n it is that the
nakedness of her ears gave a new look to her face--a primitive look,
open and sweetly wild. The Duke saw the difference, without noticing
the cause. She was more adorable than ever. He blenched and swayed as in
proximity to a loveliness beyond endurance. His heart cried out within
him. A sudden mist came over his eyes.

In the canister that she held out to him, the two pearls rattled like
dice.

"Keep them!" he whispered.

"I shall," she whispered back, almost shyly. "But these, these are for
you." And she took one of his hands, and, holding it open, tilted the
canister over it, and let drop into it the two ear-rings, and went
quickly away.

As she re-appeared at the table, the crowd gave her a long ovation
of gratitude for her performance--an ovation all the more impressive
because it was solemn and subdued. She curtseyed again and again, not
indeed with the timid simplicity of her first obeisance (so familiar
already was she with the thought of the crowd's doom), but rather in the
manner of a prima donna--chin up, eyelids down, all teeth manifest, and
hands from the bosom flung ecstatically wide asunder.

You know how, at a concert, a prima donna who has just sung insists on
shaking hands with the accompanist, and dragging him forward, to show
how beautiful her nature is, into the applause that is for herself
alone. And your heart, like mine, has gone out to the wretched victim.
Even so would you have felt for The MacQuern when Zuleika, on the
implied assumption that half the credit was his, grasped him by the
wrist, and, continuing to curtsey, would not release him till the last
echoes of the clapping had died away.

The ladies on the steps of the Hall moved down into the quadrangle,
spreading their resentment like a miasma. The tragic passion of the
crowd was merged in mere awkwardness. There was a general movement
towards the College gate.

Zuleika was putting her tricks back into the great casket, The MacQuern
assisting her. The Scots, as I have said, are a shy race, but a resolute
and a self-seeking. This young chieftain had not yet recovered from what
his heroine had let him in for. But he did not lose the opportunity of
asking her to lunch with him to-morrow.

"Delighted," she said, fitting the Demon Egg-Cup into its groove.
Then, looking up at him, "Are you popular?" she asked. "Have you many
friends?" He nodded. She said he must invite them all.

This was a blow to the young man,