hen the morning and the evening breezes
blew in spring and summer, it swayed lazily, and the feathery top waved
from side to side, and bent to the caressing air like a live thing.
Ortensia loved the tree better than anything else in the garden; even
better than the beautiful Greek Ariadne, which her uncle had himself
brought from Crete in one of his ships.

She was watching it now, and where the sunlight played in the tip, she
could see the golden and reddish lights of the cypress twigs through
the deep green. On her knees she held a large musical instrument all
made of ivory, and inlaid with black, a lute with eleven strings, but of
the shorter kind with the head of the keyboard turned back at a right
angle. It lay in her lap, in the ample straw-coloured folds of her silk
skirt, and its broad white ribband was passed over her shoulder, and
pressed on her lace collar on the left side of her neck.

At a considerable distance from her, a small, middle-aged woman in grey
sat in a high chair, bending forward over the little green pillow on
which she was making bobbin lace.

There was a good deal of furniture in the large room, and it belonged to
different periods; some of it was carved, some inlaid, some gilt in the
new French fashion. A great Persian carpet of most exquisite colours
softened and blended by age lay on the floor, and the curtains of the
doors were of rich old Genoa velvet, with palm leaves woven in gold
thread on a faded claret ground.

The time lacked about an hour of noon, and in the deep stillness the
trickling of the tiny fountain came up distinctly from the garden.

Something had just happened which Ortensia did not understand, and she
had let her lute sink in her lap, to lean back and think, and wonder,
watching the familiar outline of the dark cypress against the open sky.

She had been learning a song by a new composer, of whom she had never
heard till now, and the manuscript lay open on a cushioned stool beside
her. For a time she had followed the notes and words carefully with her
voice, picking out the accompaniment on her lute from the figured bass,
as musicians did in those days. At first it had not meant much to her;
it was difficult, the intervals were unexpected and strange, she could
not find the right chords, the words would not quite make sense, and
some of them were unfamiliar to her.

But she was patient, and she had talent, and she had tried again and
again, very soft and low, so