In the midst of her song she had forgotten herself, her audience, her first failure, even the world itself, while her young ardent soul poured out its joy and its grief in those splendid notes. Love, that great interpreter of the heart, had unlocked hers to sorrow, she sang with the heart of the sorrowful; she was, first of all, as Allestree felt, an impersonation of youth, and she sang with the soul of youth which hopes forever; she loved, purely, unselfishly, gently, and she sang with the love of the world on her lips, and singing thus was supremely lovely; what matter if the old white dress was a little out of fashion? She was a figure as symbolic of youth with its splendid hopes, its faith, its untried strength, as she was the very personification of beautiful womanhood. No one spoke, no one applauded, but not an eye was dry. But to Rose, whose ears were not filled with her own music, the silence which followed it came with a shock of terrible revulsion. She waited a moment in keen suspense, but no one spoke, no one moved; the wave of silence that followed the wave of sound engulfed her hopes, she remembered that first disappointment. Bitter dismay swept over her, she turned away to hide her emotion, but the maestro crossed the stage at that instant and held out his hand; he could not praise her but there was actually a tear in his eye. Rose looked up, and reading his face burst into tears of joy, her hopes suddenly fulfilled. Then the party of judges broke out with a round of applause and one little Frenchman, with a polished pink bald head and mustaches, shouted: “Brava!” In the end they crowded around her and overwhelmed her with compliments; they were eager to invite her to a supper and drink her health in champagne, but the staid Virginia cousin, in the old-fashioned black bonnet and the old black alpaca gown, which outraged Paris without hiding the good heart beneath it, frowned on this hilarity; her deep-seated suspicion of the Parisian in general had not been dissipated by this burst of applause. She insisted that Rose, who was trembling with excitement and the strain of the long hours of training, should go straight back to their little apartment to rest. A decision too full of wisdom for even Rose, eager though she was for the sweet meed of praise, to resist it. They drove back in a fiacre, a wild extravagance which they ventured in view of the great success and the immediate prospects of a fortune; the cousin felt that they were immediate. “You all were always talented,” she said to Rose, as they drove down the rue de Rivoli; “your mother could do anything; we always said so. Cousin Sally Carter, too, is going to be an artist, and no one ever made preserves like Cousin Anna’s! I reckon it’s in the family, Rose.” “Oh, Cousin Emily!” Rose sighed, and hid her face on the alpaca shoulder, “oh, if I can only, only sing so well that there shall be no more terrible trouble for father!”