there.

"Yes--just so," she says, with a little hostile glance at Roger,
distinctly seen by Gower--"and such a very little, that it need hardly
count!"

"What an unsatisfactory lover," says Roger, rather satirically,
returning her glance with interest. "Of whom were you thinking?"

"My dear Roger, you forget," says Miss Blount, with admirable
promptitude; "how could I think of any one in that light! I have never
had a lover in my life. I have only had--_you_!" She says this slowly,
and lets her lids fall half over her eyes, that are now gleaming with
undue brilliancy.

"True!" replies Dare, with maddening concurrence, stroking his mustache
softly.

"_Isn't_ Roger charming," says Dulce (her own manner deeply aggravating
in its turn), tapping Gower's arm lightly and confidentially with her
fan; "_so_ honest and withal _so_ gracious."

"A compliment from you is, indeed, worth having," says Roger, who is in
a dreadful temper; "but a truce to them now. By-the-by, were you really
thinking of me just now when you plucked that unoffending flower to
pieces? I can hardly bring myself to believe it."

"If not of you, of whom should I be thinking?" retorts she, calmly but
defiantly.

"Well--Gower, for example," says Roger, with a sneering laugh, and
unpardonable bad taste. "_He_ looks as though he could do a lover's part
at a moment's notice, and without the slightest effort."

As he makes this objectionable little speech, he turns on his heel and
leaves them.

Dulce, crimson, and with her breath coming somewhat quickly, still lets
her eyes meet Gower's bravely.

"I must ask you to excuse my cousin," she says, quietly. "How warm the
rooms are; is there no air anywhere, I wonder?"

"On the balcony there is," says Gower, gently. "Shall we go there for a
minute or two?"

She lays her hand upon his arm, and goes with him through the lighted,
heavily-perfumed rooms on to the balcony, where the cool air is blowing,
and where the fresh scent from the waving pines makes itself felt.

The moon is sailing in all its grandeur overhead. Below, the world is
white with its glory. The music of many rivulets, as they rush
sleepless to the river, sounds sweeter far than even the strains of the
band within.

It is past midnight. The stars are growing pale. Already the "world's
heart" begins to throb,

"And a wind blows,
With unknown freshness over lands and seas."

Something in the silence and majesty of