st notes of Caroline's voice trembled out from her lips like the
cry of a young bird when it first tempts the air. The intense stillness
with which the little group listened, took away her breath. But all this
passed away; her voice gathered up its tones and swelled into a power of
music that Olympia, in her best days, had never reached. She forgot the
people around her--forgot everything but the glorious genius which
thrilled her whole being with ecstasies of harmony. The nightingale,
nested in clustering roses and bathed with moonlight, never poured forth
its song with a sweeter impulse.

At first it was the desperation of genius, but that soon merged itself
into an exquisite power that held her little audience in amazement.

Olympia grew restless. Had she, with her own hands, given her crown and
sceptre to another? How superbly beautiful the creature looked with that
glow of inspiration on her face! How her own devoted adorers crowded
around the piano, leaving her on the outskirts of the crowd quite alone!

The woman's self-love and most active vanity were disturbed; but above
that rose another passion that had of late years grown strong within
her--avarice. She recognized the sure ring of gold in those notes, and
exulted over it.

As Caroline turned from the piano flushed, and, as it were, inspired by
a new life, a little storm of bravos broke over her. Just then the
supper-room was thrown open; but even the exquisite picture it presented
failed to draw the crowd from its new idol.

But Caroline was falling back to her normal state, and all this
tumultuous admiration terrified her.

This annoyed Olympia, also. She made a signal to the servant who stood
waiting, and his announcement, in a loud voice, that supper was served,
broke up the crowd which held Caroline prisoner.

Olympia led the way into the most superb little supper-room that even an
artist could imagine. It was, in fact, a temple, connected only by one
compartment with the house.

A shallow dome, with ground glass, through which a tender light shone
like sunbeams through sifted snow, by a gilded network over ground
glass, which also reflected hidden lights like a chain of clouded stars.

This gallery was connected with the floor by slender marble shafts,
around which passion flowers, white jessamines, creeping dwarf roses,
and other clinging plants wove their blossoms up to the lighted gallery,
whence they fell in delicate spray, forming arches o