h as a
singer and as a personality. Although one song cannot make anybody a
composer of mark in the esteem of a great public, yet Claude's drew some
attention to him. But it did more than this. It awoke in Claude a sort
of spurious desire for greater popularity, which was assiduously
fostered by Charmian. The real man, deep down, had a still and
inexorable contempt for laurels easily won, for the swift applause of
drawing-rooms. But the weakness in Claude, a thing of the surface, weed
floating on a pool that had depths, responded to the applause, to the
congratulations, with an almost anxious quickness. His mind began to
concern itself too often with the feeble question, "What do people want
of me? What do they want me to do?" Often he played the accompaniment to
his song at parties that season when Alston Lake sang it, and he enjoyed
too much--that is his surface enjoyed too much--the pleasure it gave,
the demonstrations it evoked. He received with too much eagerness the
congratulations of easily touched women.

Mrs. Mansfield noticed all this, and it diminished her natural pleasure
in her son-in-law's little success. But Charmian was delighted to see
that Claude was "becoming human at last." The weakness in her husband
made her trust more fully her own power. She realized that events were
working with her, were helping her to increase her influence. She
blossomed with expectation.

Alston Lake had his part in the circumstances which were now about to
lead the Heaths away from England, were to place them in new
surroundings, submit them to fresh influences.

His voice had been "discovered" in America by Jacob Crayford, who had
sent him to Europe to be trained, and intended, if things went well and
he proved to have the value expected of him, to bring him out at the
opera house in New York, which was trying to put a fight against the
Metropolitan.

"I shouldn't wonder if I've got another Battistini in that boy!"
Crayford sometimes said to people. "He's got a wonderful voice, but I
wouldn't have paid for his training if he hadn't something that's
bullier."

"What's that?"

"The devil's own ambition."

Crayford had not mistaken his man. He seldom did. Alston Lake had a will
of iron and was possessed of a passionate determination to succeed. He
had a driving reason that made him resolve to "win out" as he called it.
His father, who was a prosperous banker in Wall Street, had sternly
vetoed an artistic career for