d,' he said earnestly, 'or if you will not
speak it, give me one thought of pity, and I shall see it in your eyes!
You love your husband, and I respect your love--I admire you the more
for it, upon my soul and honour I do! Did I not promise to be a true
friend to you both? Have I broken my promise because I am here now, only
to see your dear face for a few moments and bear away your image to
cheer my lonely life?'

'Your lonely life!' Ortensia smiled, though scornfully enough.

'Yes, my lonely life,' he answered, repeating the words with grave
emphasis. 'What would yours be, pray, if you were forced to be for ever
a central figure amongst men and women who wearied you with adulation
and never ceased from flattering except to ask favours for themselves
and their relatives? And if, with that, you loved Stradella as you do,
and he was another woman's husband and would not even look at you, nor
let you hear his voice, would your existence not be lonely, I ask? In
the desert of your life, would you not hide yourself in the hermitage of
your heart, with the image of the man you loved upon your only altar?
Would you not feel alone all day, and lonelier still all night, though
the whole world pressed upon you, even at your rising and your lying
down, to call you beautiful and gifted beyond compare, and a divine
being on earth, and in return to beg a benefice for a graceless younger
son, or a curacy for a starving cousin of a priest, or the privilege of
providing the oil for the lamps in the Vatican? That is my life, if you
call it a life! It is all I have, except my love for you--my honouring,
respecting, venerating love!'

He spoke his words well, with changing tone and moving accent, but the
one great gift he had received from nature was his wonderful and
undefinable charm of manner; and surely of all marketable commodities,
from gold and silver coin to coloured beads and cowry shells, there is
none that can be so readily exchanged for almost anything in the world
its possessor wants. Ortensia felt it in spite of herself, and while she
was not touched by his attempts at eloquence, she was more inclined to
laugh than to be angry at what he said. There was something in him and
in his way that disarmed and made it almost impossible not to forgive
him anything in reason.

'If my husband were only here,' Ortensia said, 'this would be as amusing
as a comedy, but a lady cannot go to the play alone. Will you wait till
he comes ho