“They say it is King, that pale-faced Puritan from Boston,” rejoined her husband.  “I should have given her credit for better taste.”

In private, he made all possible inquiries; but merely succeeded in tracing them to a vessel at Civita Vecchia, bound to Marseilles.

To the public, the fascinating prima donna, who had rushed up from the horizon like a brilliant rocket, and disappeared as suddenly, was only a nine-days wonder.  Though for some time after, when opera-goers heard any other cantatrice much lauded, they would say:  “Ah, you should have heard the Campaneo!  Such a voice!  She rose to the highest D as easily as she breathed.  And such glorious eyes!”

CHAPTER XXII.

While Rosabella was thus exchanging the laurel crown for the myrtle wreath, Flora and her friend were on their way to search the places that had formerly known her.  Accompanied by Mr. Jacobs, who had long been a steward in her family, Mrs. Delano passed through Savannah, without calling on her friend Mrs. Welby, and in a hired boat proceeded to the island.  Flora almost flew over the ground, so great was her anxiety to reach the cottage.  Nature, which pursues her course with serene indifference to human vicissitudes, wore the same smiling aspect it had worn two years before, when she went singing through the woods, like Cinderella, all unconscious of the beneficent fairy she was to meet there in the form of a new Mamita.  Trees and shrubs were beautiful with young, glossy foliage.  Pines and firs offered their aromatic incense to the sun.  Birds were singing, and bees gathering honey from the wild-flowers.  A red-headed woodpecker was hammering away on the umbrageous tree under which Flora used to sit while busy with her sketches.  He cocked his head to listen as they approached, and, at first sight of them, flew up into the clear blue air, with undulating swiftness.  To Flora’s great disappointment, they found all the doors fastened; but Mr. Jacobs entered by a window and opened one of them.  The cottage had evidently been deserted for a considerable time.  Spiders had woven their tapestry in all the corners.  A pane had apparently been cut out of the window their attendant had opened, and it afforded free passage to the birds.  On a bracket of shell-work, which Flora had made to support a vase of flowers, was a deserted nest, bedded in soft green moss, which hung from it in irregular streamers and festoons.

“How pretty!” said Mrs. Delano.  “If the little creature had studied the picturesque, she couldn’t have devised anything more graceful.  Let us take it, bracket and all, and carry it home carefully.”

“That was the very first shell-work I made after we came from Nassau,” rejoined Flora.  “I used to put fresh flowers on it every morning, to please Rosa.  Poor Rosa!  Where can she be?”

She turned away her head, and was silent for a moment.  Then, pointing to the window, she said:  “There’s that dead pine-tree I told you I used to call Old Man of the Woods.  He is swinging long pennants of moss on his arms, just as he did when I was afraid to look at him in the moonlight.”