ote if I'd thought what was going on," he cried. "Contessa, I
would not have believed you could have been so mean--and I singing only
to please you."

"But think how you have pleased me--and all these ladies!" cried the
Contessa. "Does not that recompense you?" Montjoie guessed that she was
laughing at him, but he did not, in fact, see anything to laugh about.
It was natural enough that the other ladies should be pleased; still he
did not care whether they were pleased or not, and he did care much that
the object of his admiration had not waited to hear him. The Contessa
found the greatest amusement in his boyish sulk and resentment, and the
rest of the evening was passed in baffling the questions with which, now
that Bice was gone, her friends overpowered her. She gave the smallest
possible dole of reply to their interrogations, but smiled upon the
questioners with sunshiny smiles. "You must come and see me in town,"
she said to Montjoie. It was the only satisfaction she would give him.
And she perceived at a much earlier hour than usual that Lucy was
waiting for her to go to bed. She gave a little cry of distress when
this seemed to flash upon her.

"Sweet Lucy! it is for me you wait!" she cried. "How could I keep you so
late, my dear one?"

Montjoie was the foremost of those who attended her to the door, and got
her candle for her, that indispensable but unnecessary formula.

"Of course I shall look you up in town; but we'll talk of that
to-morrow. I don't go till three--to-morrow," the young fellow said.

The Contessa gave him her hand with a smile, but without a word, in that
inimitable way she had, leaving Montjoie a prey to such uncertainty as
poisoned his night's rest. He was not humble-minded, and he knew that he
was a prize which no lady he had met with as yet had disregarded; but
for the first time his bosom was torn by disquietude. Of course he must
see her to-morrow. Should he see her to-morrow? The Contessa's smile,
so radiant, so inexplainable, tormented him with a thousand doubts.

Lucy had looked on at all this with an uneasiness indescribable. She
felt like an accomplice, watching this course of intrigue, of which she
indeed disapproved entirely, but could not clear herself from a certain
guilty knowledge of. That it should all be going on under her roof was
terrible to her, though it was not for Montjoie but for Bice that her
anxieties were awakened. She followed the Contessa upstairs, bearing he