her voice. 'You will not take the
miserable money--but perhaps you will take the sacrifice, if I shut
myself up in a convent and wear a hair shirt, and feed sick babies, and
eat cabbage. How could any one say a word against me then? And you will
be happy, Tom. That is all I ask.'

'I shall not be happy, if you make yourself miserable, mother,' said
Lushington, smiling.

'Miserable? Ah, well, I daresay there will not be cabbage every day,'
answered Madame Bonanni thoughtfully. 'And I like fish. Fortunately, I
am fond of fish. The simplest, you know. Only a fried sole with a
meuniere sauce. Bah! When I talk of eating you never believe I am in
earnest. Go away, my beloved child! Go and write to little Miss Donne
that she may have all my engagements, because I am entering religion.
You shall see! She will marry you in a week. Go over to Paris and talk
to her. She is crying her eyes out for you, and that is bad for the
voice. It relaxes the vocal cords frightfully. I always have to gargle
for half-an-hour if I have been crying and am going to sing.'

Through all her rambling talk, half earnest and half absurd, Lushington
detected the signs of a coming change. He did not think she would leave
the stage so suddenly as she said she would; he assuredly did not
believe that she would ever 'enter religion'; but he saw for the first
time that she was tired of the life she had led, that she felt herself
growing old and longed for rest and quiet. She had lived as very few
live, to satisfy every ambition and satiate every passion to the full,
and now, with advancing years, she had not the one great bad passion of
old age, which is avarice, as an incentive for prolonging her career.
In its place, on the contrary, stood her one redeeming virtue, that
abundant generosity which had made her welcome Margaret Donne's great
talent with honest enthusiasm, and which had been like a providence to
hundreds, perhaps to thousands of unknown men, women and children ever
since she had gained the means of helping the poor and distressed. But
it had been part of her nature to hide that. Logotheti, who managed
most of her business, knew more about her charities than her own son,
and the world knew next to nothing at all.

CHAPTER XIII

When Lushington had run over to Paris the day before the conversation
just recorded, he had entertained a vague notion of going out to
Versailles in the afternoon; for he felt that all had not been said
bet