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“Indeed,” said she, “it is no intrusion. Any friends of Frederic are my friends; I try to impress that upon him. The tapestries are, of course, wonderful, and that lovers of beauty should desire to see them is, of course, to be expected.”

She had a mincing, artificial manner of speech, much after the way of a lady in a mid-Victorian novel; not once did she forget her hands; carefully she touched the strings of the harp; with many little turns and flourishes she showed their whiteness, their smallness, their delicacy.

She spoke of the tapestry and not of her hands, but it was plain to be seen which of the two she thought the more worthy of attention; so Ashton-Kirk conversed with her and admired the caresses she bestowed upon the strings.

“The harp,” said Miss Hohenlo, “is a beautiful instrument; in fact, I will say it is the most graceful of instruments. The Romans and the Greeks, also, preferred it to the lyre and other forms of string arrangement.”

“It is perhaps the most ancient of instruments,” said Ashton-Kirk. “We trace it back to the Egyptians, and have no assurance that it was not known even before the time of that astonishing people. That the tight-drawn string of some warrior’s bow first suggested the musical possibility of the form is more than likely true. Can you not imagine the earliest minstrel chanting his song of victory to the twanging of the bowstring which helped to bring that victory about?”