"But here the messenger had come for Monsieur le Comte, and he had obeyed the summons, leaving the secret he had tried to tell for ever untold.
"As my brother grew older his passion for music seemed only to increase. My father wished him to study law, so that he might in time give him a partnership in the steadygoing old-fashioned solicitor's practice which had been in our family for several generations, but Bertram utterly refused. He had set his heart on a musical career, and after a bitter quarrel with his father, he left home altogether, taking with him the small fortune he had inherited from our mother, and went away with the avowed intention of devoting himself to his violin.
"'I feel I have a future before me, Alice,' he said, as he bade me good-bye. 'I shall solve the Comte's secret yet. If it was talent he referred to' (and he flushed a little) 'I think I've my fair share of that, so perhaps the Stradivarius may really prove the key to fame, in spite of everything!'
"It is a very sad part of the story that comes now, but I must tell it to you all the same. Bertram left us in high hopes, and for a time, while his enthusiasm was fresh, and the change still new, I believe he studied hard at his music. But he had a curious lack of any real effort or steady concentrated purpose. He was always going to do great things, which somehow were never accomplished. I cannot tell you how many operas and oratorios he began to compose, which were to take the public by storm; but none of them was ever finished, though the fragments which I heard were of so rare a quality that they were fit to rank among the works of men of genius. Sometimes he would be at the very height of exaltation, and sometimes in the lowest depths of despair; there were periods of wild ambition, when he was determined to have the world at his feet, but they never lasted long enough to carry him through the whole of an opera.
"A few of his shorter compositions were published, and were very highly thought of by musicians, and he had splendid opportunities of playing at concerts and recitals. His appearances in public were always successful; yet he so often refused to fulfil his engagements, for no apparent reason except the whim of the moment, that the managers grew tired of him. He fell under the influence of bad companions, who led him to neglect his work, and to think of nothing but pleasure, and he had not the moral courage to say 'No' to them. His little fortune was soon spent, and as my father refused to help him, he was obliged at last to earn his bread as a teacher of music. It was in this capacity that he made the acquaintance of your mother, whose father, Sir John Lorraine, could not forgive her runaway match with one whom he considered utterly unworthy of her, and forbade her name to be mentioned again in his presence. You cannot remember her, Mildred, for she only lived long enough to put her little golden-haired baby into my arms, and beg me to be a friend to it--a trust that I have never forgotten, both for your sake and hers.