ld O'Mahony.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

WHAT WAS NOT DONE WITH THE FUNDS.

"She has taken his money all the same." This was said some weeks
after the transaction as described in the last chapter, and was
spoken by Madame Socani to Mr. Moss.

"How do you know?"

"I know very well. You are so infatuated by that young woman that you
will believe nothing against her."

"I am infatuated with her voice; I know what she is going to do in
the world. Old Barytone told me that he had never heard such a voice
from a woman's mouth since the days of Malibran; and if there is a
man who knows one voice from another, it is Barytone. He can taste
the richness of the instrument down to its lowest tinkling sound."

"And you would marry such a one as she for her voice."

"And she can act. Ah! if you could have acted as she does, it might
have been different."

"She has got a husband just the same as me."

"I don't believe it; but never mind, I would risk all that. And I
will do it yet. If you will only keep your toe in your pump, we will
have such a company as nothing that Le Gros can do will be able to
cut us down."

"And she is taking money from that lord."

"They all take money from lords," he replied. "What does it matter?
And she is as stout a piece of goods as ever you came across. She has
given me more impudence in the last eight months than ever I took
from any of them. And by Jupiter I never so much as got a kiss from
her."

"A kiss!" said Madame Socani with great contempt.

"And she has hit me a box on the cheek which I have had to put up
with. She has always got a dagger about her somewhere, to give a
fellow a prod in her passion." Here Mr. Moss laughed or affected to
laugh at the idea of the dagger. "I tell you that she would have it
into a fellow in no time."

"Then why don't you leave her alone? A little wizened monkey like
that!" It was thus that Madame Socani expressed her opinion of her
rival. "A creature without an ounce of flesh on her bones. Her voice
won't last long. It never does with those little mean made apes.
There was Grisi and Tietjens,--they had something of a body for a
voice to come out of. And here is this girl that you think so much
of, taking money hand over hand from the very first lord she comes
across."

"I don't believe a word of it," said the faithful Moss.

"You'll find that it is true. She will go away to some watering-place
in the autumn, and he'll be after her. Did you ever