Was it because there were no work-baskets, spilling lace and bits of ribbon, no photographs, no keepsakes, hideous perhaps, but dear for what they represent, no worn girlhood's books, no shamefaced toys, lingering from the nursery, no litter of any other member of her family? Perhaps. Mme. Modjeska, then, and even now one of the greatest actresses on our stage, called it an unwomanly room, but I am not quite sure that this is precisely what she meant. No, the most vivid impression the room could make upon me was one that brings a reminiscent chuckle even to-day. As my eye fell on the antique dressing-table, I seemed to see, suddenly and laughably, Margarita, sweeping down the stairs, enveloped in a billowy _peignoir_, her hair loose, her eyes flashing furiously, in her extended finger and thumb, held as one would hold a noxious adder, a thin navy-blue necktie. "Is that yours?" she demanded tragically of her husband. "Why, yes, I believe it is," said Roger, with the grave politeness that years of intimacy could never take from him. "I found it _on my dressing-table_!" she thundered, and her voice echoed like an angry vault, "_on--my--dressing-table_!" She dropped it like a toad at his feet, swept us all with the lightning of her eyes, coldly, distastefully, and swam up the stairs, an avenging goddess, deaf to Roger's matter-of-fact apology, blind to Miss Jencks's deprecating blushes. As for me, so under the spell of that voice have I always been, that I swear I thought her hardly used--the darling vixen! PART EIGHT IN WHICH THE RIVER RUSHES INTO PERILOUS RAPIDS Come, my mother that carried me, Make me to-night an olden spell! Try if my witch wife loves the Sea, Or she'll choose the waves or she'll choose for me, Then hey, for heaven or ho, for hell! Circle the Cross on the midnight sand, Heap the fire and mutter the charm, Call her out to ye, soul in hand, Blind and bare to the moon she'll stand, Then out to the sea or in to my arm! _Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._ CHAPTER XXVII WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET I did not hear Margarita sing in opera till the night of her _debut_ in _Faust_. Roger, on the contrary, was allowed to attend the last rehearsals: Margarita honestly wished for his criticism, which she knew from the very fact of his utter aloofness from her professional interests would be perfectly unbiased and sincere. It was not without a secret thrill of pleasure through my disappointment that I acquiesced in her decree; I knew that she would be nervous with me, from my very sympathy with her. I can see the _Opera_ now--the lights, the jewels, the moustaches, the white shirt-bosoms, the lorgnettes, the fat women with programmes, the great, shrouding curtain.