"Oh, nothing--I did not know the time!" said Cynthia.

She did not reply jestingly, after her usual fashion; she sat down languidly, and spread her heavy skirts around her so as to make a sort of silken barrier between herself and Hubert. He bit his lip a little as he looked at her.

"Our little bird is not quite herself," said Madame, with a side grimace at Hubert which she did not want Cynthia to see. "She has what our neighbors call '_la migraine_,' monsieur. She has never been well since the return of her old uncle from America, whose fortune--if he has a fortune--does not seem likely to do any of us any good--her least of all."

Cynthia lowered her head a little and darted a sudden and fierce glance at her teacher and chaperon--a glance of which Hubert guessed the meaning. She had never mentioned this "uncle from America" to him; probably she had told Madame not to do so either, and the little Italian lady had broken her compact.

Madame della Scala laughed and spread out her hands deprecatingly.

"_Che, che_--what is it I have done to make you look so fierce at me? I will leave her to you, Mr. Lepel, and trust you to make her tractable before we reach the house where we are to sing. For the last few days I have not known how to content _la signorina_ at all; she has twice refused to sing when refusal meant--well, two things--loss of money and offence of friends. Those are two things which I do not like at all."

So saying, Madame, with a fan outstretched before her like a palm-leaf, moved towards the door; but Cynthia intercepted her.

"Madame, do not go!" she cried. "Indeed I am sorry! Do not make Mr.

Lepel think that I have been behaving so like a petted child. I will do what you wish henceforward--I will indeed! Do not go, or I shall think that you are angry with me!"

"Angry with you, _carissima_? Not one bit!" said Madame, touching the girl's hot cheek with the end of her dainty fan. "Not angry, only a little--little tiny bit disappointed! But what of that? I forgive you!

Genius must have its moods, its freaks, its passions. But calm yourself now, for Heaven's sake, or we shall be in bad voice to-night! I am just going to my room to get my scent-bottle; I will return immediately;" and Madame escaped.

Hubert was delighted with the little lady's manoeuvre, designed, as he knew, to leave him alone with Cynthia. As for Cynthia, she gave one scared look round, as if she dreaded to meet his eyes, then dropped into the nearest chair and placed one hand over her face. He thought that she was crying.

"Cynthia, my darling, what is all this?" he said approaching her. "My dearest, you are not happy! What can I do?"

"Nothing," she answered, dashing away a tear and letting her hand fall into her lap--"nothing indeed!"

"But you are not--as Madame says--quite like yourself."

"I know; I am very cross and disagreeable," said Cynthia, with a resolute assumption of gaiety. "I always had a bad temper; and it is well perhaps that you should find it out."

Without speaking, he bent his head to kiss her; but she drew back.

"No!" she said, with decision. "No, Hubert--Mr. Lepel, I mean--that will not do!"

"What, Cynthia?"

"We are not engaged. We are really nothing to each other; I was wrong to forget that before."

"This is surely a new view on the subject, Cynthia!"

"Yes; it is the view I have taken ever since I thought it over. We will be friends, if you like--I will always be your friend"--and there came over her face an indescribable expression of yearning and passionate regret--"but we must remember that I shall be nothing more."

"Nothing more? Why, my darling, do you forget what you promised me--that at the end of two years----"

"If you were free--yes," she interrupted him. "But it was a foolish promise. You know that you are not likely to be free. You--you knew that when you told me that you loved me!" She set her teeth and gave him a look of bitter reproach.

"What does this mean?" said Hubert, flushing up to the roots of his hair. "I told you everything the next morning, Cynthia; and I acknowledged to you that I loved you only because I thought that I was too miserable a wretch for you to cast a sigh upon. You have changed since then--not I."

Cynthia suddenly rose from her chair.

"I hear the carriage," she said abruptly; "Madame is at the door. There is no use in continuing this conversation."

"No use at all," said Hubert, who by this time was not in the best of tempers. "Perhaps you would rather that I did not accompany you to-night, Miss West?" "Oh, pray come!" said Cynthia, with a heartless little laugh. "Madame will never forgive me if I deprive her of a cavalier! It does not matter to me."

Hubert turned at once to Madame della Scala, and offered her his arm with the courtesy of manner which she always averred she found in so few Englishmen, but which he displayed to perfection. Cynthia followed, not waiting for him to lead her to the carriage. He was about to hand her to her seat, but she had so elaborately encumbered herself with gloves, fan, bouquet, and sweeping silken train, that it seemed as if she could not possibly disentangle her hands in time to receive his help. She took her seat beside Madame with her usual smiling nonchalance, and the two ladies waited for Mr. Lepel to take the opposite seat. He took off his hat and made a sweeping bow.

"Madame," he said, "I am unfeignedly sorry, but I find that circumstances will not allow me to accompany you this evening. Will you pardon me therefore if I decline the honor of the seat you have offered me?"

This stately mode of speech was intended to pacify Madame della Scala, who liked to be addressed as if she were a princess; he knew that she would be angry enough at his defection. Before she had recovered herself so far as to speak, he fell back and signed to the coachman to drive on.

They had left him far behind before Madame ceased to vent her exclamations of wrath, despair, and disappointment.

"What can he mean by 'circumstances'?" This was the phrase that rose most frequently to her tongue. "'Circumstances will not allow me'! But that is nonsense--absolutely nonsense!"

"I think by 'circumstances' he meant me," said Cynthia at last--by which remark she diverted all Madame's wrath upon her own unlucky head.

She did not seem to mind however. She looked brilliant that evening, and she sang her best. There was a royal personage amongst her hearers, and the royal personage begged to be presented to her, and complimented her upon her singing. As Cynthia made her little curtsey and smiled her bright little smile, she wondered what the royal personage would say if he knew that she was "Westwood, the murderer's daughter." She had been called so too often in her earliest years ever to forget the title.

In spite of her waywardness that night, she was woman enough to wish that Hubert had been there to witness her triumph. She had never offended him before. She thought that perhaps he would come back, and darted hasty glances at the throng of smart folk around her, longing to see his dark face in some corner of the room. But she was disappointed; he did not come.

"Oh, Miss West," said her hostess to her, in the course of the evening, "do come here one moment! I hope you won't be very much bored; you young people always like other young people best, I know. But there is a lady here--an old lady--who is very much impressed by your voice--your charming voice--and wants to know you; and she is really worth knowing, I assure you--gives delightful parties now and then."

"I shall be most happy!" said Cynthia brightly. "I like old ladies very much; they generally have something to say."

"Which young men do not, do they? Oh, fie, you naughty girl! I saw you with young Lord Frederick over there---- Dear Miss Vane, this is our sweet songstress, Miss Cynthia West--Miss Vane. I have just been telling her how much you admire her lovely singing;" and then the hostess hurried away.

Something like an electric shock seemed to pass through Cynthia's frame.

She did not show any trace of emotion, the smile did not waver on her lips; but suddenly, as she bowed gracefully to the handsome, keen-eyed old lady to whom she had just been introduced, she saw herself a ragged, unkempt, savage little waif and stray, fresh from the workhouse, standing on a summer day upon a dusty road, the centre of a little group of persons whose faces came back to her one by one with painful distinctness. There was the old lady--not so wrinkled as this old lady, but still with the same clearly-cut features, the same sharp eyes, the same inflexible mouth; there was the child with delicate limbs and dainty movements, with sweet sympathetic eyes and lovely golden hair, which Cynthia had passionately admired as she had never admired any other hair and eyes in the world before; and there was a young man. His face had hitherto been the one that she thought she remembered best; she was suddenly aware that she had so idealised and glorified it that its very features had become unreal, and that when she met it in the flesh in later years it remained unrecognisable. Never once till now had it been borne in upon her that this hero of her childish dreams and her present lover were one and the same. It was a terrible shock to her--and greater even then she knew.

"I am glad to make your acquaintance, Miss West," said Miss Leonora Vane, holding out her hand so cordially that Cynthia could not in common politeness refuse to take it. "Your singing has delighted everybody--and myself, I am sure I may say, not least. You have been some time in Italy, I suppose? Do sit down here and tell me where you studied."

Cynthia fancied that she heard the same voice telling her what a wicked girl she was, and that she deserved to be whipped for running away from the workhouse. She repressed a little shudder, and answered smilingly--

"You are very kind. Yes, I have studied in Italy."

"Under Lamperti, I hear. Do you think of coming out in opera next season? You may always count me among your audience."

Cynthia remembered how this courteous gentlewoman had once put her hand over her eyes and declared that the sight of Westwood's daughter made her ill. The burning sense of injustice that had then taken possession of the child's soul rose up as strong as ever in the woman. She wished, in her bitterness, that she were free to rise from her seat and cry aloud--

"Yes, look at me--listen to me--for I am Westwood's daughter! I am the child of a felon and escaped convict, a man whom you call a murderer--and I am proud of my name!"

Curiously enough, Miss Vane touched closely upon this subject before long. She was anxious to know whether Cynthia's name was her own or only assumed for stage purposes, and managed to put her question in such a way that it sounded less like impertinence than a manifestation of kindly interest--which was very clever of Miss Vane.

"No," said Cynthia coldly, "'West' is not my name exactly; but I prefer to be known by it at present."

She had never said as much before; and Miss Vane felt herself a little bit snubbed, and decided that the new singer had not at all good manners; but she meant to secure her for her next party nevertheless.

She rather prided herself upon her parties.

To her utter surprise and bewilderment, Miss Cynthia West absolutely declined to come. She gave no reason except that she thought that she should before long give up singing in drawing-rooms at all; and she was not to be moved by any consideration of payment. Miss Vane ventured to intimate that she did not mind what she paid; but she was met by so frigid a glance that she was really obliged, in self-defence, to be silent. She carried away an unpleasant impression of Cynthia West, and was heard to say afterwards that she could believe anything of that young woman.