well mistaken. Let him try it on, that's all! I should immediately
take steps to enforce my rights, the law is on my side, that's clear
enough."
"I don't know! You heard what Doss said--about how you looked from
the front; and others have got their eyesight as well as him, and can
see you are not well and not--"
"Not fit to sing--that's what you are driving at?"
Saidie was silent.
"I tell you I will sing. Nothing and no one shall stop me. I shall
just defy them all, and go on, and there's no law in England to stop
me."
"If you are not a goose, Bella, I never saw one! What in all the
world keeps you on the boards, I cannot see. Here's a man come over
from N'York with the intention of marrying you; a man who is earning
his hundred dollars a week, and you turn up your nose at him. I can't
understand you. You seemed proud enough of him a week or two back;
but now all on a sudden, for no earthly reason, you show him the cold
shoulder."
"I suppose I can please myself," answered Bella, and her lip
quivered, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks.
"I wish to God I had never left--Jack," she said weakly.
Whereupon Saidie gave her what she was pleased to call a "piece of
her mind" as to the insane folly of any such speech, the result of
which was that Bella wept and coughed herself into a state of
collapse, and had to be carried off to bed.
Things did not mend. Bella persisted, ill though she was, in
appearing night after night in public until at length what Saidie had
predicted came to pass, and she received a formal notice cancelling
her engagement at the Empire on the ground of the extreme delicacy of
her health.
Mr. and Mrs. Doss happened to be with her at the time she received
the notice, and Bella partially appealed to them.
"You will help me, won't you? You won't allow them to impose upon me
so shamefully. They have no right to do it. It's infamous--'annul my
engagement' indeed! They shall find out who they are dealing with. It
would be ruin for me, it would simply spoil my career. I shall go
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