f-second the
sweetness of her mouth.

"Who told you that persons who don't like your mistress are going to talk
in there?" said Aennchen.

"You," said Beppo.

Aennchen drew up in triumph: "And now will you pretend that you didn't
come up here to go in there to listen to what they say?"

Beppo clapped hands at her cleverness in trapping him. "Hush," said all
her limbs and features, belying the previous formal "good-evening." He
refused to be silent, thinking it a way of getting to the little
antechamber. "Then, I tell you, downstairs you go," said Aennchen
stiffly.

"Is it decided?" Beppo asked. "Then, good-evening. You detestable German
girls can't love. One step--a smile: another step--a kiss. You
tit-for-tat minx! Have you no notion of the sacredness of the sentiments
which inspires me to petition that the place for our interview should be
there where I tasted ecstatic joy for the space of a flash of lightning?
I will go; but it is there that I will go, and I will await you there,
signorina Aennchen. Yes, laugh at me! laugh at me!"

"No; really, I don't laugh at you, signor Beppo," said Aennchen,
protesting in denial of what she was doing. "This way."

"No, it's that way," said Beppo.

"It's through here." She opened a door. "The duchess has a reception
to-night, and you can't go round. Ach! you would not betray me?"

"Not if it were the duchess herself," said Beppo; "he would refuse to
satisfy man's natural vanity, in such a case."

Eager to advance to the little antechamber, he allowed Aennchen to wait
behind him. He heard the door shut and a lock turn, and he was in the
dark, and alone, left to take counsel of his fingers' ends.

"She was born to it," Beppo remarked, to extenuate his outwitted cunning,
when he found each door of the room fast against him.

On the following night Vittoria was to sing at a concert in the Duchess
of Graatli's great saloon, and the duchess had humoured Pericles by
consenting to his preposterous request that his spy should have an
opportunity of hearing Countess d'Isorella and Irma di Karski in private
conversation together, to discover whether there was any plot of any sort
to vex the evening's entertainment; as the jealous spite of those two
women, Pericles said, was equal to any devilry on earth. It happened that
Countess d'Isorella did not come. Luigi, in despair,--was the hearer of a
quick question and answer dialogue, in the obscure German tongue, between
Anna von L