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I never saw Ninette again. She made no opposition to Lady Greville’s scheme. She let herself be taken to the Orphanage, and she never asked, so they said, to see me again.

‘She’s a stupid little thing,’ said Lady Greville to her nephew, on her return, ‘and as plain as possible; but I suppose she was kind to the boy. They will forget each other now I hope. It is not as if they were related.’

‘In that case they would already be hating each other. However, I am quite sure your protege will forget soon enough; and, after all, you have nothing to do with the girl.’

I suppose I did not think very much of Ninette then; but what would you have? It was such a change from the old vagrant days, that there is a good deal to excuse me. I was absorbed too in the new and wonderful symmetry which music began to assume, as taught me by the master Lady Greville procured for me. When the news was broken to me, with great gentleness, that my little companion had run away from the sisters with whom she had been placed–run away, and left no traces behind her, I hardly realised how completely she would have passed away from me. I thought of her for a little while with some regret; then I remembered Stradivarius, and I could not be sorry long. So by degrees I ceased to think of her.

I lived on in Lady Greville’s house, going with her, wherever she stayed–London, Paris, and Nice–until I was thirteen. Then she sent me away to study music at a small German capital, in the house of one of the few surviving pupils of Weber. We parted as we had lived together, without affection.

Personally Lady Greville did not like me; if anything, she felt an actual repugnance towards me. All the care she lavished on me was for the sake of my talent, not for myself. She took a great deal of trouble in superintending, not only my musical education, but my general culture. She designed little mediaeval costumes for me, and was indefatigable in her endeavours to impart to my manners that finish which a gutter education had denied me.

There is a charming portrait of me, by a well-known English artist, that hangs now in her ladyship’s drawing-room. A pale boy of twelve, clad in an old-fashioned suit of ruby velvet; a boy with huge, black eyes, and long curls of the same colour, is standing by an oak music-stand, holding before him a Cremona violin, whose rich colouring is relieved admirably by the beautiful old point lace with which the boy’s doublet is slashed. It is a charming picture. The famous artist who painted it considers it his best portrait, and Lady Greville is proud of it.

But her pride is of the same quality as that which made her value my presence. I was in her eyes merely the complement of her famous fiddle.

I heard her one day express a certain feeling of relief at my approaching departure.

‘You regret having taken him up?’ asked her nephew curiously.

‘No,’ she said, ‘that would be folly. He repays all one’s trouble, as soon as he touches his fiddle–but I don’t like him.’

‘He can play like the great Pan,’ says Felix.

‘Yes, and like Pan he is half a beast.’

‘You may make a musician out of him,’ answered the young man, examining his pink nails with a certain admiration, ‘but you will never make him a gentleman.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Lady Greville carelessly. ‘Still, Felix, he is very refined.’

Dame! I think he would own himself mistaken now. Mr. Felix Leominster himself is not a greater social success than the Baron Antonio Antonelli, of the Legion of Honour. I am as sensitive as any one to the smallest spot on my linen, and Duchesses rave about my charming manners.

For the rest my souvenirs are not very numerous. I lived in Germany until I made my debut, and I never heard anything more of Ninette.