And so her presence by my side soothed away almost at once the excitation and the spiritual disturbance of the scene through which I had just passed with Emmeline; and I was disposed, if not to laugh at the whole thing, at any rate to regard it calmly, dispassionately, as one of the various inexplicable matters with which one meets in a world absurdly called prosaic.  I was sure that no trick had been played upon me.  I was sure that I had actually seen in the crystal what I had described to Emmeline, and that she, too, had seen it.  But then, I argued, such an experience might be the result of hypnotic suggestion, or of thought transference, or of some other imperfectly understood agency....  Rosetta Rosa an instrument of misfortune!  No!

When I looked at her I comprehended how men have stopped at nothing for the sake of love, and how a woman, if only she be beautiful enough, may wield a power compared to which the sway of a Tsar, even a Tsar unhampered by Dumas, is impotence itself.  Even at that early stage I had begun to be a captive to her.  But I did not believe that her rule was malign.

“Mr. Foster,” she said, “I have asked you to see me to my carriage, but really I want you to do more than that.  I want you to go with me to poor Alresca’s.  He is progressing satisfactorily, so far as I can judge, but the dear fellow is thoroughly depressed.  I saw him this afternoon, and he wished, if I met you here to-night, that I should bring you to him.  He has a proposition to make to you, and I hope you will accept it.”

“I shall accept it, then,” I said.

She pulled out a tiny gold watch, glistening with diamonds.

“It is half-past one,” she said.  “We might be there in ten minutes.  You don’t mind it being late, I suppose.  We singers, you know, have our own hours.”

In the foyer we had to wait while the carriage was called.  I stood silent, and perhaps abstracted, at her elbow, absorbed in the pride and happiness of being so close to her, and looking forward with a tremulous pleasure to the drive through London at her side.  She was dressed in gray, with a large ermine-lined cloak, and she wore no ornaments except a thin jewelled dagger in her lovely hair.

All at once I saw that she flushed, and, following the direction of her eyes, I beheld Sir Cyril Smart, with a startled gaze fixed immovably on her face.  Except the footmen and the attendants attached to the hotel, there were not half a dozen people in the entrance-hall at this moment.  Sir Cyril was nearly as white as the marble floor.  He made a step forward, and then stood still.  She, too, moved towards him, as it seemed, involuntarily.

“Good evening, Miss Rosa,” he said at length, with a stiff inclination.  She responded, and once more they stared at each other.  I wondered whether they had quarrelled again, or whether both were by some mischance simultaneously indisposed.  Surely they must have already met during the evening at the Opera!