If he had carried out his despairing threat?
She pictured him floating on the surface of a Hampstead pond and a shudder went over her at the gruesome thought.
Finally she subsided into dull resignation and strove to think no more about him.
It was September; with the colder weather came the waning of the Hampstead season, the fashionable folk were returning to London and preparing for masquerades, ridottos, the theatres and the opera.

The Great Room concerts were but thinly attended and for a whole fortnight Lavinia had not sung twice.

But this did not matter to her.

She had been written to by John Rich, and he had engaged her at a little higher salary than he had hitherto paid.
Lavinia sang for the last time at Hampstead and quitted the Great Room not without regrets and doubts.

Would she be as successful at the Duke's Theatre?
Would she have her chance?
She well knew the rivalries a rising actress would have to encounter.