misdoubting head bit the dust at Ball's Bluff; outlived his colorless
widow, and left Kelly a penniless orphan.
Yet enough of her country was left in her to make her courageous and
independent of her past. They say that when she got the news she cried
a little, and then laid the letter and what was left of her last
monthly allowance in Madame Ablas' lap. Madame was devastated. "But you,
impoverished and desolated angel, what of you?" "I shall get some of
it back," said the desolated angel with ingenuous candor, "for I speak
better French and English than the other girls, and I shall teach THEM
until I can get into the Conservatoire, for I have a voice. You yourself
have told papa so." From such angelic directness there was no appeal.
Madame Ablas had a heart,--more, she had a French manageress's
discriminating instinct. The American schoolgirl was installed in a
teacher's desk; her bosom friends and fellow students became her pupils.
To some of the richest, and they were mainly of her own country, she
sold her smartest, latest dresses, jewels, and trinkets at a very good
figure, and put the money away against the Conservatoire in the future.
She worked hard, she endured patiently everything but commiseration.
"I'd have you know, Miss," she said to Miss de Laine, daughter of the
famous house of Musslin, de Laine & Co., of New York, "that whatever my
position HERE may be, it is not one to be patronized by a tapeseller's
daughter. My case is not such a very 'sad one,' thank you, and I prefer
not to be spoken of as having seen 'better days' by people who haven't.
There! Don't rap your desk with your pencil when you speak to me, or
I shall call out 'Cash!' before the whole class." So regrettable an
exhibition of temper naturally alienated certain of her compatriots who
were unduly sensitive of their origin, and as they formed a considerable
colony who were then reveling in the dregs of the Empire and the last
orgies of a tottering court, eventually cost her her place. A republican
so aristocratic was not to be tolerated by the true-born Americans who
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