“Oh, I never sing nowadays,” Nancy replied, the tears standing bright in her eyes at the thought of the delight that was in store for that little daughter—a walking maypole now perhaps, but still so much her little daughter. “But you must sing for us,” Mother Catherine insisted. “We want to hear your voice roll out above our thin notes. It is so dreadful, this news that the French Government has forbidden midnight Mass in any of the French cathedrals or churches this year. What woes that wretched country is calling down upon itself! It will hearten us to hear your voice singing that wonderful old hymn.” Nancy felt that it would sound like affectation to refuse after this, and into her voice at midnight she put all the triumph, all the gladness, all the gratitude in her mother-heart. So, for the next two years Letizia was writing home to England the most absorbing accounts of Rome, where she and her companions spent most of their time, though on different occasions they visited all the famous cities of Italy. While up and down the length of England, in and out of Wales, over to Ireland, and across the border into Scotland wandered her mother. CHAPTER XXV THE COMMON CHORD Nancy was considerably startled when Letizia at the age of nineteen entered the chorus of the Vanity Theatre. She had old-fashioned ideas about the dignity of her profession, and the chorus of the Vanity did not appeal to her as a worthy or suitable medium for the début of an actress who wanted to take her career seriously. “Oh, but it’s so reassuring, mother,” Letizia exclaimed. “Can’t you understand how reassuring it is not to be chosen for your talents, but simply, solely, and entirely for your looks?” “Yes, but the girls in the Vanity chorus are such a mixed lot. And I don’t like their outlook on life. It’s nearly always hard, mercenary, and, well, to speak quite frankly, my dear child, immoral.” “I’ll be the shining exception,” Letizia vowed. “Ah, yes, it’s all very well to say that. But you’ll soon be liable to take your tone from your surroundings, and become like the rest of them. Dear, it’s no use for me to pretend that your engagement at the Vanity is anything but a dreadful disappointment to me after your education, because it is—a dreadful disappointment.” “Mother, try to believe I know what I’m doing. I’m not proposing to remain a Vanity girl. But the Vanity chorus is just what I require after such a careful bringing up. It will cure all the prunes and prisms of convent life; it will give me poise; and it will teach me the way of the world, of which at present I’m really hopelessly ignorant. I’m only just nineteen, and I must look fairly nice already or Mr. Richards would never have engaged me.”