I engaged her at once, and she appeared here in the following July. She sang twelve times, and — well, you know the sensation there was. I had offered her twenty pounds a night in Genoa, and she seemed mighty enchanted.

“After her season here I offered her two hundred pounds a night for the following year; but Lord Clarenceux had met her then, and she merely said she would think it over. She wouldn’t sign a contract. I was annoyed. My motto is, ‘Never be annoyed,’ but I was. Next to herself, she owed everything to me. She went to Vienna to fulfil an engagement, and Lord Clarenceux after her. I followed. I saw her, and I laid myself out to arrange terms of peace.

“I have had difficulties with prime donne before, scores of times. Yes; I have had experience.”