f disengaged for the prince for half the night, and the only
reward was his Russian compliment of, 'What a bore is a ball when one is
past the age of dancing!'"

"Did the Noncio eat much?" asked the padre, who seemed at once curious
and envious about the dignitary.

"He played whist all night," said Jekyl, "and never changed his
partner!"

"The old Marchesa Guidotti?"

"The same. You know of that, then, padre?" asked Jekyl.

A grunt and a nod were all the response.

"What a curious chapter on 'La vie privee' of Florence your revelations
might be, padre!" said Jekyl, as if reflectingly. "What a deal of
iniquity, great and small, comes to your ears every season!"

"What a vast amount of it has its origin in that little scheming brain
of thine, Signor Jekyli, and in the fertile wits of your fair neighbor.
The unhappy marriages thou hast made; the promising unions thou hast
broken; the doubts thou hast scattered here, the dark suspicions
there; the rightful distrust thou hast lulled, the false confidences
encouraged, youth, youth, thou hast a terrible score to answer for!"

"When I think of the long catalogue of villany you have been listening
to, padre, not only without an effort, but a wish to check; when every
sin recorded has figured in your ledger, with its little price annexed;
when you have looked out upon the stormy sea of society, as a wrecker
ranges his eye over an iron-bound coast in a gale, and thinks of the
'waifs' that soon will be his own; when, as I have myself seen you, you
have looked indulgently down on petty transgressions, that must one day
become big sins, and, like a skilful angler, throw the little fish back
into the stream, in the confidence that when full-grown you can take
them, when you have done all these things and a thousand more, padre,
I cannot help muttering to myself, Age, age, what a terrible score thou
hast to answer for!"

"I must say," interposed Nina, "you are both very bad company, and that
nothing can be in worse taste than this interchange of compliments. You
are both right to amuse yourselves in this world as your faculties best
point out, but each radically wrong in attributing motives to the other.
What, in all that is wonderful, have we to do with motives? I'm sure _I_
have no grudges to cherish, no debts of dislike to pay off, anywhere.
Any diablerie I take part in, is for pure mischief sake. I do think it
rather a hard case, that, with somewhat better features, and