“A la bonne heure!  You haf come just at a good moment, Mees de Gervais, to hear this pupil of mine who will some day be one of the world’s great singers.”

Adrienne de Gervais shook hands.

“I’ve been listening, Baroni.  She has a marvellous voice.  But”—­looking at Diana pleasantly—­“we are neighbours, surely?  I have seen you in Crailing—­where we have just taken a house called Red Gables.”

“Yes, I live at Crailing,” replied Diana, a little shyly.

“And I saw you, there one day—­you were sitting in a pony-trap, waiting outside a cottage, and singing to yourself.  I noticed the quality of her voice then,” added Miss de Gervais, turning to the maestro.

“Yes,” said Baroni, with placid content.  “It is superb.”

Adrienne turned back to Diana with a delightful smile.

“Since we are neighbours in the country, Miss Quentin, we ought to be friends in town.  Won’t you come and see me one day?”

Diana flushed.  She was undoubtedly attracted by the actress’s charming personality, but beyond this lay the knowledge that it was more than likely that at her house she might again encounter Errington.  And though Diana told herself that he was nothing to her—­in fact, that she disliked him rather than otherwise—­the chance of meeting him once more was not to be foregone—­if only for the opportunity it would give her of showing him how much she disliked him!

“I should like to come very much,” she answered.

“Then come and have tea with me to-morrow—­no, to-morrow I’m engaged.  Shall we say Thursday?”

Diana acquiesced, and Miss de Gervais turned to Baroni with a rather mischievous smile, saying something in a foreign tongue which Diana took to be Russian.  Baroni replied in the same language, frowningly, and although she could not understand the tenor of his answer, Diana was positive that she caught her own name and that of Max Errington uttered in conjunction with each other.

It struck her as an odd coincidence that Baroni should be acquainted both with Miss de Gervais and with Errington, and at her next lesson she ventured to comment on the former’s visit.  Baroni’s answer, however, furnished a perfectly simple explanation of it.

“Mees de Gervais?  Oh, yes, she sings a song in her new play, ’The Grey Gown,’ and I haf always coached her in her songs.  She has a pree-ty voice—­nothing beeg, but quite pree-ty.”

Diana set forth on her visit to Adrienne with a certain amount of trepidation.  Much as she longed to see Max Errington again, she felt that the first meeting after that last episode of their acquaintance might well partake of the somewhat doubtful pleasure of skating on thin ice.

It was therefore not without a feeling of relief that she found the actress and her chaperon the only occupants of the former’s pretty drawing-room.  They both welcomed her cordially.