“Well, poor Tulee’s troubles are all over,” rejoined Madame, with a sigh; “and bambinos escape a great deal of suffering by going out of this wicked world.  For, between you and I, dear, I don’t believe one word about the innocent little souls staying in purgatory on account of not being baptized.”

“O, my friend, if you only knew!” exclaimed Rosa, in a wild, despairing tone.  But she instantly checked herself, and said:  “I will try not to think of it; for if I do, I shall spoil my voice; and Papa Balbino would be dreadfully mortified if I failed, after he had taken so much pains to have me brought out.”

“That is right, darling,” rejoined Madame, patting her on the shoulder.  “I will go away, and leave you to rehearse.”

Again and again Rosa sang the familiar airs, trying to put soul into them, by imagining how she would feel if she were in Norma’s position.  Some of the emotions she knew by her own experience, and those she sang with her deepest feeling.

“If I could only keep the same visions before me that I have here alone, I should sing well to-night,” she said to herself; “for now, when I sing ‘Casta Diva,’ I seem to be sitting with my arm round dear little Flora, watching the moon as it rises above the dark pines on that lonely island.”

At last the dreaded hour came.  Rosa appeared on the stage with her train of priestesses.  The orchestra and the audience were before her; and she knew that Papa and Mamma Balbino were watching her from the side with anxious hearts.  She was very pale, and her first notes were a little tremulous.  But her voice soon became clear and strong; and when she fixed her eyes on the moon, and sang “Casta Diva,” the fulness and richness of the tones took everybody by surprise.

“Bis!  Bis!” cried the audience; and the chorus was not allowed to proceed till she had sung it a second and third time.  She courtesied her acknowledgments gracefully.  But as she retired, ghosts of the past went with her; and with her heart full of memories, she seemed to weep in music, while she sang in Italian, “Restore to mine affliction one smile of love’s protection.”  Again the audience shouted, “Bis!  Bis!”

The duet with Adalgisa was more difficult; for she had not yet learned to be an actress, and she was embarrassed by the consciousness of being an object of jealousy to the seconda donna, partly because she was prima, and partly because the tenor preferred her.  But when Adalgisa sang in Italian the words, “Behold him!” she chanced to raise her eyes to a box near the stage, and saw the faces of Gerald Fitzgerald and his wife bending eagerly toward her.  She shuddered, and for an instant her voice failed her.  The audience were breathless.  Her look, her attitude, her silence, her tremor, all seemed inimitable acting.  A glance at the foot-lights and at the orchestra recalled the recollection of where she was, and by a strong effort she controlled herself; though there was still an agitation in her voice, which the audience and the singers thought to be the perfection of acting.  Again she glanced at Fitzgerald, and there was terrible power in the tones with which she uttered, in Italian, “Tremble, perfidious one!  Thou knowest the cause is ample.”