rm an impassable barrier between them, and prevent all intimacy;
but, apparently, I was wrong. He seems to have been the companion of her
rides and drives, and under the pretext of doing some commissions for her
in the bazaars of Constantinople, he got to correspond with her. So artful
a fellow would well know what to make of such a privilege.'

'And is he your successor now?' asked she, with a look of almost
undisguised insolence.

'Scarcely that,' said he, with a supercilious smile. 'I think, if you had
ever seen my cousin, you would scarcely have asked the question.'

'But I have seen her. I saw her at the Odescalchi Palace at Rome. I
remember the stare she was pleased to bestow on me as she swept past me.
I remember more, her words as she asked, "Is this your Titian Girl I have
heard so much of?"'

'And may hear more of,' muttered he, almost unconsciously.

'Yes--even that too; but not, perhaps, in the sense you mean.' Then, as if
correcting herself, she went on, 'It was a bold ambition of Mr. Atlee. I
must say I like the very daring of it.'

'_He_ never dared it--take my word for it.'

An insolent laugh was her first reply. 'How little you men know of each
other, and how less than little you know of us! You sneer at the people who
are moved by sudden impulse, but you forget it is the squall upsets the
boat.'

'I believe I can follow what you mean. You would imply that my cousin's
breach with _me_ might have impelled her to listen to Atlee?'

'Not so much that as, by establishing himself as her confidant, he got the
key of her heart, and let himself in as he pleased.'

'I suspect he found little to interest him there.'

'The insufferable insolence of that speech! Can you men never be brought to
see that we are not all alike to each of you; that our natures have their
separate watchwords, and that the soul which would vibrate with tenderness
to this, is to that a dead and senseless thing, with no trace or touch of
feeling about it?'

'I only believe this in part.'

'Believe it wholly, then, or own that you know nothing of love--no more
than do those countless thousands who go through life and never taste its
real ecstasy, nor its real sorrow; who accept convenience, or caprice, or
flattered vanity as its counterfeit, and live out the delusion in lives of
discontent. You have done wrong to break with your cousin. It is clear to
me you suited each other.'

'This is sarcasm.'

'If it is, I am sorry for