istake about it."

Bella fell back again relievedly.

"Oh, you're talking about Charlie, are you?" she said.

"Who should I be talking about? There isn't no one else as wants to
make an honest woman of you, is there?"

The shaft fell short of its mark. Bella did not even wince.

"Well, it strikes me, my girl, you'll have to fall in with his
views," Saidie continued presently; "for if what has come to Doss's
ears is true, you'll be out of a berth before you can say Christopher
Columbus."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"The management are getting dissatisfied, and we know what that
means."

The pale face flushed poppy red.

"They can't help themselves," she said eagerly. "I have a contract
for six months. They cannot cancel it, you must know they can't, and
it's not very likely I shall allow myself to be played fast and loose
with as the fancy takes them."

"But if you're not able to fulfil your share of the contract--"

"Who says I am not?" cried Bella fiercely. "Old Robertson is a fool,
and if he thinks I'm going to put up with any hanky-panky, he's jolly
well mistaken. Let him try it on, that's all! I should immediately
take steps to enforce my rights, the law is on my side, that's clear
enough."

"I don't know! You heard what Doss said--about how you looked from
the front; and others have got their eyesight as well as him, and can
see you are not well and not--"

"Not fit to sing--that's what you are driving at?"

Saidie was silent.

"I tell you I will sing. Nothing and no one shall stop me. I shall
just defy them all, and go on, and there's no law in England to stop
me."

"If you are not a goose, Bella, I never saw one! What in all the
world keeps you on the boards, I cannot see. Here's a man come over
from N'York with the intention of marrying you; a man who is earning
his hundred dollars a week, and you turn up your nose at him. I can't
understand you. You seemed proud enough of him a week or two back;
but now all on a sudden, for no earthly reason, you show him the cold
shoulder."

"I suppose I can please myself," answered Bella, and her lip
quivered, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks.

"I wish to God I had never left--Jack," she said weakly.

Whereupon Saidie gave her what she was pleased to call a "piece of
her mind" as to the insane folly of any such speech, the result of
which was that Bella wept and coughed herself into a state of
collapse, and had to be carried off to bed