Ella looked at him with a sudden seriousness in her great eyes.

“Daddy, you’ve heard something!”

Lord Ashleigh pulled a bundle of letters from his pocket.

“I have,” he admitted.

“Quick!” Ella begged.  “Tell us all about it?  Don’t sit there, dad, looking so stolid.  Can’t you see I am dying to hear?  Quick, please!”

Her father smiled, glanced for a moment at the plate which had been passed to him from the side table, approved of it and stretched out his hand for his cup.

“I heard this morning,” he said, “from your friend Delarey.  He went into the matter very fully.  You shall read his letter presently.  The sum and substance of it all, however, is that for the first year of your musical training he advises—­where do you think?”

“Dresden,” Lady Ashleigh suggested.

“Munich?  Paris?” Ella put in breathlessly.

“All wrong,” Lord Ashleigh declared.  “New York!”

There was a momentary silence.  Ella’s eyes were sparkling.  Her mother’s face had fallen.

“New York!” Ella murmured.  “There is wonderful music there, and Mr. Delarey knows it so well.”

Lord Ashleigh nodded portentously.

“I have not finished yet.  Mr. Delarey wound up his letter by promising to cable me his final decision in the course of a few days.  This cablegram,” he went on, drawing a little slip of blue paper from his pocket, “was brought to me this morning whilst I was shaving.  I found it a most inconvenient time, as the lather—­”

“Oh, bother the lather, father!” Ella exclaimed.  “Read the cablegram, or let me.”

Her father smoothed it out before him and read—­

    “To Lord Ashleigh, Hamblin House, Dorset, England.

“I find a magnificent programme arranged for at Metropolitan Opera House this year.  Have taken box for your daughter, engaged the best professor in the world, and secured an apartment at the Leeland, our most select and comfortable residential hotel.  Understand your brother is still in South America, returning early spring, but will do our best to make your daughter’s year of study as pleasant as possible.  Advise her sail on Saturday by Mauretania.”

“On Saturday?” Ella almost screamed.

“New York!” Lady Ashleigh murmured disconsolately.  “How impossible, George!”

Her husband handed over the letter and cablegram, which Ella at once pounced upon.  He then unfolded the local newspaper and proceeded to make an excellent breakfast.  When he had quite finished, he lit a cigarette and rose a little abruptly to his feet as a car glided out of the stable yard and slowly approached the front door.

“I shall now,” he said, “leave you to talk over and discuss this matter for the rest of the day.  I believe you said, dear,” he added, turning to his wife, “that we were dining alone to-night?”

“Quite alone, George,” Lady Ashleigh admitted.  “We were to have gone to Annerley Castle, but the Duke is laid up somewhere in Scotland.”