Brian started on hearing this name again, and he felt Madge’s cold hand touch his.

“And who was Rosanna?” asked Felix, curiously, looking up.

“A dancer and burlesque actress,” replied Valpy, vivaciously, nodding his old head.  “Such a beauty; we were all mad about her—­such hair and eyes.  You remember her, Frettlby?”

“Yes,” answered the host, in a curiously dry voice.

But before Mr. Valpy had the opportunity to wax more eloquent, Madge rose from the table, and the other ladies followed.  The ever polite Felix held the door open for them, and received a bright smile from his wife for, what she considered, his brilliant talk at the dinner table.

Brian sat still, and wondered why Frettlby changed colour on hearing the name—­he supposed that the millionaire had been mixed up with the actress, and did not care about being reminded of his early indiscretions—­and, after all, who does?

“She was as light as a fairy,” continued Valpy, with wicked chuckle.

“What became of her?” asked Brian, abruptly.

Mark Frettlby looked up suddenly, as Fitzgerald asked this question.

“She went to England in 1858,” said the aged one.  “I’m not quite sure if it was July or August, but it was in 1858.”

“You will excuse me, Valpy, but I hardly think that these reminiscences of a ballet-dancer are amusing,” said Frettlby, curtly, pouring himself out a glass of wine.  “Let us change the subject.”

Notwithstanding the plainly-expressed wish of his host Brian felt strongly inclined to pursue the conversation.  Politeness, however, forbade such a thing, and he consoled himself with the reflection that, after dinner, he would ask old Valpy about the ballet-dancer whose name caused Mark Frettlby to exhibit such strong emotion.  But, to his annoyance, when the gentlemen went into the drawing-room, Frettlby took the old colonist off to his study, where he sat with him the whole evening talking over old times.

Fitzgerald found Madge seated at the piano in the drawing-room playing one of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words.

“What a dismal thing that is you are playing, Madge,” he said lightly, as he sank into a seat beside her.  “It is more like a funeral march than anything else.”

“Gad, so it is,” said Felix, who came up at this moment.  “I don’t care myself about ‘Op. 84’ and all that classical humbug.  Give me something light—­’Belle Helene,’ with Emelie Melville, and all that sort of thing.”

“Felix!” said his wife, in a stern tone.

“My dear,” he answered recklessly, rendered bold by the champagne he had taken, “you observed—­”

“Nothing particular,” answered Mrs. Rolleston, glancing at him with a stony eye, “except that I consider Offenbach low.”

“I don’t,” said Felix, sitting down to the piano, from which Madge had just risen, “and to prove he ain’t, here goes.”