As she stood thus, she looked around the house with an expression of friendly good-will on her face--the true index of a quality in her which accounted largely for her popularity. Then she began to sing. It was a ballad of the “homely pathetic” order, such as never fails to go to the hearts of an audience, with its allusions to mother, wife, child, home, etc., and the Tarara sang it with great feeling. Rhodes, watching that strange child of his, whom he always felt to be a mystery beyond his ken, saw now a look of deep content and pleasure settle on her face, and some very rare tear-drops rise to her eyes. When the song had ended, she turned to him and said, abruptly: “I love that lady.” A strange sense of joy throbbed through the man’s heart at these words. They were something more than a surprise. “She is good and kind,” said Clementina, with the same tone of conviction. “I wish she would come back.” Rhodes, for his part, rather dreaded that return, for fear the sweet impression might be destroyed. But when she afterward appeared as a smart hussar, and sang a barrack song, and then as a _vivandière_ and gurgled her song from over a tin canteen, the impression which she had made upon the child was evidently not disturbed. It was noticeable, however, that the Tarara was the only one of the performers who had found favor with Clementina. The others either bored her, or roused a feeling of disapproval, which that strong little face well knew how to express. The last appearance of the Tarara was in a ballet costume, and as she floated out on the stage and pirouetted up to the footlights, Rhodes glanced with real timidity at the child. He dreaded the effect of the bare limbs and painted face upon this austere judge. But Clementina’s eyes were fixed with a look of unmixed pleasure upon the dancer, who, as Clem now saw to his amazement, caught and returned her gaze. It was for a second only, but there could be no doubt of it, and the child saw it, also, for she flushed with happiness and said, under her breath: “Oh, the sweet lady!” With the same look of confidence and content, she followed every movement until the dance was ended. The Tarara, after that one glance, did not again look at the child, but as she skimmed and bounded about the stage, going through all the peculiarly imbecile motions of the modern ballet dance, as she toyed with her tarletan skirts and sidled diagonally on her poor blunted toes, threw her body backward and waved her arms, then smirked and grimaced at the applause that burst from the house, the child’s gaze grew more and more delighted, until it deepened into a look of burning love. This gaze, also, the dancer caught as she was leaving the stage, and she not only caught, but returned it. Rhodes began to feel deeply alarmed for his secret, but the reflection, that she could not possibly know that the child was his, partly reassured him.