"To be sure it will, dear," responded Madame, who had entered softly and stood listening to the last strains.
"Ah, if all would hear with your partial ears!" replied Rosabella, with a glimmering smile. "But they will not. And I may be so frightened that I shall lose my voice."
"What have you to be afraid of, darling?" rejoined Madame. "It was more trying to sing at private parties of accomplished musicians, as you did in Paris; and especially at the palace, where there was such an élite company. Yet you know that Queen Amelia was so much pleased with your performance of airs from this same opera, that she sent you the beautiful enamelled wreath you are to wear to-night."
"What I was singing when you came in wept itself out of the fulness of my heart," responded Rosabella. "This dreadful news of Tulee and the baby unfits me for anything. Do you think there is no hope it may prove untrue?"
"You know the letter explicitly states that my cousin and his wife, the negro woman, and the white baby, all died of yellow-fever," replied Madame. "But don't reproach me for leaving them, darling. I feel badly enough about it, already. I thought it would be healthy so far out of the city; and it really seemed the best thing to do with the poor little bambino, until we could get established somewhere."
"I did not intend to reproach you, my kind friend," answered Rosa. "I know you meant it all for the best. But I had a heavy presentiment of evil when you first told me they were left. This news makes it hard for me to keep up my heart for the efforts of the evening. You know I was induced to enter upon this operatic career mainly by the hope of educating that poor child, and providing well for the old age of you and Papa Balbino, as I have learned to call my good friend, the Signor. And poor Tulee, too,—how much I intended to do for her! No mortal can ever know what she was to me in the darkest hours of my life."
"Well, poor Tulee's troubles are all over," rejoined Madame, with a sigh; "and bambinos escape a great deal of suffering by going out of this wicked world. For, between you and I, dear, I don't believe one word about the innocent little souls staying in purgatory on account of not being baptized."
"O, my friend, if you only knew!" exclaimed Rosa, in a wild, despairing tone. But she instantly checked herself, and said: "I will try not to think of it; for if I do, I shall spoil my voice; and Papa Balbino would be dreadfully mortified if I failed, after he had taken so much pains to have me brought out."
"That is right, darling," rejoined Madame, patting her on the shoulder. "I will go away, and leave you to rehearse."
Again and again Rosa sang the familiar airs, trying to put soul into them, by imagining how she would feel if she were in Norma's position. Some of the emotions she knew by her own experience, and those she sang with her deepest feeling.