nd listened while Rosamund was singing her
first song. Seeing her thus in the midst of a crowd he awakened to the
fact that Robin had changed her very much. She still looked splendidly
young but she no longer looked like a girl. The married woman and the
mother were there quite definitely. Even he fancied that he heard them
in her voice, which had gained in some way, perhaps in roundness,
in mellowness. This might be the result of study; he was inclined to
believe it the result of motherhood. She was wearing ear-rings--tiny,
not long drooping things, they were green, small emeralds; and he
remembered how he had loved her better when he saw her wearing ear-rings
for the first time in Mr. Darlington's drawing-room. How definite she
was in a crowd. Crowds effaced ordinary people, but when Rosamund was
surrounded she always seemed to be beautifully emphasized, to be made
more perfectly herself. She did not take, she gave, and in giving showed
how much she had.

She was giving now as she sang, "Caro mio ben."

Towards the end of the song, when Dion was deeply in it and in her who
sang it, he was disturbed by a woman's whisper coming from close behind
him. He did not catch the beginning of what was communicated, but he did
catch the end. It was this: "Over there, the famous Mrs. Clarke."

But Mrs. Clarke was in Paris. Daventry had told him so. Dion looked
quickly about the large and crowded room, but could not see Mrs.
Clarke. Then he glanced behind him to see the whisperer, and beheld a
hard-faced, middle-aged and very well-known woman--one of those women
who, by dint of perpetually "going about," become at length something
less than human. He was quite sure Mrs. Brackenhurst would not make
a mistake about anything which happened at a party. She might fail to
recognize her husband, if she met him about her house, because he was
so seldom there; she would not fail to recognize the heroine of a
resounding divorce case. Mrs. Clarke must certainly have returned from
Paris and be somewhere in that room, listening to Rosamund and probably
watching her. Dion scarcely knew whether this fact made him sorry or
glad. He did know, however, that it oddly excited him.

When "Caro mio ben" was ended people began to move. Rosamund was
surrounded and congratulated, and Dion saw Esme Darlington bending to
her, half paternally, half gallantly, and speaking to her emphatically.
Mrs. Chetwinde drifted up to her; and three or four young men ho