Fanchette had the true French taste for style and elegance. She selected a robe of black lace and black satin, embroidered with jet. Then she took some fragrant white rose-buds from the author's bouquet and fastened them at the front of the square corsage, and tied a black velvet ribbon around the slender column of the white throat. She wore no ornament except the pearl cross that swung from the velvet ribbon, and a diamond on her finger. No costume could have enhanced the star-like beauty of the queen of song more superbly. The lustrous satin set off the creamy fairness of cheek and throat and brow exquisitely, and made the soft darkness of eyes and hair more lovely by the contrast. But Madam Dolores was so impatient she forgot to glance into the long, swinging mirror when Fanchette said she was "finished." She took up R. V.'s poems and went back to the parlor, hoping to get a minute more for reading before her visitors came. So when Professor Larue ushered Manager Verne and the author into the room, Madam Dolores had utterly forgotten their existence. She was half-buried in a great, velvet chair, her cheek in the hollow of one small hand, the dark, fringed lashes almost sweeping her cheek as she pored over the blue-and-gold volume that lay open on her knee. They were fairly in the house before she heard them; then she rose, with a deep, beautiful blush that faded instantly into marble pallor; for, glancing instinctively past the manager, she saw a tall, handsome man with blue-gray eyes like twilight skies, and dark hair thrown carelessly back from a high, white brow. She heard the manager say, courteously: "Madam Dolores, allow me to present to you Mr. Valchester, the composer of the opera over which all New York has gone wild with delight." Madam Dolores murmured some indistinct words in reply, and made a low bow to the author, but she did not offer him her hand. It hung at her side, still mechanically grasping the book of poems. Mr. Valchester complimented and congratulated her on her successful appearance last night, and then thanked her in eloquent, well-chosen terms for the part she had taken in making his venture such a signal success. Both were grave and courteous, and calm. No one who witnessed the meeting would have suspected that they had parted only three years ago, broken-hearted and longing for death. In that moment of quiet recognition each believed that the other had outlived the passion which a little while ago had seemed the all in all of life. Then the manager excused himself and went out with the professor. The author and the singer were left alone in the luxurious parlor to entertain each other. They sat silently a moment; then Mr. Valchester said, calmly: "You were reading, Madam Dolores?" She looked down at the book in her hand, and the color rushed into her cheeks as she answered: "Yes." CHAPTER XXIX.