She was announced to sing that night, as the new Spanish prima donna, La Senorita Rosita Campaneo; and though she had been applauded by manager and musicians at the rehearsal that morning, her spirit shrank from the task.  Recent letters from America had caused deep melancholy; and the idea of singing, not con amore, but as a performer before an audience of entire strangers, filled her with dismay.  She remembered how many times she and Flora and Gerald had sung together from Norma; and an oppressive feeling of loneliness came over her.  Returning from rehearsal, a few hours before, she had seen a young Italian girl, who strongly reminded her of her lost sister.  “Ah!” thought she, “if Flora and I had gone out into the world together, to make our own way, as Madame first intended, how much sorrow and suffering I might have been spared!” She went to the piano, where the familiar music of Norma lay open before her, and from the depths of her saddened soul gushed forth, “Ah, bello a me Ritorno.”  The last tone passed sighingly away, and as her hands lingered on the keys, she murmured, “Will my heart pass into it there, before that crowd of strange faces, as it does here?”

“To be sure it will, dear,” responded Madame, who had entered softly and stood listening to the last strains.

“Ah, if all would hear with your partial ears!” replied Rosabella, with a glimmering smile.  “But they will not.  And I may be so frightened that I shall lose my voice.”

“What have you to be afraid of, darling?” rejoined Madame.  “It was more trying to sing at private parties of accomplished musicians, as you did in Paris; and especially at the palace, where there was such an elite company.  Yet you know that 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.”