"Duncan, I have knelt in the house of the Lord, to-day, and witnessed your triumph. Ten years ago, when I went desolate and wretched from your house, I might have prophesied your destiny. Come, to-night, and behold my triumph—at—the opera-house!
"Your sister,
ROSALIE."
Do you think that, as he read that summons, he hesitated as to whether he should obey it? If his bishopric had been sacrificed by it, he would have gone; if disgrace and danger had attended his footsteps, he would have obeyed her bidding! The love which had been strengthening in ten long years of loneliness and bereavement, was not now to stop, to question or to fear.
"Accompany me, dear mother, this evening; I have made an engagement for you," he said, as he went, she hanging on his arm, to the cathedral for afternoon service.
"Willingly, my son," was the instant answer, and Duncan kept her to her word.
But it was with wondering, with surprise that she did not attempt to conceal, and with questions which were satisfied with no definite reply, that Mrs. Melville found herself standing with her son in an obscure corner of the opera-house that night. Soon all her expressions of astonishment were hushed, but by another cause than the mysterious inattention of her son: a queenly woman appeared upon the stage; she lifted her voice, and sobbed the mournful wail which opens the first scene in——.
For years there had not been such a sensation created among the frequenters of that place, as now, by the appearance of this stranger. The wild, singular style of her beauty made an impression that was heightened by every movement of her graceful figure, every tone of her rich melodious voice. She seemed for the time the very embodiment of the sorrow to which she gave an expression, and the effect was a complete triumph.
Mary Melville and her son gazed on the debutante—they had no word, no look for each other: for they recognised in her voice the tones of a grief of which long ago they heard the prelude—and every note found its echo in the bishop's inmost heart.
"Come away! let us go home! Duncan, this is no place for us—for you. It is disgrace to be here," was the mother's passionate plea, when at last Rosalie disappeared, and other forms stood in her place.
"We will stay and save her," was the answer, spoken with tears and trembling, by the man for whom, in many a quiet home, prayers in that very hour ascended. "She is mine now, and no earthly consideration or power shall divide us."
And looking for a moment in her son's face steadfastly, the lady turned away sighing and tearful, for she knew that she must yield then, and she had fears for the future.