CHAPTER IV.
THE ITALIAN TEACHER.
Lady Clara was right. Olympia had brought her daughter to London after a professional tour on the continent, not as her daughter. Olympia would not force herself to admit that the tall Juno-like girl, who outshone her in beauty, and rebuked her flippant grace by a dignity at once calm and regal, could, by any possibility, be her own offspring, at least as yet. She had arranged it with Brown that no public acknowledgment of Caroline's relationship should be made, and that she should pass as an adopted child or protege, at least until her success on the operatic stage was confirmed.
Brown had stipulated, on his part, that the girl should receive her musical training in strict privacy, so far as that was possible, and, in no case, should be moved from his personal supervision, a condition that Olympia accepted with delight, for, after a month or two, she began to feel the presence of her cast-off husband something of a restraint, and regarded the quick growth and blooming loveliness of the young girl as almost a wrong to her own ripe beauty. Still she would not loosen her hold as a parent on the girl's life, but still hoped to reap a golden harvest from her talent, and sun her own charms, as they waned, in the splendor of her child's beauty.
With these feelings, Olympia opened her campaign in Europe, and swept a brilliant career from France to Italy, and from thence to Austria and St. Petersburg, leaving Caroline with her guardian and maid, in a village near Florence, where she could perfect herself in Italian and music at the same time.
There Caroline's life really began. They were staying at a pretty villa, terraced up from the banks of a bright little stream, that emptied itself into the Arno, so isolated and lonely, that it was perfect heaven to Brown, who was set down at once as the young lady's father, and to Eliza, who delighted in the chance of rest this arrangement promised.
While in Florence, Brown had taken his charge to one of the best teachers in Europe, who consented to break through his usual rules and give her lessons in the pretty home she had decided on. He would also charge himself with selecting a teacher of the language, who should make her pronunciation of the sweet Tuscan perfect as her voice, which was, in fact, something wonderful.
Some persons were in the musician's room when these arrangements were made, and one of them, a young man, drew slowly toward the piano, like a bird charmed against its will, and listened with rapt attention while Caroline took her first lesson. The girl looked up once or twice, as her voice rang out with unusual power, and unconsciously answered back the warm smile that enkindled his whole face. A musician himself—she knew by the very expression of his dark eyes.
Brown saw it too, and was delighted with the effect of her genius; which he, in his partial affection, deemed transcendent.
"He is a professor, I dare say, or perhaps a great singer," thought the kind old man; "but she charmed him at once."
Brown was confirmed in this idea when the eminent teacher he had consulted fell into a discussion with the man in Italian, which Caroline did not hear, and Brown himself could not understand, but which evidently turned upon Caroline's performance. They were both delighted with it; that was evident from the very ardor with which they spoke. Brown was pleased with all this, but Caroline, perhaps, remembered it with greater interest than he had felt, for the young man's face haunted her long after she was settled in the pretty villa, and had made herself at home among the vines and flowers that turned those terraces into a jungle of fruit and blossoms.