Cynthia wrung her hands.
"And I can't go—at least to-night; and I must—I must!"
"Don't you take on, ma'am," said Jenkins, evidently much moved by her distress. "I wouldn't trouble about to-night if I was you. Mrs. Vane may be there again, or the General, and a host o' folks. It would only bother them, and do my master no good, if you went to-night. To-morrow morning'll be the time. And now I must be going; for I could only get away while my wife was there, and she wanted to get back to the children by nine o'clock."
So Jenkins took his leave, and Cynthia went up to her room to dress for her party.
What a mockery it seemed to her to don her pretty frock, her ornaments, her flowers—to see herself a radiant vision of youth and loveliness in her mirror—while all the time her heart was bleeding for her lover's suffering, and he lay tossing upon a bed of sickness, calling vainly upon her name! If she could have done as she liked, she would have relinquished all her engagements and sought his bed-side at once. But—fortunately perhaps—she was bound, for many reasons, to sing at Lady Beauclerc's party. Madame della Scala and others would be injured in reputation, if not in pocket, should she fail to appear. And, although she would not mind sacrificing her own interests, she could not sacrifice those of her friends even for the sake of her love.
She was said never to have looked so brilliant or sung so magnificently before. There was a new strange touch of pathos in her eyes and voice—something that stirred the hearts of those who heard. The new vibration in her voice was put down to genius by her audience, and not by any means to emotion.
"That girl will equal Patti if she goes on like this," said one musical amateur to another that evening.
"But she won't go on like this," his friend replied. "She'll marry, or break down, or something; she won't last; she won't be tied down to a professional life—that's my prophecy. She'll bolt!"
The amateur laughed him to scorn. But he had reason to alter his tone when some years later his friend reminded him of his prediction, and coupled it with the information that Cynthia West's last appearance as a singer had been at Lady Beauclerc's party. She never sang in public again.
But she had no idea, during the evening in question, that it was absolutely her last appearance. Her mind had never been so much set on a professional career as it was just then. She meant to go to America with her father certainly, but to take engagements as a vocalist in the States. That she was at all likely to cease work so suddenly and so soon never once occurred to her.