and this evening there was something in the tones she drew from
the instrument which many a musician might have envied. She threw into
her touch all that she was suffering and it was a faint satisfaction to
her to listen to the lament of the sad notes as she struck them and they
rose and fell and died away.

The door opened and San Miniato entered. She heard his footstep and
recognised it, and immediately she struck a succession of loud chords
and broke into a racing waltz tune.

"You were playing something quite different, when I came to the door,"
he said, sitting down beside her.

"I thought you might prefer something gay," she answered without looking
at him and still playing on.

San Miniato did not answer the remark, for he distrusted her and fancied
she might have a retort ready. Her tongue was often sharper than he
liked, though he was not sensitive on the whole.

"Will you sing something to me?" he asked, as she struck the last chords
of the waltz.

"Oh yes," she replied with an alacrity that surprised him, "I feel
rather inclined to sing. Mamma," she cried, as the Marchesa entered the
room, "I am going to sing to my betrothed. Is it not touching?"

"It is very good of you," said San Miniato.

The Marchesa smiled and sank into a chair. Beatrice struck a few chords
and then, looking at the Count with half closed eyes, began to sing the
pathetic little song of Chiquita.

"On dit que l'on te marie
Tu sais que j'en vais mourir--"

Her voice was very sweet and true and there was real pathos in the words
as she sang them. But as she went on, San Miniato noticed first that she
repeated the second line, and then that she sang all the remaining
melody to it, singing it over and over again with an amazing variety of
expression, angrily, laughingly, ironically and sadly.

"--Tu sais que j'en vais mourir!"

She ended, with a strange burst of passion.

She rose suddenly to her feet and shut the lid down sharply upon the
key-board.

"How perfectly we understand each other, do we not?" she said sweetly, a
moment later, and meeting San Miniato's eyes.

"I hope we always shall," he answered quietly, pretending not to have
understood.

She left him with her mother and went out upon the terrace and looked
down at the black water deep below and at the lights of the yachts and
the far reflections of the stars upon the smooth bay, and at the distant
light on Capo Miseno. The night air soothed her a lit