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had made his way to the seat Lady Adelaide had vacated for one at the back of the box, in order to converse with some gentlemen.

"Who?" Aline asked, blushing and smiling.

"Who? why the angel who is turning all the ladies' heads-that man Angelo."

"He does sing most beautifully," she answered, simply but earnestly.

"I am so glad to see you here, Aline," the young man continued, affectionately; "this looks something like your coming out; when will that really be?"

"Oh! not for a whole year, I am only sixteen to-day."

"What a bore! oh will you not enjoy your first ball!"

"Not half so much as my first opera, I am sure," Aline replied with a mingled smile and sigh, as if she felt that the enjoyment she had tasted that night, had been too exquisite to allow of any other ever being of equal relish.

"What, not even to dance with me?" was the young man's exclamation.

"No, not even that," she said, with her truthful, childlike smile, cold as the first dawn of morning.

And Aline returned home to her school

room her studious seclusion

and in her dreams, in her vivid remembrance alone, was

this exquisite treat renewed.

But it had not been lost upon her—this one night had, as it were, given her her first insight into the mysteries and magic of music. Indeed, her singing instructress was charmed with the perceptible improvement, the enlarged comprehension of the art now joined to her native talent and power. She longed for others to hear and admire, but, as yet her pupil had never sang out of her own immediate family circle.

Music was, that season, all the rage in the fashionable world.

Lady Adelaide Seyton's house was the centre

of all that was brilliant and excellent in that line, both amateur and professional.

Evening concerts, morning rehearsals, were weekly carried on in her house, to which the young recluse could only listen from afar, like a caged bird to the free vocalists of the woods, from her gloomy school-room, or her restless couch.

CHAPTER V.

"Of all the arts beneath the heaven,
That man has found, or God has given,
None draws the soul so sweet away,

As music's melting mystic lay,
Slight emblem of the bliss above,

It soothes the spirit all to love."

ETTRICK Shepherd.

It was at the opening of the season that Aline had gone to the Opera, and the gay spring was towards its close, and the young girl still pursued her studies, in the seclusion of the school-room.

But there was an important break made at length in this state of affairs.

It was at the close of one of those rehearsals in preparation for a musical entertainment, intended to exceed all its predecessors in brilliancy, which was to be given by her ladyship the following week, that one morning, the door of the school-room opened, and Lady Adelaide entered, followed by Madame C., the singing mistress of Miss Seyton, and a stranger, for whose presence Lady Adelaide thus accounted, as her daughter and the governess arose to meet her.

"Dear Aline, Madame C. and I have brought this gentleman to give us his opinion of your voice; Madame has told him wonders, so you must do your best."

"Oh Madame !" said Aline, blushing, and with a reproachful glance at her instructress. "Come, come, ma rosignole! do not be afraid, but shew off your belle voix ;" and Madame C. sat down to the piano, which Aline approached with all the disagreeable

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