"In three days a vessel will sail for Marseilles," replied Mrs. Delano. "Our passage is taken; and Mr. and Mrs. Percival, who intended to return home soon, are kind enough to say they will go with us. I wish they could accompany us to the South; but he is so well known as an Abolitionist that his presence would probably cause unpleasant interruptions and delays, and perhaps endanger his life."
Flora seized her hand and kissed it, while tears were dropping fast upon it. And at every turn of the conversation, she kept repeating, "How wrong it was for me to run away and leave her!"
"No, my child," replied Mrs. Delano, "you did right in coming to me. If you had stayed there, you would have made both her and yourself miserable, beside doing what was very wrong. I met Mr. Fitzgerald once on horseback, while I was visiting at Mr. Welby's plantation; but I never fairly saw him until to-day. He is so very handsome, that, when I looked at him, I could not but think it rather remarkable he did not gain a bad power over you by his insinuating flattery, when you were so very young and inexperienced."
The guileless little damsel looked up with an expression of surprise, and said: "How could I bear to have him make love to me, when he was Rosa's husband? He is so handsome and fascinating, that, if he had loved me instead of Rosa, in the beginning, I dare say I should have been as much in love with him as she was. I did dearly love him while he was a kind brother; but I couldn't love him so. It would have killed Rosa if I had. Besides, he told falsehoods; and papa taught us to consider that as the meanest of faults. I have heard him tell Rosa he never loved anybody but her, when an hour before he had told me he loved me better than Rosa. What could I do but despise such a man? Then, when he threatened to sell me, I became dreadfully afraid of him." She started up, as if struck by a sudden thought, and exclaimed wildly, "What if he has sold Rosa?"
Her friend brought forward every argument and every promise she could think of to pacify her; and when she had become quite calm, they sang a few hymns together, and before retiring to rest knelt down side by side and prayed for strength and guidance in these new troubles.
Flora remained a long time wakeful, thinking of Rosa deserted and alone. She had formed many projects concerning what was to be seen and heard and done in Rome; but she forgot them all. She did not even think of the much-anticipated opera, until she heard from the street snatches of Norma, whistled or sung by the dispersing audience. A tenor voice passed the house singing, Vieni in Roma. "Ah," thought she, "Gerald and I used to sing that duet together. And in those latter days how languishingly he used to look at me, behind her back, while he sang passionately, 'Ah, deh cedi, cedi a me!' And poor cheated Rosa would say, 'Dear Gerald, how much heart you put into your voice!' O shame, shame! What could I do but run away? Poor Rosa! How I wish I could hear her sing 'Casta Diva,' as she used to do when we sat gazing at the moon shedding its soft light over the pines in that beautiful lonely island."
And so, tossed for a long while on a sea of memories, she finally drifted into dream-land.
CHAPTER XIX.
While Flora was listlessly gazing at Monte Pincio from the solitude of her room in the Via delle Quattro Fontane, Rosabella was looking at the same object, seen at a greater distance, over intervening houses, from her high lodgings in the Corso. She could see the road winding like a ribbon round the hill, with a medley of bright colors continually moving over it. But she was absorbed in revery, and they floated round and round before her mental eye, like the revolving shadows of a magic lantern.
She was announced to sing that night, as the new Spanish prima donna, La Señorita Rosita Campaneo; and though she had been applauded by manager and musicians at the rehearsal that morning, her spirit shrank from the task. Recent letters from America had caused deep melancholy; and the idea of singing, not con amore, but as a performer before an audience of entire strangers, filled her with dismay. She remembered how many times she and Flora and Gerald had sung together from Norma; and an oppressive feeling of loneliness came over her. Returning from rehearsal, a few hours before, she had seen a young Italian girl, who strongly reminded her of her lost sister. "Ah!" thought she, "if Flora and I had gone out into the world together, to make our own way, as Madame first intended, how much sorrow and suffering I might have been spared!" She went to the piano, where the familiar music of Norma lay open before her, and from the depths of her saddened soul gushed forth, "Ah, bello a me Ritorno." The last tone passed sighingly away, and as her hands lingered on the keys, she murmured, "Will my heart pass into it there, before that crowd of strange faces, as it does here?"