at Queen Amelia was so much pleased
with your performance of airs from this same opera, that she sent you
the beautiful enamelled wreath you are to wear to-night."

"What I was singing when you came in wept itself out of the fulness of
my heart," responded Rosabella. "This dreadful news of Tulee and the
baby unfits me for anything. Do you think there is no hope it may
prove untrue?"

"You know the letter explicitly states that my cousin and his wife,
the negro woman, and the white baby, all died of yellow-fever,"
replied Madame. "But don't reproach me for leaving them, darling. I
feel badly enough about it, already. I thought it would be healthy so
far out of the city; and it really seemed the best thing to do with
the poor little _bambino_, until we could get established somewhere."

"I did not intend to reproach you, my kind friend," answered Rosa. "I
know you meant it all for the best. But I had a heavy presentiment of
evil when you first told me they were left. This news makes it hard
for me to keep up my heart for the efforts of the evening. You know I
was induced to enter upon this operatic career mainly by the hope of
educating that poor child, and providing well for the old age of
you and Papa Balbino, as I have learned to call my good friend, the
Signor. And poor Tulee, too,--how much I intended to do for her! No
mortal can ever know what she was to me in the darkest hours of my
life."

"Well, poor Tulee's troubles are all over," rejoined Madame, with a
sigh; "and _bambinos_ escape a great deal of suffering by going out of
this wicked world. For, between you and I, dear, I don't believe one
word about the innocent little souls staying in purgatory on account
of not being baptized."

"O, my friend, if you only _knew_!" exclaimed Rosa, in a wild,
despairing tone. But she instantly checked herself, and said: "I will
try not to think of it; for if I do, I shall spoil my voice; and Papa
Balbino would be dreadfully mortified if I failed, after he had taken
so much pains to have me brought out."

"That is right, darling," rejoined Madame, patting her on the
shoulder. "I will go away, and leave you to rehearse."

Again and again Rosa sang the familiar airs, trying to put soul into
them, by imagining how she would feel if she were in Norma's position.
Some of the emotions she knew by her own experience, and those she
sang with her deepest feeling.

"If I could only keep the same visions before me that I have h