Mrs. Stuart said nothing to her husband. She was whispering with Julius Revington, who had come into her box a little while before. The gleam of hate in the lady's eyes flashed almost brighter than her diamonds, her cheek glowed through its rouge with a deep natural red, and her jeweled hands clenched each other nervously in her lap. Miss Brooke came again after a little interval, which was filled up by other performers. She had fought down her terrible emotion, but her lovely face was very pale and sad, and she never lifted her dark blue eyes while she sang. This time it was an Italian _chanson_, and the words flowed easily from her lips in that liquid southern tongue that is so sweet and soft. The Florentines were charmed, as the professor had intended they should be, at hearing one of their native songs warbled by the sweet lips of the stranger. She retired again under a storm of bouquets and applause, but, as before, she did not respond to their encores. It was too keen an agony to go back and sing to them again before those burning dark eyes, whose gaze she intuitively felt upon her, though she would not lift her own to meet their flashing light. It was all that she could bear to go on when her turn came. But when she had sung her last song and the liquid Italian recall followed her again, Professor Bozzaotra went to her. He was radiant with joy. "Let me beg you to humor them, my child," he said, radiantly. "You have carried their warm hearts by storm. Be kind to them. Sing them something, anything to satisfy their craving." She went back and stood before them, with bowed head and an almost divine sadness on her face. She sang some words that were "as sad as earth, as sweet as Heaven." "I stand by the river where both of us stood, And there is but one shadow to darken the flood; And the path leading to it where both used to pass, Has the step of but one to take dew from the grass; One forlorn since that day! "The flowers of the margins are many to see, But none stoops at my bidding to pluck them for me; The bird in the alder sings loudly and long, For my low sound of weeping disturbs not his song, As thy vow did that day. "I stand by the river--I think of the vow-- calm as the place is, vow-breaker, be _thou_! I leave the flower growing--the bird, unreproved-- Would I trouble _thee_ rather than _them_, my beloved, And my lover that day? "Go! be sure of my love--by that treason forgiven; Of my prayers--by the blessings they win thee from Heaven; Of my grief--(guess the length of the sword by the sheath's) By the silence of life more pathetic than death's! Go! be clear of that day!" Then the concert was over! CHAPTER XLII.