ed to tell him how foolishly he had let slip his
great opportunity. A Portuguese would have fixed the young lady long
before. By tender moonlight, in captivating language, beneath the
umbrageous orange-groves, a Portuguese would have accurately calculated
the effect of the perfume of the blossom on her sensitive nostrils, and
know the exact moment when to kneel, and declare his passion sonorously.

'Yes,' said Evan, 'one of them did. She told me.'

'She told you? And you--what did you do?'

'Laughed at him with her, to be sure.'

'Laughed at him! She told you, and you helped her to laugh at love! Have
you no perceptions? Why did she tell you?'

'Because she thought him such a fool, I suppose.'

'You never will know a woman,' said the Countess, with contempt.

Much of his worldly sister at a time was more than Evan could bear.
Accustomed to the symptoms of restiveness, she finished her discourse,
enjoyed a quiet parade up and down under the gaze of the lieutenant, and
could find leisure to note whether she at all struck the inferior seamen,
even while her mind was absorbed by the multiform troubles and anxieties
for which she took such innocent indemnification.

The appearance of the Hon. Melville Jocelyn on deck, and without his
wife, recalled her to business. It is a peculiarity of female
diplomatists that they fear none save their own sex. Men they regard as
their natural prey: in women they see rival hunters using their own
weapons. The Countess smiled a slowly-kindling smile up to him, set her
brother adrift, and delicately linked herself to Evan's benefactor.

'I have been thinking,' she said, 'knowing your kind and most considerate
attentions, that we may compromise you in England.'

He at once assured her he hoped not, he thought not at all.

'The idea is due to my brother,' she went on; 'for I--women know so
little!--and most guiltlessly should we have done so. My brother perhaps
does not think of us foremost; but his argument I can distinguish. I can
see, that were you openly to plead Silva's cause, you might bring
yourself into odium, Mr. Jocelyn; and heaven knows I would not that! May
I then ask, that in England we may be simply upon the same footing of
private friendship?'

The diplomatist looked into her uplifted visage, that had all the sugary
sparkles of a crystallized preserved fruit of the Portugal clime, and
observed, confidentially, that, with every willingness in the world to
serve her,