ked the best to sing, and
sang the worst. There was something else about her, almost as strange as
her beautiful feet, her magnificent voice and her defective (or
altogether lacking) ear for music; and that was the purity of her
character. She had had affairs with half a dozen men in the studios,
without really knowing that it wasn't the right thing to do. But her
heart remained spotless (so Mr. du Maurier assures us); and it is a most
unfortunate thing that Little Billee's mother comes tearing over to
Paris, leaving the peaceful dales and dairies of Devonshire behind her,
in her mad haste to break the engagement which Trilby has at last made
with the young English painter, after having repeatedly refused to do
so, notwithstanding her great love for him. Mrs. Bagot has no difficulty
in convincing her that she is no worthy mate for Little Billee; and she
accordingly runs away from Paris, heart-broken, and becomes a
_blanchisseuse de fin_. Little Billee's heart is broken, too; or if not
broken, benumbed; and henceforth, though he becomes a most successful
artist, and the pet of all London, he takes his pleasures and successes
sadly and listlessly, caring nothing for the wealth and fame that come
to him.

In the meantime a great _prima-donna_ appears upon the European stage,
and all the world bows down before her. Happening to be in Paris, Little
Billee is persuaded by his old chums, Taffy the Yorkshireman ex-soldier,
and the "Laird of Cockpen"--painters both,--to go and hear the prodigy.
Fancy their stupefaction at recognizing in the glorious singer the
tuneless Trilby of five years gone! No longer Trilby O'Ferrall, but La
Svengali, wife of their old acquaintance Svengali the Jew, who had
recognized the possibilities of her voice when he first heard it in
their Paris studio, and had afterwards captured her and cultivated it
and by his mesmeric arts trained her as a singer and even made her love
him as a dog loves his master. A day or two later, meeting him at a
hotel, Svengali spits in Little Billee's face, and gets his nose pulled
for his pains by Taffy. And then the great _prima-donna_ and her master
go to London; and Trilby breaks down in trying to sing "Ben Bolt," and
is hooted off the stage--Svengali's sudden death in a stage-box (unknown
to anyone in the house) having broken the mesmeric influence that has
made her a singer. She pines away, surrounded by her old friends the
Englishmen, and an object of solicitude to