deferring that treat as long as possible. One day, however, he begged 'dear mamma' to make herself and us as handsome as possible.

'We go to hear Serlini,' he explained; and mine old pupil and still good friend Givori has sent me a box. Ha, Miss Annie, what say you now!-long wished for, come at last. Such a treat! such an actor! such an actress! and, ach Gott, such singers too! We must all put on our best bibs and tuckers. Ah, you laugh! You are always laughing at Droigel. You are a naughty girl, Miss Annie, for all your grave face and demure little ways-always making fun of the fat old master who is teaching you so much.'

6

'Don't get pathetic, papa,' said Gretchen, or you will make Annie cry.' And then she took him round the neck, and kissed first one cheek and then the other, after which she executed a pas seul round the table, finishing her performances by waltzing me out of the room, in order to look up our finery.

Áh, Heaven, what a pity! what a pity' said the Professor, following her movements with a melancholy pride.

"That I have no voice,' panted Gretchen, pausing. It is a pity; for had I possessed one, I might have become another Serlini.'

'Ach, no,' answered her father; 'there is but one Serlini ; there will never be no other.'

'The mould was broken up after she was created,' remarked Miss Gretchen gaily. There is but one Serlini, and Herr Droigel is her prophet and Annie her worshipper.'

'Will one of you two girls sew my body into my blue-silk skirt ?' asked Madam in her broken English. Born in the country, she had never learnt to speak its language any better than her father and mother had done before her.

'Yes,' answered Gretchen; 'one of us two girls-Annie, to wit-will perform the surgical operation you have mentioned.'

Not without difficulty did we succeed in so dressing Madam as to render her presentable; but when at length her toilette was completed, and Herr Droigel admitted to a private view, his satisfaction could only find expression in a Babel of language I dare not attempt to reproduce.

She was charming; she was beautiful as in her first youth. No one would believe she could ever have chosen such a fat awkward husband as poor Droigel.

Proud girls were we as we looked and listened and laughed. Happy girls when, dressed in all our best, we squeezed ourselves together as Herr Droigel's huge body, coming into the cab, tightened us up as though he were a cramp.

'I don't believe it is real-I don't believe we shall ever get there,' said Gretchen, looking radiantly pretty.

She but expressed my feelings. I kept tight hold of her hand, and had to say perpetually to myself, 'I am going to the Opera,' in order to feel I was not dreaming. I had done the same thing in Fairport years and years before. Had time gone back? Was I walking over again within sound of the murmuring sea? For a moment as I closed my eyes the illusion seemed perfect, but when I opened them, wet with tears, I beheld the thronged streets, the bright gaslight, the thousands hurrying this way and that.

The night which came back to my memory so vividly had wrought all this change in my life. From quiet Lovedale to London was a transition not more extraordinary than that I, the country-bred child, reared in such seclusion, fenced round with prejudices and loving strictness, should be now in training for a public singer.

Let speculators build as many new opera-houses as they please, they will never raise another edifice so dear to the hearts of a former generation as Her Majesty's.

It is all very well for young and flippant writers to speak of the Dust-hole in the Haymarket, but can they crowd another house with the memories and the traditions that contained?

What actors and actresses have trod those boards! what floods of melody have been poured forth under its roof! what stories, sinful and tragic and pitiful, have been played out behind the scenes! what gay, and witty, and sorrowful, and gloomy, and distinguished, and wicked men and women have jostled each other in the crush-room!

It was fitting that when the time came for the old house to pass away, fire should have been the agent for its destruction.

Who that loved Her Majesty'sand what veteran opera-goer failed to do so! could have endured to

behold the building torn limb from limb by callous workmen, its properties sold, its stage pulled down, its scenery carted off, its boxes sold for firewood?

Better so, I believe, must have been the second thought of every man and woman who had memories connected with the dear old operahouse. The first thought naturally was one of regret; the next, that as its days could not in any event have been long in the land, it had perished so gloriously.

Fairyland had the poor little theatre at Fairport seemed to me that evening when I entered it with my uncle.

If there be a seventh heaven of fairyland, I entered it that night with Herr Droigel. To others the gilding and the paint might have seemed dingy and the curtains faded, but to me they were fresh, and bright, and beautiful.

We were all kings and queens and princesses in our box. Herr Droigel arrayed so carefully that it seemed impossible to associate him and the word dishabille together; Madam clad in many colours, a style of costume which suited her; Gretchen and myself simply attired as became our youth, but still dressed for the evening, and looking as well as our neighbours.

The opera was Les Huguenots. Shall I ever forget it as then performed, ever lose the memory of how Serlini sung, and Givori sustained his part? To the end of my life I shall recollect the clapping, the encores, the bouquets, the frantic applause, which greeted the prima donna.

'Ah!' exclaimed Herr Droigel, as she at length retired from the stage half concealed by flowers, 'that is a life worth living for, the only life worth having.'

As for me, I could not speak, my very soul seemed to have left me and gone out to seek that woman, who, marvellous when I first heard her, had since developed powers which rendered Herr Droigel's remark of there being but one Serlini no exaggeration.

There never was her equal before, there never will be her equal again. Voice, culture, passion, pathos, beauty, grace, all these she combined in her own person.

She has gone, and left no copy of herself. Never for ever will another Serlini cross an English or any other stage.

After that night it so happened that other tickets were sent, and we went twice again that season to the Opera. Then Herr Droigel remarking that late hours and a summer in London were destroying his sweet Annie's good looks, we suddenly packed up and transported ourselves to the sea-side.

There, however, my lessons still continued. We had a detached

cottage and a hired piano, and my master divided his time between composing music and finding fault with me.

'Depend upon it,' said Gretchen, who understood the signs of her father's barometer, 'he intends to bring you out next season. He is not quite satisfied as to the prudence of his determination, but he has resolved to risk the plunge.'

'But if I should fail,' I suggested. 'Pshaw!' she replied; 'you won't fail unless you wish to do so. We all know that.'

'But it is so soon,' I murmured. 'It is like having a tooth out,' she replied; 'the sooner the operation is over, the sooner you will be at ease. Listen to me, Annie,' she went on. 'You are one of those absurd girls who ought to have a father and mother and half a dozen brothers and sisters to maintain, in which case you would be so anxious to earn money that you would forget yourself and everything except money. Now you profess to be fond of me, and I believe you are; therefore, the moment you get up to sing, think, "I am singing for Gretchen. If I succeed, she will be happy; if I fail, times will not be good with her." Say to yourself, "I am singing to give Gretchen a dot; if I get an encore, that means happiness and ease to the Droigels. They have invested in me--if I turn out a poor affair, they lose both hope and money; whereas if I succeed, we-they and I-will be rich and prosperous and content.",

When I think over all this now, it seems to me that a portion at least of Herr Droigel's mantle had fallen upon Gretchen, that, like her father, she was wise in her generation; and yet, why should I blame the girl? She was getting, I doubt not, weary of comparative poverty, and she looked to me as a certain deliverer.

Still, if I failed! That idea was ever present with me whilst practising and taking my lessons; but whenever I could sing out the songs I fancied, all alone by myself, no doubt of success entered my mind.

Chafed and worn and mortified, and scolded by Herr Droigel, music was one thing. Sung as I listed -without teacher or critic - it proved quite another.

And in this way I was, one afternoon, screaming out to myself an aria from the last opera we had heard shrieking, declaiming, in my own poor manner travestying the brilliant prima donna.

The house, to all intents and purposes, I had to myself-for there was only one woman in it, and she nearly deaf.

Two days previously, Herr Droigel had, with many protestations of regret, and assurances of his unalterable attachment for us individually and collectively, left our temporary home for London.

Madam and Gretchen were out boating, and I was doing what I dared not to have done had the Professor been within sound of my voice, trying over song after song, humming the easiest parts, skipping the most difficult, slurring over brilliant passages-ganging mine ain gait,' in fact, in defiance of all commands, entreaties, and injunctions; and, it is needless to add, enjoying myself thoroughly.

At length I came to one of the most lovely of operatic melodiesone which I had heard sung by Madame Serlini a short time before we left town.

As I played the symphony, every tone of voice, every turn of expression, seemed to come back to my memory; and flinging aside the repression I always felt when singing to Herr Droigel, I broke out with a power of voice and a strength of passion to which I had

never before given utterance since I left Alford.

As the last note died away, as it was intended to do, in almost a sob, Herr Droigel put his head through the open window, and said,

'Go on.'

Instead of going on, I jumped up from the piano, upset the music in my fright, and was essaying to collect the scattered sheets when my master entered the room.

Go on,' he repeated; if you can sing like that, always sing the same do you hear-repeat that for me similar once again.'

He might as well have told me to stand on my head.

What is the matter with you, child?' he exclaimed. 'What are you trembling about? Why for do you fear Droigel? Am I a monster that you shake and shiver? Have I beat you? have I spoken hard words to you? have I not been kind to you as to mine own? Come, tell me what it is I have done that you can sing well the moment my back is turned, and then, when I do show myself, you turn white, as if you did see one ghost.'

"When I am singing to you,' I answered, 'I feel I am always going wrong.'

And so you do go wrong often, and it is my right to tell you that; but because I do tell you, that is no reason why you should shut up your voice in a box, and only let out through one tiny hole. Come here, close to the light-stand-so -that will do. I want to look at you.'

And he did. He looked at me from head to foot; he measured my inches with his eye; he mentally criticised my figure, which must, in comparison to his, have seemed about as slight as a reed; he gazed thoughtfully at my face; with his hand under my chin, he examined my features closely; and

VOL. XI.

then with a sigh he patted my shoulder, and said sadly,

'No; it would be a waste of power and time. For that a woman must have a presence, or she must have piquancy. If diminutive, she should be bright, and arch, and pert, and coquettish. At the bottom of that sort of success there is always a devil, and thou hast no devil, Annie. If we could put one into thee, all might be different. Bah! what a stupid head I am to babble such folly! Let us go out and have a walk in this delightful air. Let us forget music and the world, and fancy we are back in happy Alford once again.'

As we paced along, the fresh sea breeze blowing in our faces, Herr Droigel, anxious apparently to dissipate that feeling of restraint which a pupil always, I think, feels towards a teacher, and which increases instead of decreasing as time goes by, exerted himself to amuse and interest me.

He could talk well when he thought fit to drop his absurd mannerisms and to discourse like an ordinary human being, and he chose on that day to speak about subjects which had a great fascination for

me.

He told me about his youth; he described his birthplace; we lingered together in foreign cathedrals; he had much to say about the celebrated men and women with whom he had come in contact.

Never did I enjoy a walk more, and I was telling him so while we slowly climbed the hill on the top of which our cottage stood perched, when a small pony-chaise containing two persons, a lady and a gentleman, passed us.

Something in the lady's face seemed familiar to me. Something in mine apparently was familiar to her, for she said to her companion, without in the least lowering her tone,

F

'Stop the pony, George, and let those people overtake us. I think I know the girl;' and turning round she stared at me fixedly for an instant before exclaiming, 'Yes, it is little Trenet. What in the world are you doing here? And jumping

lightly out she took both my hands in hers, saying at the same time, 'You have forgotten me; you cannot remember who I am.'

'I have not forgotten you, Miss Cleeve,' I answered; 'you are not changed in the least!'