like a firefly through an open window. "Have I? Have I?"

And something within her felt a stab of pain, something within her soul and yet surely a thousand miles away.

"Tutto--tutto al mondo e vano," murmured Lady Cardington. "We feel that and we feel it, and--do you?"

"To-day I seem to," answered Lady Holme.

"When you sing that song you look like the love that gives all sweetness to men. Sing like that, look like that, and you--If Sir Donald had heard you!"

Lady Holme got up from the piano.

"Sir Donald!" she said.

She came to sit down near Lady Cardington.

"Sir Donald! Why do you say that?"

And she searched Lady Cardington's eyes with eyes full of inquiry.

Lady Cardington looked away. The wistful power that generally seemed a part of her personality had surely died out in her. There was something nervous in her expression, deprecating in her attitude.

"Why do you speak about Sir Donald?" Lady Holme said.

"Don't you know?"

Lady Cardington looked up. There was an extraordinary sadness in her eyes, mingled with a faint defiance.

"Know what?"

"That Sir Donald is madly in love with you?"

"Sir Donald! Sir Donald--madly anything!"

She laughed, not as if she were amused, but as if she wished to do something else and chose to laugh instead. Lady Cardington sat straight up.

"You don't understand anything but youth," she said.

There was a sound of keen bitterness in her low voice.

"And yet," she added, after a pause, "you can sing till you break the heart of age--break its heart."

Suddenly she burst into a flood of tears. Lady Holme was so surprised that she did absolutely nothing, did not attempt to console, to inquire.

She sat and looked at Lady Cardington's tall figure swayed by grief, listened to the sound of her hoarse, gasping sobs. And then, abruptly, as if someone came into the room and told her, she understood.

"You love Sir Donald," she said.

Lady Cardington looked up. Her tear-stained, distorted face seemed very old.

"We both regret the same thing in the same way," she said. "We were both wretched in--in the time when we ought to have been happy. I thought--I had a ridiculous idea we might console each other. You shattered my hope."

"I'm sorry," Lady Holme said.

And she said it with more tenderness than she had ever before used to a woman.

Lady Cardington pressed a pocket-handkerchief against her eyes.

"Sing me that song again," she whispered. "Don't say anything more. Just sing it again and I'll go."

Lady Holme went to the piano.

"Torna in fior di giovinezza Isaotta Blanzesmano, Dice: Tutto al mondo a vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

When the last note died away she looked towards the sofa. Lady Cardington was gone. Lady Holme leaned her arm on the piano and put her chin in her hand.

"How awful to be old!" she thought.

Half aloud she repeated the last words of the refrain: "Nell'amore ogni dolcezza." And then she murmured:

"Poor Sir Donald!"

And then she repeated, "Poor--" and stopped. Again the faint cloud of fear was in her eyes.

CHAPTER XV

THE Charity Concert was to be given in Manchester House, one of the private palaces of London, and as Royalty had promised to be present, all the tickets were quickly sold. Among those who bought them were most of the guests who had been present at the Holmes' dinner-party when Lady Holme lost her temper and was consoled by Robin Pierce. Robin of course was in Rome, but Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Mrs. Wolfstein, Sir Donald, Mr. Bry took seats. Rupert Carey also bought a ticket. He was not invited to great houses any more, but on this public occasion no one with a guinea to spend was unwelcome. To Lady Holme's surprise the day before the concert Fritz informed her that he was going too.

"You, Fritz!" she exclaimed. "But it's in the afternoon."

"What o' that?"

"You'll be bored to death. You'll go to sleep. Probably you'll snore."

"Not I."

He straddled his legs and looked attentively at the toes of his boots.

Lady Holme wondered why he was going. Had Miss Schley made a point of it? She longed to know. The cruel curiosity which the angel was ever trying to beat down rose up in her powerfully.