Well, she was Italian--on one side at least, and had inherited the tricks and a certain quality of voice, irresistibly catching.

And she looked captivating as she sang--the small pointed face within its frame of reddish-brown hair, the strange eyes, the expressive red lips, alive with coquetry.

The men--even the old politicians, listened and stared, quite fascinated.
Some of the Leichardt's Town ladies--good, homely wives and mothers who, in their early married days of struggle, had toiled and cooked and sewed, with no time to imagine an aspect of the Eternal Feminine of which they had never had any experience, were perhaps a little shocked, perhaps a little regretful.

One or two others, younger, with budding aspirations, but provincial in their ideals, were filled with wonder and vague envy.
A few of them had made the usual trip 'Home,' landing at Naples and journeying to London, via Monte Carlo and Paris, and these felt they had missed something in that journey which Lady Bridget was now revealing to them.

Joan Gildea, whose profession it was to realise vividly such modes of life as came within her purview, felt herself once more in the blue lands girdling the Sea of Story--It all came back upon her--moonlight nights in Naples; on the Chiaja; looking down from her windows on sunny gardens on the Riviera, and the strolling minstrels in front of the hotel....
As for Colin McKeith who had never been in the Blue Land and knew little even of the British Isles except for London--chiefly around St Paul's School, Hammersmith--and the Scotch Manse where he had occasionally spent his holidays--even he was transported from the Government House drawing-room.