The word came back to her. With an unmusical laugh she stood
up, shaking the letter to the floor. Romance! She was no longer a girl;
she was a woman of five and twenty; and what should a woman know of
romance? Ah, there had been a time when all the world was romance,
romance; when the night breeze had whispered it under her
casement-window, when the lattice-climbing roses had breathed it, when
the moon and the stars had spelled it. Romance! She hated the word not
less than she hated the Italian language, the Italian people, the
country itself. She spurned the letter with her foot and fed the
newspaper to the fire. She would let Bettina answer the letter.

She went down-stairs to the piano and played with strong feeling.
Presently she began to sing a haunting melancholy song by Abt. From Abt
she turned to Flotow; from Offenbach to Rossini; from Gounod to Verdi.
The voice was now sad or gay, now tender or wild. She was mistress of
every tone, every shade, every expression.

The door opened gradually. The little maid's face was moved to rapture
over these exquisite sounds.

Crash! It was over.

"Bettina? Bettina, are you listening?"

"I am always listening." Bettina squeezed into the room. "I had not the
heart to interrupt. It is beautiful, beautiful! To sing like that!"
Then, with a burst of confidence: "There will be kings and dukes at your
feet!"

"Enough!"

"Pardon, signora, I forgot. But listen; I bring a message. A boy came to
say that the rehearsal will be at four this afternoon. It is now after
twelve."

"So late? I did not know. We must be off to lunch."

"And the letter up-stairs on the floor?"

"Some day, Bettina, you will enter the Forbidden Chamber, and I shall
have to play Bluebeard. This time, however, I do not mind. Leave it
there or burn it," indifferently.

Bettina knew her mistress. She thought best to leave the letter where it
lay, forgotten for the time being.

CHAPTER IV

BLINDFOLDED

For two days the club steward only nodded when Hillard came in; he had
no letters to present.

"I am thirty-three years old," Hillard mused, as he sought the
reading-room. "Down-town I am looked upon as a man of affairs, a
business man, with the care of half a dozen fortunes on my hands. Now,
what's the matter with me? I begin to tremble when I look that sober old
steward in the face. If he had handed me a letter to-night, I should
have had to lean against the wall for support. This will neve