Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/519

Rh "It will not be the singing he will care for this time," she said, in a tired voice.

And Juliet read her lover aright. Never had I liked Bernard as well as I did that day when he came in straight from the station with a newspaper in his hand. He looked worried, but that was all. So generous and honest was he that he never doubted that there was a mistake, that an explanation was ready.

"Look here, Juliet," he called up the staircase to her. "I have something to show you! You have a namesake, and in all your life you'll never sing as well as she does."

Juliet came slowly down the stairs, and she took the paper, but she did not look at it. She had not read any of the notices, although she knew that I had bought all the morning papers and that they were in my room. But Juliet cared little for the past; her eyes were always on the future.

I was in the parlor. I had been copying music, and I stayed there. Juliet sat down by the fire, holding the paper in her hand, and Bernard stood smiling at her.

"You look tired," he said.

"I am," she answered.

"And how do you think she feels?"

"Who?"

"The other Juliet Abercrombie."

"Oh, nonsense!" she answered. "You know there is no other."

"You don't mean that you sang last night?"

"Certainly I do."

He answered her not a word, but he turned and went out of the room. We watched him as he put on his overcoat and hat in the hallway, but we said not a word. Then he went out of the house.

After a little Juliet spoke. "That, I suppose, was the Mendoza blood!" she said, and she too left the house, and it was hours before she came back from a long walk.

Now, as Juliet told me the story, without apology, she was not so much to blame, except for her most lamentable concealment. Her singing-teacher, Mr. Leopardi, was an old man, and poor, because of an improvident son, and in the long years of his life he had never had such a pupil as Juliet, and it deeply disappointed him that she had surrendered a public career, for he was training her for opera. When there came to him a letter from the leader of a famous orchestra saying that his chief soprano was ill and that her place in the concert to be given in our city in a day or so could not be filled, he telegraphed back that he would fill her place and that he would guarantee a success. Then he sent for Juliet, and he told her that if she would but sing, his future, because he was her teacher, would be secure. Juliet was fond of him, and he had been kind to her, so she consented, and then did not know what to do, because she was sure Bernard would be violent in his disapproval, and she did not tell me, because she resolved to bear all the blame herself.

We looked for Bernard that night and the next, but he did not come. Then there arrived a little note, and this was all it said: