d it with the flush of
enthusiasm on his cheek and brow.

"Oh, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed, "what a sure guide and what a noble
inspirer to a true Englishman's ambition nature has fitted you to be,
were it not--" He paused abruptly.

This outburst took Isaura utterly by surprise. She had been accustomed
to the language of compliment till it had begun to pall, but a
compliment of this kind was the first that had ever reached her ear. She
had no words in answer to it; involuntarily she placed her hand on her
heart as if to still its beatings. But the unfinished exclamation, "Were
it not," troubled her more than the preceding words had flattered, and
mechanically she murmured, "Were it not--what?"

"Oh," answered Graham, affecting a tone of gayety, "I felt too ashamed
of my selfishness as man to finish my sentence."

"Do so, or I shall fancy you refrained lest you might wound me as
woman."

"Not so; on the contrary, had I gone on it would have been to say that
a woman of your genius, and more especially of such mastery in the
most popular and fascinating of all arts, could not be contented if she
inspired nobler thoughts in a single breast,--she must belong to the
public, or rather the public must belong to her; it is but a corner of
her heart that an individual can occupy, and even that individual must
merge his existence in hers, must be contented to reflect a ray of the
light she sheds on admiring thousands. Who could dare to say to you,
'Renounce your career; confine your genius, your art, to the petty
circle of home'? To an actress, a singer, with whose fame the world
rings, home would be a prison. Pardon me, pardon--"

Isaura had turned away her face to hide tears that would force their
way; but she held out her hand to him with a childlike frankness,
and said softly, "I am not offended." Graham did not trust himself to
continue the same strain of conversation. Breaking into a new subject,
he said, after a constrained pause, "Will you think it very impertinent
in so new an acquaintance, if I ask how it is that you, an Italian, know
our language as a native; and is it by Italian teachers that you have
been trained to think and to feel?"

"Mr. Selby, my second father, was an Englishman, and did not speak any
other language with comfort to himself. He was very fond of me; and
had he been really my father I could not have loved him more. We were
constant companions till--till I lost him."

"And no mother left t