end of a dinner graced by fair women and flowers,
betrayed itself in the tone of the conversations, and the reminiscences
of this bazaar, at which the ladies--urged on by a noble spirit of
emulation in collecting the largest sums--employed the most unheard of
audacities to attract buyers.

'And did you accept it?' asked Andrea of the Duchess.

'I sacrificed my hands on the altar of Benevolence,' she replied.
'Twenty-five louis more to my account!'

'_All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand._' He
laughed as he quoted Lady Macbeth's words, but, in reality, his heart
was sore with a confused, ill-defined pain, that bore a strong
resemblance to jealousy. And suddenly he became aware of something
excessive, almost--it might be--a touch of the courtesan, defacing the
manners of the great lady. Certain inflections of her voice, certain
tones of her laughter, here a gesture, there an attitude, certain
glances, exhaled a charm that was perhaps a trifle too Aphrodisiac. She
was, besides, somewhat over-lavish with the visible favours of her
graces, and the air she breathed was continually surcharged with the
desire she herself excited.

Andrea's heart swelled with bitterness; he could not take his eyes off
Elena's hands. Out of those hands, so delicately, ideally white and
transparent, with their faint tracery of azure veins--from those rosy
hollowed palms, wherein a chiromancer would have discovered many an
intricate crossing of lines, ten, twenty different men had drunk at a
price. He could _see_ the heads of these unknown men bending over her
and drinking the wine. But Secinaro was one of his friends--a great
handsome jovial fellow, imperially bearded like a very Lucius Verus, and
a most formidable rival to have. He felt as if the dinner would never
come to an end.

'You are such an innovator,' Elena was saying to Donna Francesca, as she
dipped her fingers into warm water in a pale blue finger-glass rimmed
with silver, 'Why do you not revive the ancient fashion of having the
water offered to one after dinner with a basin and ewer? The modern
arrangement is very ugly, do you not think so, Sperelli?'

Donna Francesca rose. Every one followed her example. Andrea, with a
bow, offered his arm to Elena and she looked at him without smiling as
she slowly laid her hand on his arm. Her last words were gaily and
lightly spoken, but her gaze was so grave and profound that the young
man felt it sink into his ve