shudder thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme.
de Serizy from her place.

"What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such weak health;
I was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so far beyond her
strength."

The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not courage to sing
any longer, and submitted to her rival's treacherous sympathy. There
was a whisper among the women. The incident led to discussions; they
guessed that the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de
Serizy, and their tongues did not spare the latter.

Julie's strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized.
Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that
with that gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first
love. There were times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and
passionate young love should have been hers; the passion of the young
lover whose thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment
of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might
think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune in devotion to his love,
--she need never fear a rival. All these things she had fondly and
idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at once it seemed to her that her
dream had come true. In the young Englishman's half-feminine face she
read the same deep thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same
passive acquiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own.
She saw herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most eloquent of
love's interpreters, and response is marvelously swift between two
suffering creatures, for in them the powers of intuition and of
assimilation of facts and ideas are well-nigh unerring and perfect. So