But at the moment a sound as faint and far-away as the ring of a musical glass pierced the air. Guardina's lips were hardly parted, but that spear of sound thrilled through the room. Certainly, if she was paid a sovereign a note, that first note of the "Zitanella" was good measure. Then it broke like quicksilver into a thousand perfectly round and shining globules of sound, collected itself again, poised, quavered, trilled, thrilled, perched as it were like a bird on the topmost twig of sound, and vanished like a conjurer's handkerchief into air. Mrs. Leighton again extended her mouth over her right cheek.
"Too delicious!" she said. "And how we are to pay for it all—the house I mean—I haven't got the remotest idea. It is so comfortable having no money at all: you not only don't, but you can't pay for anything, and it's no use thinking about it. Marie, you must come down and see it. There are two spare bedrooms all white and chintz. When I am there I always dream of milk and butter and litters of pigs. Yes, isn't Guardina marvellous? I wish she would lend me her vocal cords for a week. I would willingly lend her anything I have for a fortnight."
The end of Guardina's song was marked by a sort of general post, and Marie was snapped up by Mr. Maxwell, if such a phrase can properly be used of so deliberate a process. His interpretation of the art of conversation chiefly consisted in opening his mouth as if he was going to speak, and then shutting it again, like a fish in an aquarium. The person with whom he was conversing he stood over in an encompassing manner, with an air of proprietorship. Elsewhere Anthony had cornered Mildred Brereton's little girl, who evidently wanted to go away, but was checked by her mother's eye, which from time to time pinned her like a fluttering butterfly to the spot. She herself was taken possession of by Mrs. Maxwell, who, unlike her husband, was as voluminous in speech as she was in person. Arthur Naseby, close beside them, was half listening to his hostess's conversation, while he was discussing a quantity of subjects entirely unfit for discussion with Mrs. Leighton.
"Yes, I'm sure she sings beautiful," said Mrs. Maxwell, "and so true. She seems to hit the note every time. What a thing to have a gift like that! and I'm sure she makes the most of it. Why, I remember her first coming out, and she went away in a hanson-cab from the opera. But she can go handsomer than cabs now!"
Mrs. Brereton again pinned the unfortunate Maud to her seat.
"And what a brilliant party you have got together, Mrs. Maxwell!" she said. "Positively, there is every one here one has ever heard of, and absolutely nobody that one hasn't heard of. That is so clever of you! It is easy enough to get people, but the difficulty is to not have the wrong ones. I'm sure you must find it so."
Mrs. Maxwell sighed.
"It's as much as Anthony and me can do in a week's work to go through the calling-book," she said. "Talk of weeding, you never saw such a deal of it as we have to do. People seem to think they can all come for the calling. But one must be careful, and I try never to ask any one whom a single one of my guests would be sorry to have in their own houses."
Mrs. Brereton smiled a congratulatory smile.
"We should most of us be very glad to see them in ours," she said.