it does not please people at the dress rehearsal, we
can leave it out on the real night.'

'I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life!' Madame Bonanni
was evidently displeased.

She had once done the 'sack' scene herself to satisfy the caprice of a
foreign sovereign who wished to see the effect of it, and she had a
vivid and disagreeable recollection of being half dragged, half
carried, inside a brown canvas bag, and then put down rather roughly;
and then, of not knowing at what part of the stage she was, while she
listened to Rigoletto s voice; and of the strong, dusty smell of the
canvas, that choked her, so that she wanted to cough and sneeze when
Rigoletto tore open the bag and let her head out; and then, of having
to sing in a very uncomfortable position; and, altogether, of a most
disagreeable quarter of an hour just at the very time when she should
have been getting her wig and paint off in her dressing-room. Moreover,
the scene was a failure, as it always has been wherever it has been
tried. She told Margaret this.

'At all events,' she concluded, 'you won't have to do it on the real
night.'

They were in the larger room again. But for the decided damage done to
her sleeve by her tears, Madame Bonanni had restored her outward
appearance tolerably well. She stood at the corner of the piano,
resting one hand upon it.

'I'm sorry for you, my dear,' she said cheerfully, because I've given
you so much trouble, but I'm glad I cried as much as I wanted to. It's
horribly bad for the voice and complexion, but nothing really refreshes
one so much. I felt as if my heart were going to break when I got
here.'

'And now?' Margaret smiled, standing beside the elderly woman and idly
turning over the music on the desk of the instrument.

'I suppose it has broken,' Madame Bonanni answered. 'At all events, I
don't feel it any more. No--really--I don't! He may go to Peru, if he
likes--I hope he will, the ungrateful little beast! I'll never think of
him again! When you have made your _debut_, I'm going to live in the
country. There's plenty to do there! Bonanni shall milk cows again and
hoe the furrows between the vines this summer! Bonanni shall go back to
Provence and be an old peasant woman, where she was once a peasant
girl, and married the English painter. Do you think I've forgotten the
language, or the songs?'

One instant's pause, and the singer's great voice broke out in the
small room with a volume of s