"Chantez!" reiterated Gigue, furrowing his brows into a commanding frown—"Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do!"
Cicely's dark eyes flashed—and her lips parted.
"Do—re—mi—sol—-"
Round and full and clear rang the notes, pure as a crystal bell,— and the listeners held their breath, as she made such music of the common scale as only a divinely-gifted singer can.
"Bien!—tres-bien!" said Gigue, approvingly, with a smile round at the company—"Mademoiselle Cicely commence a chanter! Ze petite sera une grande cantatrice! N'est-ce-pas?"
A stiffly civil wonderment seemed frozen on the faces of Lady Beaulyon and the others present. Wholly lacking in enthusiasm for any art, they almost resented the manner in which Cicely was thus brought forward as a kind of genius, a being superior to them all. Gigue sniffed the air, as though he inhaled offence in it. Then he shook his finger with a kind of defiance.
"Mais—pas en Angleterre!" he said—"Ze petite va commencer a Milan- -St. Petersburg—Vienna! Zen, ze Inglis vill say—'Ha ha! Zis prima donna chante pour les Francais, les Italiens, les Russes!—il faut qu'elle chante pour nous!' Zen—zey vill pay ze guinea—ces commes des moutons! Zey follow les autres pays—zey know nosing of ze art demselves!"
Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay coughed delicately.
"Music is so very much overdone in England"—she said, languidly— "One gets so tired of it! Concerts are quite endless during the season, and singers are always pestering you to take tickets. It's quite too much for anyone who is not a millionaire."
Gigue did not catch this flow of speech—but Cicely heard it,