"I have not that pleasure."
"Bien, I will tell you. I am Kernadi."
Miss Elisabetha bowed, and inhaled salts from her smelling-bottle, her little finger elegantly separated from the others.
"You do not mean to say that you have never heard of Kernadi—Cécile Kernadi?" said the diva, sitting fairly erect now in her astonishment.
"Never," replied the maiden, not without a proud satisfaction in the plain truth of her statement.
"Where have you lived, ma'm'selle?"
"Here, Mistress Kernadi."
The singer gazed at the figure before her in its ancient dress, and gradually a smile broke over her beautiful face.
"Ma'm'selle," she said, dismissing herself and her fame with a wave of her white hand, "you have a treasure in Doro, a voice rare in a century; and, in the name of the world, I ask you for him."
Miss Elisabetha sat speechless; she was never quick with words, and now she was struck dumb.