ertheless.
She rather prided herself upon her parties.

To her utter surprise and bewilderment, Miss Cynthia West absolutely
declined to come. She gave no reason except that she thought that she
should before long give up singing in drawing-rooms at all; and she was
not to be moved by any consideration of payment. Miss Vane ventured to
intimate that she did not mind what she paid; but she was met by so
frigid a glance that she was really obliged, in self-defence, to be
silent. She carried away an unpleasant impression of Cynthia West, and
was heard to say afterwards that she could believe anything of that
young woman.

Cynthia was, however, acknowledged to have made in every other way a
great success. Madame della Scala was delighted with her pupil, and
quite forgot all the little disagreeables of the evening; while Cynthia,
during their drive home, was as charming and as lively as she had ever
been. When the carriage stopped at the quiet little house in Kensington,
the weather had changed, and rain was falling rapidly. One of the
servants was in waiting with an umbrella, ready to give an arm to
Madame, who alighted first. Cynthia followed, scarcely noticing the man
who stepped forward to assist her, until something prompted her suddenly
to look at his face. Then she uttered an inarticulate exclamation.

"Yes, it is I," said Hubert. "I have been waiting to help you out. I
don't know how I have offended you; but, whatever it is, forgive me,
Cynthia--I can't bear your displeasure!"

"Nor I yours," she said, with a sob; and, under the umbrella that he was
holding, she actually held up her face to be kissed.

Nobody saw the little ceremony of reconciliation. The next moment
Cynthia was in the hall, having her dress shaken out and let down by a
yawning maid's attentive hands, and the coachman had driven off, and the
hall door was shut, and Hubert Lepel was out in the street, with a wall
between him and his love. There were tears in Cynthia's eyes as she went
wearily, her gaiety all departed, up to her room. Nobody suspected that
the charming singer whose gaiety and audacity, as well as her beauty,
had won all hearts that evening passed half the night in weeping on the
hard floor--weeping over the fate that divided her from her lover. For
ever since the day that she had learned from her father that Hubert
Lepel was a cousin of the Vanes--more than ever now she knew that he was
the man who had befriended her in her childh