The young girl sank back in a chair exhausted. Melosan, a man about sixty years of age, with white hair and sunburned face, stood with folded hands before his mistress, and his dark eyes looked anxiously at Jane's pale face.
"You are suffering?" he said, after a pause.
Jane shuddered. "Ah, no," she said, "I am feeling perfectly well."
"But the fright?"
"Oh, that is nothing," replied Jane, sorrowfully; and, rising up wildly, she passionately added: "Why am I forced to enter a world which is not my own, and never can be! And it shall not be either," she sobbingly concluded, "never—never!"
Melosan held down his head.
"A queen would have been proud at the reception you had to-night."
"Why do you tell me this?" she exclaimed. "A queen? I? Oh, what bitter mockery!"
"But your eminent talent—your voice?"
"Would to God I had none! I—but go now, I want to be alone."