h as one small single scruple as to the
deception on Mrs. Murray that she was so successfully carrying out.
Indeed, it was evident that she had not given that side of the matter
a thought.

"But I am keeping the best part of all until the last to tell you," she
said; "and that is, of course, about my voice."

"Your voice," echoed Margaret. "Oh, of course, about your singing, you
mean."

She had completely forgotten Eleanor's great ambition to be a famous
singer.

"You remember what I told you that Signor Vanucci said to me, that I
ought to be the greatest singer of my generation, that he foresaw a
splendid future before me, that my voice had infinite possibilities.
But that it was, of course, quite untrained."

Margaret nodded. She remembered now.

"I can never forget those three phrases," Eleanor said in a slow,
thoughtful tone, as she gazed dreamily past Margaret at the wooden wall
of the summer-house over behind her. "Never. How often during the last
dreary six months have I not repeated them to myself. They had been
alternately my joy and my misery according as my hopes of getting proper
training some day, and my fear that I never would were in the ascendant.
But all that is over now, and I am a pupil of Martelli's. Do you know,
Margaret, I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure that I am awake
and not dreaming. Even as I sit here telling it all to you the whole
situation--you, me, Madame Martelli, and everybody seem as though they
were a part of a dream, a lovely dream, but still a dream. Does it seem
like a dream to you?"

"N--no, not exactly," said Margaret, with a slow shake of her head. "It
all seems quite real to me. But tell me what Madame Martelli said about
your voice."

"Yes, I am not telling my story properly," said Eleanor, "but the truth
is that though I sit here so calmly, and talk so quietly, I am just
devoured by excitement whenever I think of my good luck. Well, I can tell
you what Madame Martelli said in a very few words. She was even more
enthusiastic than Signor Vanucci about my voice. Far, far more. I went
down to her the very first morning after I got here, you know. Mrs.
Murray was rather surprised at my eagerness to start off to my lessons,
she wanted instead to take me for a drive and show me the country, she
said; but I told her that I would much rather go down and see the Signora
at once, and so, although I believe she was a little disappointed that I
would not come driving