"Dear Andrea," Mademoiselle Celaire exclaimed, "you permit me that I present to you my dear friend, well known in Paris—alas! many years ago—Monsieur le Baron de Grost. Monsieur le Baron was kind enough to pay his respects to me this evening, and I have induced him to become my escort here."
"It was my good fortune," Peter remarked, smiling, "that I saw Mademoiselle Celaire's name upon the bills this evening—my good fortune, since it has procured for me the honour of an acquaintance with a musician so distinguished."
"You are very kind, Monsieur le Baron," Korust replied.
"You stay here, I regret to hear, a very short time?"
"Alas!" Andrea Korust admitted, "it is so. For myself, I would that it were longer. I find your London so attractive, the people so friendly. They fall in with my whims so charmingly. I have a hatred, you know, of solitude. I like to make acquaintances wherever I go, to have delightful women and interesting men around, to forget that life is not always gay. If I am too much alone I am miserable, and when I am miserable I am in a very bad way indeed. I cannot then make music."
Peter smiled gravely and sympathetically.
"And your brother? Does he, too, share your gregarious instincts?"
Korust paused for a moment before replying. His eyes were quite wide open now. If one could judge from his expression, one would certainly have said that the Baron de Grost's attempts to ingratiate himself with his host were distinctly unsuccessful.
"My brother has exactly opposite instincts," he said slowly. "He finds no pleasure in society. At the sound of a woman's voice he hides."
"He is not here, then?" Peter asked, glancing around.