Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for a purpose--once in Berlin and once in London--he had played the second violin in a Tzigany orchestra.

He turned the fiddle slowly round, looking at it with mechanical intentness.

Through the passion of emotion the sure sense of the musician was burning.

His fingers smoothed the oval brown breast of the instrument with affection.

His eyes found joy in the colour of the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of Autumn leaves.
"It is old--and strange," he said, his eyes going from Berry to Ingolby and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down blinds before his inmost thoughts.