"Orpheus has recovered," he ventured with a smile.

She stared in front of her with no response; but the jasmine rose and
fell, and her nostrils were abnormally dilated. Her face had turned from
the red of her first surprise to the white of suppressed indignation.
The situation was inconceivably embarrassing for both; now his bolt was
shot, and unless she cared to express herself, he could not venture to
allude to it again, though a whole orchestra augmented the efforts of
the artist in the bower.

By-and-by there came a pause in the music, and she spoke.

"It is the blackest of affronts this," was her comment, that seemed at
once singular and sweet to her hearer.

"_D'accord_," said Count Victor, but that was to himself. He was quite
agreed that the Chamberlain's attentions, though well meant, were not
for a good woman to plume herself on.

The flageolet spoke again--that curious unfinished air. Never before
had it seemed so haunting and mysterious; a mingling of reproaches and
command. It barely reached them where they sat together listening, a
fairy thing and fascinating, yet it left the woman cold. And soon the
serenade entirely ceased. Olivia recovered herself; Count Victor was
greatly pleased.

"I hope that is the end of it," she said, with a sigh of relief.

"Alas, poor Orpheus! he returns to Thrace, where perhaps Madame Petullo
may lead the ladies in tearing him to pieces!"

"Once that hollow reed bewitched me, I fancy," said she with a shy air
of confession; "now I cannot but wonder and think shame at my blindness,
for yon Orpheus has little beyond his music that is in any way
admirable."

"And that the gift of nature, a thing without his own deserving,
like his--like his regard for you, which was inevitable, Mademoiselle
Olivia."

"And that the hollowest of all," she said, turning the evidence of it in
her pocket again. "He will as readily get over that as over his injury
from you."

"Perhaps 'tis so. The most sensitive man, they say, does not place all
his existence on love; 'tis woman alone who can live and die in the
heart."

"There I daresay you speak from experience," said Olivia, smiling, but
impatient that he should find a single plea in favour of a wretch he
must know so well.

"Consider me the exception," he hurried to explain. "I never loved but
once, and then would die for it." The jasmine trembled in its chaste
white nunnery, and her lips were temptingly apart. He bent forward
b