rds "love" and "passion"
seemed to have eighty syllables, she uttered them with so much
expression. Oh, expression! That was what Mistress Dobson placed before
everything, and what she tried, and tried in vain, to impart to her
pupil.

'Ay Chiquita,' upon which Paris fed for several seasons, was then at the
height of its popularity. Sidonie studied it conscientiously, and all the
morning she could be heard singing:

"On dit que tu te maries,
Tu sais que j'en puis mourir."

[They say that thou'rt to marry
Thou know'st that I may die.]

"Mouri-i-i-i-i-r!" the expressive Madame Dobson would interpose, while
her hands wandered feebly over the piano-keys; and die she would, raising
her light blue eyes to the ceiling and wildly throwing back her head.
Sidonie never could accomplish it. Her mischievous eyes, her lips,
crimson with fulness of life, were not made for such AEolian-harp
sentimentalities. The refrains of Offenbach or Herve, interspersed with
unexpected notes, in which one resorts to expressive gestures for aid, to
a motion of the head or the body, would have suited her better; but she
dared not admit it to her sentimental instructress. By the way, although
she had been made to sing a great deal at Mademoiselle Le Mire's, her
voice was still fresh and not unpleasing.

Having no social connections, she came gradually to make a friend of her
singing-mistress. She would keep her to breakfast, take her to drive in
the new coupe and to assist in her purchases of gowns and jewels. Madame
Dobson's sentimental and sympathetic tone led one to repose confidence in
her. Her continual repinings seemed too long to attract other repinings.
Sidonie told her of Georges, of their relations, attempting to palliate
her offence by blaming the cruelty of her parents in marrying her by
force to a man much older than herself. Madame Dobson at once showed a
disposition to assist them; not that the little woman was venal, but she
had a passion for passion, a taste for romantic intrigue. As she was
unhappy in her own home, married to a dentist who beat her, all husbands
were monsters in her eyes, and poor Risler especially seemed to her a
horrible tyrant whom his wife was quite justified in hating and
deceiving.

She was an active confidant and a very useful one. Two or three times a
week she would bring tickets for a box at the Opera or the Italiens, or
some one of the little theatres which en