And Diana began. But she was so nervous that she felt as though her
throat had suddenly closed up, and only a faint, quavering note issued
from her lips, breaking off abruptly in a hoarse croak.

Baroni stopped playing.

"Tchut! she is frightened," he said, and laid an encouraging hand on her
shoulder. "But do not be frightened, my dear. You haf a pree-ty face;
if your voice is as pree-ty as your face you need not haf fear."

Diana was furious with herself for failing at the critical moment, and
even more angry at Baroni's speech, in which she sensed a suggestion of
the tolerance extended to the average drawing-room singer of mediocre
powers.

"I don't want to have a _pretty_ voice!" she broke out, passionately. "I
wouldn't say thank you for it."

And anger having swallowed up her nervousness, she opened her mouth--and
her throat with it this time?--and let out the full powers that were
hidden within her nice big larynx.

When she ceased, Baroni closed the open pages of the song, and turning on
his stool, regarded her for a moment in silence.

"No," he said at last, dispassionately. "It is certainly not a pree-ty
voice."

To Diana's ears there was such a tone of indifference, such an air of
utter finality about the brief speech, that she felt she would have been