She had never said as much before; and Miss Vane felt herself a little bit snubbed, and decided that the new singer had not at all good manners; but she meant to secure her for her next party nevertheless. She rather prided herself upon her parties.
To her utter surprise and bewilderment, Miss Cynthia West absolutely declined to come. She gave no reason except that she thought that she should before long give up singing in drawing-rooms at all; and she was not to be moved by any consideration of payment. Miss Vane ventured to intimate that she did not mind what she paid; but she was met by so frigid a glance that she was really obliged, in self-defence, to be silent. She carried away an unpleasant impression of Cynthia West, and was heard to say afterwards that she could believe anything of that young woman.
Cynthia was, however, acknowledged to have made in every other way a great success. Madame della Scala was delighted with her pupil, and quite forgot all the little disagreeables of the evening; while Cynthia, during their drive home, was as charming and as lively as she had ever been. When the carriage stopped at the quiet little house in Kensington, the weather had changed, and rain was falling rapidly. One of the servants was in waiting with an umbrella, ready to give an arm to Madame, who alighted first. Cynthia followed, scarcely noticing the man who stepped forward to assist her, until something prompted her suddenly to look at his face. Then she uttered an inarticulate exclamation.
"Yes, it is I," said Hubert. "I have been waiting to help you out. I don't know how I have offended you; but, whatever it is, forgive me, Cynthia—I can't bear your displeasure!"
"Nor I yours," she said, with a sob; and, under the umbrella that he was holding, she actually held up her face to be kissed.
Nobody saw the little ceremony of reconciliation. The next moment Cynthia was in the hall, having her dress shaken out and let down by a yawning maid's attentive hands, and the coachman had driven off, and the hall door was shut, and Hubert Lepel was out in the street, with a wall between him and his love. There were tears in Cynthia's eyes as she went wearily, her gaiety all departed, up to her room. Nobody suspected that the charming singer whose gaiety and audacity, as well as her beauty, had won all hearts that evening passed half the night in weeping on the hard floor—weeping over the fate that divided her from her lover. For ever since the day that she had learned from her father that Hubert Lepel was a cousin of the Vanes—more than ever now she knew that he was the man who had befriended her in her childhood—she felt it to be utterly impossible that she should marry him until he knew the truth; and the truth—that she was Westwood's daughter—would, she felt sure, part him from her for ever.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Early in the sweet June morning—sweet and fair although it brooded over London, the smokiest city in the world—Cynthia was again walking in Kensington Gardens. She had not gone far before she met her father, with whom she had made an appointment for that hour.
"Well, Cynthia, my girl?"