“Leo, you can sing finer music than ‘The Starry Night,’” she said.  “You have the capacity.  Ah, but you enjoy too much; you are petted and spoiled, yes? you have not a great ambition—­”

“I’ll tell you what I seem to have, though, Nina,” said he.  “I seem to have a faculty of impressing my friends with the notion that I could do something tremendous if only I tried; whereas I know that this belief of theirs is only a delusion.”

“But you do not try, Leo,” said this persistent counsellor.  “No? life is too pleasant for you; you have not enthusiasm; why, your talk is always persiflage—­it is the talk of the fashionable world.  And you an artist!”

However, at this moment Lionel suddenly discovered that this leisurely stroll was likely to make them late in getting to the theatre; so that perforce they had to leave these peaceful glades of the Green Park and get into Piccadilly, where they jumped into a hansom-cab and were rapidly whirled away eastward.

But if Lionel was to be reproached for his lack of ambition, that was a charge which could not be brought against certain of those fashionable friends of his at whom Nina (in unconscious collusion with Maurice Mangan) seemed inclined to look askance.  At the very height of the London season Lady Adela Cunyngham and her sisters, Lady Sybil and Lady Rosamund Bourne, had taken the town by storm; and it seemed probable that, before they departed for Scotland, they would leave quite a trail of glory behind them in the social firmament.  The afternoon production of “The Chaplet,” in the gardens of Sir Hugh’s house on Campden Hill, had been a most notable festivity, doubtless; but then it was a combination affair; for Miss Georgie Lestrange had shared in the honors of the occasion; moreover, they had professional assistance given them by Mr. Lionel Moore.  It was when the three sisters attacked their own particular pursuits that their individual genius shone, and marked success had attended their separate efforts.  His royal highness, the commander-in-chief, it is true, had not as yet invited the colonels of the British army to recommend Lady Sybil’s “Soldiers’ Marching Song” to the band-masters of the various regiments, but, in default of that, this composition was performed nightly, as the concluding ceremony, at the international exhibition then open in London; and as the piece was played by the combined bands of the Royal Marines, with the drums of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, the Highland Pipers of the 2d Battalion Scots Guards, and the drums of the 2d Battalion Grenadier Guards, the resultant noise was surely sufficient to satisfy the hungriest vanity of any composer, professional or amateur, who ever lived.  Then not only had Lady Rosamund exhibited a large picture at the Lansdowne Gallery (a decorative work this was, representing the manumission of a slave, with the legend underneath, “Hunc hominem liberum esse volo"), but also the proprietors of an illustrated weekly newspaper had published in their summer number, as a colored supplement, what she had ventured to call “An All-the-year-round Valentine.”  She had taken the following rhyme (or perhaps some one had found it for her)—­