"It Might Have Been."

CHAPTER I.

THE DEBUTANTE.

Ir was a dull rainy evening in the spring of 1861. A few determined lovers of music were assembled in the New York Academy of Music, to listen to the closing performance of a brief and unsuccessful season of Italian opera. The small isolated groups that formed the audience looked lost amid the massive white and gold pillars of the auditorium, the proscenium boxes yawned, empty, dimly lighted, and cavernous, and the scattered occupants of the parquet had each a row or two of chairs from which to select their seats. The season-thanks to the charms of a young prima donna, a débutante with a fair face and a lovely voice, and to the engagement of a veteran tenor possessed of two notes and a half and a great deal of science, remains of the qualities which had gained him his European reputation-had at first promised to be a brilliant success; but the fall of Sumter had crushed the manager's hopes into the dust. The curtain had risen on the first act of the mighty tragedy of the Rebellion, and the people were watching the first movements of the actors on that terrible stage with interest too great and too deeply absorbed to be turned aside for the dulcet strains of an opera or the commonplace excitements of a play.

Yet, under any other circumstances, the performance that evening would have been deemed worthy of admiration. The opera was Lucia di Lammermoor, and, as it was one in which all the singers were well versed, it was going off with considerable smoothness, and

no lack of spirit. The antiquated tenor, with that perversity which is usually displayed by singers with worn and uncertain voices, had been seized with a fit of enthusiasm, or of inspiration, and was singing in a manner worthy of the golden days of his prime. And the prima donna, despite her heavy black tresses and dark flashing eyes, in her youth, her beauty, and her immature and almost childish grace, was as winning a representative of the hapless heroine as one could easily find. Her voice and acting, though both were as yet undeveloped and still much in need of cultivation, bore traces of those qualities which are essential to the formation of a great singer. The first, a clear, pure soprano, lacking it is true, both force and finish in the lower notes, was of singularly fine quality and marvellously expressive; and her acting, uneven like her singing, was, like it, passionate, spontaneous, and, at times, of thrilling power, while the unmistakable aroma of genius pervaded her rendition both of the vocal and dramatic portions of her rôle. Everything, it is true, was immature, unfinished; it was a promise rather than a performance, but it was a promise of surpassing excellence in the future. All the elements of success were there, chaotic, crude, unpliable, unserviceable as yet, but most real.

Louise Delmar was a New England girl, with just enough French blood in her veins to kindle the natural coldness of her ancestral temperament into a genial glow, and to lend her glances and movements an unstudied and bewitching vivacity. She was the daughter of a merchant who had failed in 1857, and had died broken-hearted in consequence of that failure. She lost her mother a few years later, but kind and sympathising friends had come forward to aid the little orphan, and to further the efforts which, even at that early age, she was called upon to make to support herself, and later, as her musical gifts asserted themselves, to assist her in procuring the tuition necessary to develop those gifts. Her one sole relative, a maiden aunt who was very deaf and rather stupid, acted as a duenna for her lovely niece, and cast over her professional wanderings the shadow of respectability. Only the shadow was needed, for Louise possessed the reality. Nature had not only bestowed upon her the perilous gift of genius, in addition to her

voice and beauty, but had also blessed her with gifts which but seldom accompany artistic graces, namely, a high sense of rectitude, perfect purity of soul, and a wonderful fund of strong common sense; and thus armed, this seventeen-year-old girl was prepared to go forth to fight the battle of life, and to conquer fate in despite of adverse and discouraging circumstances. Destiny was even then beckoning her onward to foreign shores, and commanding her to leave behind her her early friends and protectors; but her best and truest friend would cleave to her still, that friend of which Bulwer's "Richelieu speaks exultingly in the dark hour of his fortunes, the indomitable soul, not of Armand Duplessis, but of Louise Delmar.

Destiny had indeed decreed that Louise should quit her native land. An engagement of an unusually tempting character, and terms far more lucrative than are usually offered to young singers during their first season, had been proffered for her acceptance The unsettled state of social affairs, as well as political ones, caused by the war, was a death-blow to art in any shape in the United States for a season or two at least; and by the terms of her contract she was to sing a certain number of nights in each of the principal cities in Italy, windup with a series of performances in St. Petersburg. It was a speculation on the part of an enterprising manager, an Italian by birth, who saw in the personal and vocal charms of Louise Delmar, a mine of purest gold to whoever should be so fortunate as first to obtain possession.

And yet, notwithstanding her devotion to her profession and the tempting nature of Signor Morulli's offers, the young girl still hesitated. Might it not be that the voice and the beauty that so charmed the public would be reserved to gladden and brighten the smaller, yet diviner, sphere of a husband's heart and a happy home? Was there not one for whom Louise Delmar was ready to sacrifice hopes of future wealth and renown, the profession that she already loved with all the ardour of a true artist, the glow and excitement of her stage life, and to accept instead the quiet existence and homely duties of a wife? It was for this that she paused and procrastinated,

and roused the irascible Morulli to a pitch of frenzied excitement. But the moment for decisive action had come; the opera company of which she was a member was about to be dissolved, and the fiery Italian had announced to her his determination to have a decisive answer from her that very night. And her resolution had also been taken. That night she would learn the truth; she would ascertain at once and definitey whether the smiles and soft whispers and petits soins of which she had been the object, meant anything more serious than the caressing admiration of a confirmed old bachelor for a pretty girl some twenty years his junior.

New York society, at least the musical portion of it, had been vastly exercised to give a proper answer to that very question. Horace Fielding was a member of one of the oldest families of New York. He was well-looking, and possessed a small fortune, which enabled him to sport the most fashionable of dress-coats, the freshest of boutonnières, and the most immaculate of gloves on all occasions. His taste for music amounted to a passion; he performed well on two or three instruments, composed small canzonets and easy gallops with some taste and skill, and would have taken singing lessons had not Provi. dence denied him the gift of a voice. During a society career of about twenty-five years he had never missed an operatic performance of any importance in New York, and might have been said to have never truly lived till the Academy of Music on Fourteenth-street was erected. He was a perfect oracle in musical circles, and no rising singer, whether professional or amateur, was voted a decided success till Horace Fielding had pronounced favourably respecting his or her pretensions. Although over forty, he was still a very fine-looking man, with jet-black hair, fine teeth (all of which were his own), good features, and peculiarly pleasing manners, which varied towards ladies as best suited his purposes, from loverlike devotion to paternal tenderness. He was a practical flirt, and no man better than he knew the right moment for discarding the first manner and assuming the second; for casting aside the ardent admirer to become the elderly and confiden. tial friend. His dark eyes, expressive features, white teeth, and graceful

bearing were all useful in getting up the first character, while his thirty-seven years and long social experience came neatly into play for the second. The truth was, he had no inclination for matrimony; he was too much of an old bachelor, too confirmed in his luxurious habits and dilettante tastes, to feel willing to relinquish any of his cherished luxuries and enjoyments for the sake of securing a wife, who, after all, might turn out anything but an agreeable addition to his possessions. Yet from the time that Louise Delmar had made her first appearance in the musical circles of New York, and been hailed as a rising star of unusual lustre in the artistic firmament, his attentions to her had been so constant, his manner so empressé, and his devotion so real, that society in amazement felt itself forced to contemplate the possibility of Horace Fielding's actually committing the unpardonable folly of matrimony. That he should feel willing to give up his pet elegancies, his faultless attire, dainty rooms, delicate fare, and unlimited gloves, to take in exchange a wife, and that wife a girl of no social position, and who would bring him as a dower only youth and beauty, a loving heart, and a clear, strong, practical brain-such an idea was agonising, and society refused to entertain it for a moment.

And society was right, as she usually is respecting such actions on the part of her votaries. Horace Fielding was really, for him, very much in love. There was a freshness and sweetness about this young, unsophisticated, unconventional nature, which charmed his soul, satiated as it was with the artificial atmosphere of boudoirs and drawingrooms, and with the more powerful perfumes of hothouse-bred exotics, Keenly alive as his nature was to the enchantments of the art to which he was so devoted, he had not failed to recognise in Louise Delmar one of those exceptionally gifted beings in whom both the mental and physical qualities necessary for the formation of a great artist were united. Her vocal and dramatic gifts, her tireless energy, her undaunted perseverance, all gave promise of a future of artistic excellence. And, moreover, both blushing cheek and radiant eyes had revealed to him the secret of that innocent, yet ardent soul, and he knew that Louise Delmar loved him,