"No, Mr. Elliot, it's no use talking to me, not a bit of use!" Millie Deans exclaimed vehemently in the hall as Rades began Enigme in his most velvety voice. "London has no taste, it has only fashions. In Paris that man is not a singer at all. He is merely a diseur. No one would dream of putting him in a programme with me."
"But, my dear Miss Deans, you knew he was singing to-night. And my programmes are always eclectic. There is no intention—"
"I don't know anything about eplectic," said Millie Deans, whose education was one-sided, but who had temperament and talent, and also a very strong temper. "But I do know that Mr. Brett, who seems to rule you all here, is as ignorant of music as—as a carp, isn't it? Isn't it, I say!"
"I daresay it is. But, my dear Miss Deans, people were delighted. You will come back, you—"
"Never! He means to keep me out. I can see it. He has that Dantini in his pocket. A woman with a voice like a dwarf in a gramophone!"
At this moment, perhaps fortunately, Miss Deans's hired electric brougham came up, and Max Elliot got rid of her.
Although she had lost her temper Miss Deans had not lost her shrewdness. Mr. Brett shrugged his shoulders and confessed that the talent of Miss Deans did not appeal to him.
"Her singing bored me," was the verdict of Mrs. Shiffney.
And many of Max Elliot's guests found that they had been subject to a similar ennui when the American was singing.
"Poor woman!" thought Mrs. Mansfield, who was unprejudiced, and who, with Max Elliot and other genuine musicians, recognized the gifts of Miss Deans.