"My dear, a professional singer spoils everything," said Miss Marjoribanks; "it changes the character of an evening altogether. There are so few people who understand that. When you have professional singers, you have to give yourself up to music; and that is not my view in the least. My great aim, as all my friends are aware, is to be a comfort to dear papa."
"I wish you would not talk in riddles," said Lucilla's amazed and indignant companion, in her round rich contralto. "I suppose you really are Miss Marjoribanks. I have always heard that Miss Marjoribanks was a little——"
"There!" said Lucilla triumphantly; "really it is almost like a recitativo to hear you speak. I am so glad. What have you got there? Oh, to be sure, it's that duet out of the Trovatore. Do let us try it; there is nobody here, and everything is so convenient—and you know it would never do to risk a breakdown. Will you play the accompaniment, or shall I?" said Miss Marjoribanks, taking off her gloves. As for the drawing-master's daughter, she stood aghast, lost in such sudden bewilderment and perplexity that she could find no words to reply. She was not in the least amiable or yielding by nature; but Lucilla took it so much as a matter of course that Barbara could not find a word to say; and before she could be sure that it was real, Miss Marjoribanks had seated herself at the piano. Barbara was so obstinate that she would not sing the first part, which ought to have been hers; but she was not clever enough for her antagonist. Lucilla sang her part by herself gallantly; and when it came to Barbara's turn the second time, Miss Marjoribanks essayed the second in a false voice, which drove the contralto off her guard; and then the magnificent volume of sound flowed forth, grand enough to have filled Lucilla with envy if she had not been sustained by that sublime confidence in herself which is the first necessity to a woman with a mission. She paused a moment in the accompaniment to clap her hands after that strophe was accomplished, and then resumed with energy. For, to be sure, she knew by instinct what sort of clay the people were made of by whom she had to work, and gave them their reward with that liberality and discrimination which is the glory of enlightened despotism. Miss Marjoribanks was naturally elated when she had performed this important and successful tour. She got up from the piano, and closed it in her open, imperial way. "I do not want to tire you, you know," she said; "that will do for to-day. I told you your voice was the very thing to go with mine. Give my love to Rose when she comes in, but don't bring her with you when you come to me. She is a good little thing—but then she is different, you know," said the bland Lucilla; and she held out her hand to her captive graciously, and gathered up her parasol, which she had left on her chair. Barbara Lake let her visitor go after this, with a sense that she had fallen asleep, and had dreamt it all; but, after all, there was something in the visit which was not disagreeable when she came to think it over. The drawing-master was poor, and he had a quantity of children, as was natural, and Barbara had never forgiven her mother for dying just at the moment when she had a chance of seeing a little of what she called the world. At that time Mr. Lake and his portfolio of drawings were asked out frequently to tea; and when he had pupils in the family, some kind people asked him to bring one of his daughters with him—so that Barbara, who was ambitious, had beheld herself for a month or two almost on the threshold of Grange Lane. And it was at this moment of all others, just at the same time as Mrs. Marjoribanks finished her pale career, that poor Mrs. Lake thought fit to die, to the injury of her daughter's prospects and the destruction of her hopes. Naturally Barbara had never quite forgiven that injury. It was this sense of having been ill-used which made her so resolute about sending Rose to Mount Pleasant, though the poor little girl did not in the least want to go, and was very happy helping her papa at the School of Design. But Barbara saw no reason why Rose should be happy, while she herself had to resign her inclinations and look after a set of odious children. To be sure, it was a little hard upon a young woman of a proper ambition, who knew she was handsome, to fall back into housekeeping, and consent to remain unseen and unheard; for Barbara was also aware that she had a remarkable voice. In these circumstances, it may be imagined that, after the first movement of a passionate temper was over, when she had taken breath, and had time to consider this sudden and extraordinary visit, a glimmer of hope and interest penetrated into the bosom of the gloomy girl. She was two years older than Miss Marjoribanks, and as different in "style" as she was in voice. She was not stout as yet, though it is the nature of a contralto to be stout; but she was tall, with all due opportunity for that development which might come later. And then Barbara possessed a kind of beauty, the beauty of a passionate and somewhat sullen brunette, dark and glowing, with straight black eyebrows, very dark and very straight, which gave, oddly enough, a suggestion of oblique vision to her eyes; but her eyes were not in the least oblique, and looked at you straight from under that black line of shadow with no doubtful expression. She was shy in a kind of way, as was natural to a young woman who had never seen any society, and felt herself, on the whole, injured and unappreciated. But no two things could be more different than this shyness which made Barbara look you straight in the face with a kind of scared defiance, and the sweet shyness that pleaded for kind treatment in the soft eyes of little Rose, who was plain, and had the oddest longing to make people comfortable, and please them in her way, which, to be sure, was not always successful. Barbara sat down on the stool before the piano, which Miss Marjoribanks had been so obliging as to close, and thought it all over with growing excitement. No doubt it was a little puzzling to make out how the discovery of a fine contralto, and the possibility of getting up unlimited duets, could further Lucilla in the great aim of her life, which was to be a comfort to her dear papa. But Barbara was like a young soldier of fortune, ready to take a great deal for granted, and swallow much that was mysterious in the programme of the adventurous general who might lead her on to glory. In half an hour her dreams had gone so far that she saw herself receiving in Miss Marjoribanks's drawing-room the homage, not only of Grange Lane, but even of the county families, who would be attracted by rumours of her wonderful performance; and Barbara was, to her own consciousness, walking up the middle aisle of Carlingford Church in a veil of real Brussels, before little Mr. Lake came in, hungry and good-tempered, from his round. To be sure, she had not concluded who was to be the bridegroom; but that was one of those matters of detail which could not be precisely concluded on till the time.
Such was the immediate result, so far as this secondary personage was concerned, of Lucilla's masterly impromptu; and it is needless to say that the accomplished warrior, who had her wits always about her, and had made, while engaged in a simple reconnaissance, so brilliant and successful a capture, withdrew from the scene still more entirely satisfied with herself. Nothing, indeed, could have come more opportunely for Lucilla, who possessed in perfection that faculty of throwing herself into the future, and anticipating the difficulties of a position, which is so valuable to all who aspire to be leaders of mankind. With a prudence which Dr. Marjoribanks himself would have acknowledged to be remarkable "in a person of her age and sex," Lucilla had already foreseen that to amuse her guests entirely in her own person, would be at once impracticable and "bad style." The first objection might have been got over, for Miss Marjoribanks had a soul above the ordinary limits of possibility, but the second unanswerable. This discovery, however, satisfied all the necessities of the position. Lucilla, who was liberal, as genius ought always to be, was perfectly willing that all the young ladies in Carlingford should sing their little songs while she was entertaining her guests; and then at the right moment, when her ruling mind saw it was necessary, would occur the duet—the one duet which would be the great feature of the evening. Thus it will be seen that another quality of the highest order developed itself during Miss Marjoribanks's deliberations; for, to tell the truth, she set a good deal of store by her voice, and had been used to applause, and had tasted the sweetness of individual success. This, however, she was willing to sacrifice for the enhanced and magnificent effect which she felt could be produced by the combination of the two voices; and the sacrifice was one which a weaker woman would have been incapable of making. She went home past Salem Chapel by the little lane which makes a line of communication between the end of Grove Street and the beginning of Grange Lane, with a sentiment of satisfaction worthy the greatness of her mission. Dr. Marjoribanks never came home to lunch, and indeed had a contempt for that feminine indulgence; which, to be sure, might be accounted for by the fact that about that time in the day the Doctor very often found himself to be passing close by one or other of the houses in the neighbourhood which had a reputation for good sherry or madeira, such as exists no more.