--so
those said who had seen and heard her years before.

Her young womanhood had been devoted to patient, honest study, which was
rewarded with success, and calm, passionless prosperity. She had married
brilliantly, and left the stage, but after an absence of many years had
returned to it to aid her husband in some reverse of fortune. Her
married life had been tranquilly happy, for she had loved with all the
sweet serenity of a cold, unexacting nature.

But now it was whispered that this beautiful, pure woman, who had
resisted--indeed, like another Una, had never felt--the temptations
which had environed her on the stage, and in the courtly circle to which
she had been raised by her husband's rank, was being strangely
influenced by a gifted, handsome tenor singer, with whom she had been
associated since her return to her professional life.

This person was about her husband's age, a year or two her senior, and
unmarried. The infatuation, it was said, existed on both sides, and the
two lovers were so blinded by their strange passion as to seem
unconscious of any other sight or presence. The husband, report added,
behaved with remarkable prudence and good breeding; indeed, some doubted
if he noticed the affair,--for he treated not only his wife, but the
reputed lover, with familiar and kind friendliness.

The recollection of this scandal flitted over my memory as I listened to
the First Duet. Madame C---- was a blonde; she had rich, deep violet
eyes, and a lovely skin: her hair, too, was a waving mass of the poet's
and painter's golden hue. She was about middle height, and had a full,
well-developed person.

"When I saw her in Paris and Vienna, twenty years ago," whispered Max,
"she was too pale and slender, and the expression of those brilliant
eyes was as cold and still as glacier depths."

Not so now, I thought,--for they fairly blazed with a passionate fire,
as the music welled up on her beautiful quivering lips; indeed, the
melody appeared to come from them, as much as from her mouth, and I
seemed to be listening with my looks as well as my hearing. She was not
well, evidently,--for there was a bright red, feverish spot on either
cheek, and her movements were feeble and trembling; but her voice was
full of the deepest pathos.

"In her best days she never sang so well," said Max, as the room rang
with applause at the termination of the duo, "Time may have taken away a
little fulness from her lower notes; but