Part 16 (2/2)

”Of course. She's old Cedar-tank Merton's only thing,” replied the girl rather flippantly, Patricia thought. ”She's hordes and gobs of coin, as well as being gifted with a voice and a family tree that makes the California redwoods look like mere bushes. You're with Tancredi, too, aren't you?”

Patricia nodded.

”I suppose she has a name, though I haven't heard it,” the girl said to Constance, who was chatting with someone at an opposite table.

Constance did not hear her, but Patricia readily supplied the deficiency.

”I'm Patricia Kendall,” she said, feeling rather apologetic for herself, though she did not know quite why.

”I'm Louise Woods,” replied the other. ”I'll look you up some time after I've spotted you and tell you what Tancredi says about _you_.”

”Oh, it couldn't be much,” cried Patricia in dismay. ”I've just begun to study and Tancredi only bothers with me because a friend of hers asked her to.”

The girl seemed not much impressed. ”You've got something up your sleeve, I think,” she smiled as she rose. ”Tancredi doesn't cast her pearls before swine that way.”

Patricia watched her making her sociable way out of the room, and she decided that she liked her.

”I wonder why I never met her before?” she thought, and then realized how completely Rosamond had blocked her view of all the other girls. ”I guess I'll not be half so lonely as I thought. They all seem so kind.”

She felt still better content when, as the twilight gathered and Doris came to make one of their group, one of the girls went to the big piano and ill.u.s.trated her idea of the Swan Song in Lohengrin, striking pa.s.sionate chords with her finger-tips and throwing her full-toned contralto into the dimness with an effect that was thrilling to Patricia.

Then another girl pushed her from the seat and, interrupting herself from time to time with explanations of the method, sang part of the scene where Louise leaves her home.

The magic of the dim hour was on them and they gave themselves to the music entire. The great winged Victory above the bookshelf showed back of the singer's dark head. The real everyday world dropped away and a more real and vital world took its place. One after another, the music students took their place eagerly on the seat, and sang or played the melody that was surging within them, to which the magic moment had given utterance.

Patricia never knew how it ended or if it were herself that was back in the everyday world of the cafe, eating dinner with Rosamond as usual, or whether she was still in that twilit world of melody listening to the voices, until Rosamond said rather sharply for her:

”Are you ill, Miss Pat, that you look so strange?”

Then Patricia drew herself together and managed to appear as normal as she could, but her one desire was to get away by herself to gloat over the riches that had been flung in her lap.

”I'd never, never known how splendid it was if I hadn't left Rosamond,”

she marveled. ”Oh, how much I've been missing all this time!”

She was so taken out of herself by the beautiful experience that she hurried to her room and sat down to write a note to Elinor, begging her to forgive her silly conduct and her rank ingrat.i.tude for all their care. She made it as strong as that, and when she had sealed it she went down and put it in the mail-box herself, so eager was she that it should speed on its way.

She went to her room with a lighter heart and the day ended triumphantly with her. She counted the good things that had come to her on her fingers. First, she had cheered Rita Stanford--that she was sure of.

Next, she had not shown any ill feeling towards Rosamond--her visits in morning and afternoon proved that. And third, she had been received into the fellows.h.i.+p of the musical set in a way that set her dreaming of the hour when she, too, might take her place on the seat of the grand piano in the twilight and sing out what was in her heart. Then, she had conquered her reluctance to make the first overtures to Elinor, and she had discovered that the girls in the next room were going to be worth while.

That finished off one hand and she paused as she began on the other.

What was it the Woods girl had said about Rosamond entertaining Madame Milano at luncheon last week? Patricia would have thought it a mistake a week ago, but now she believed Rosamond capable of forgetting to tell her such a momentous fact.

”She doesn't care for me at all any more,” she thought, with a sort of slow contempt rising through the sadness that the memory had brought back to her.

”I don't believe she ever did care for me,” she said, a few minutes later. ”I think she only tolerated me because she thought that I must be going to have a wonderful voice since Milano recommended, but when she found that I was only a stupid beginner, and not worth bothering with, she forgot I was in existence except when I was in sight.”

<script>