ut
that great painter never saw the original, and your admiration will be
modified somewhat perhaps, when I tell you that this study was made from
a statue of a woman."

"But who is it?"

I hesitated.

"I insist upon knowing," she added earnestly.

"I believe," I said, "that this _Adonis_ represents a--a relative of
Madame de Lanty."

I had the chagrin of seeing that she was lost in contemplation of that
figure. She sat down in silence, and I seated myself beside her and
took her hand without her noticing it. Forgotten for a portrait! At that
moment we heard in the silence a woman's footstep and the faint rustling
of a dress. We saw the youthful Marianina enter the boudoir, even
more resplendent by reason of her grace and her fresh costume; she
was walking slowly and leading with motherly care, with a daughter's
solicitude, the spectre in human attire, who had driven us from the
music-room; as she led him, she watched with some anxiety the slow
movement of his feeble feet. They walked painfully across the boudoir
to a door hidden in the hangings. Marianina knocked softly. Instantly
a tall, thin man, a sort of familiar spirit, appeared as if by magic.
Before entrusting the old man to this mysterious guardian, the lovely
child, with deep veneration, kissed the ambulatory corpse, and her
chaste caress was not without a touch of that graceful playfulness, the
secret of which only a few privileged women possess.

"_Addio, addio!_" she said, with the sweetest inflection of her young
voice.

She added to the last syllable a wonderfully executed trill, in a very
low tone, as if to depict the overflowing affection of her heart by
a poetic expression. The old man, suddenly arrested by some memory,
remained on the threshold of that secret retreat. In the profound
silence we heard the sigh that came forth form his breast; he removed
the most beautiful of the rings with which his skeleton fingers were
laden, and placed it in Marianina's bosom. The young madcap laughed,
plucked out the ring, slipped it on one of her fingers over her glove,
and ran hastily back toward the salon, where the orchestra were, at that
moment, beginning the prelude of a contra-dance.

She spied us.

"Ah! were you here?" she said, blushing.

After a searching glance at us as if to question us, she ran away to her
partner with the careless petulance of her years.

"What does this mean?" queried my young partner. "Is he her husband? I
believe I