Hawtrey's Deputy by Harold Bindloss

While Wyllard made arrangements for his journey, and Sally Creighton went very quietly about her work on the lonely prairie farm, it happened one evening that Miss Winifred Rawlinson sat uneasily expectant far back under the gallery of a concert hall in an English manufacturing town. She could not hear very well there, but it was the cheapest place she could obtain, and economy was of some importance to her. Besides, by craning her neck a little to avoid the hat of the rather strikingly dressed young woman in front of her, she could, at least, see the stage. The programme which she held in one hand announced that Miss Agatha Ismay would sing a certain aria from a great composer's oratorio, and she leaned further forward in her chair when a girl of about her own age, which was twenty-four, slowly advanced to the centre of the stage.

She was a tall, well-made, brown-haired girl, with a quiet grace of movement and a comely face, attired in a long trailing dress of a shimmering corn-straw tint, but when she stood looking at the audience Miss Rawlinson noticed a hint of tension in her expression. Agatha Ismay had sung at unimportant concerts with marked success, but that evening there was something very like shrinking in her eyes.