yet.'

'For me!' The exquisite colour deepened twice in her face and faded
again as her heart fluttered.

'For you,' Stradella answered, so softly that she barely heard.

The nurse came back just then, having merely left the salver outside to
be taken away. In her judgment things had gone far enough for the
present. Then the mid-day bells clanged out, and it was time to end the
lesson, and Stradella put his lute into its purple bag and bowed himself
out as he always did; but to-day he kept his eyes on Ortensia's, and
hers did not turn from him while she could see his face.

CHAPTER II

Love-dealings and Deceit, says an ancient poet, were born into the world
together, daughters of Night; and several dry-hearted old critics, who
never were in love and perhaps never deceived anybody in their lives,
have had so much trouble in understanding why these divinities should
have made their appearance in the world at the same time, that they have
suspected the passage and written pages of learned trash about what
Hesiod probably wrote instead of 'Love-dealings,' or the pretty word for
which I can think of no better translation.

Pignaver was not a particularly truthful person himself, but he exacted
strict truthfulness from others, which is good business if it is bad
morality; and Ortensia had been brought up rigidly in the practice of
veracity as a prime virtue. She had not hitherto been tempted to tell
fibs, indeed; but she had always looked upon doing so as a great sin,
which, if committed, would require penance.

Yet no sooner had she fallen in love with Alessandro Stradella than she
found herself telling the most glaring untruths every day, with a
readiness and self-possession that were nothing short of terrifying. For
instance, her uncle often asked her to tell him exactly what she had
been studying with the music-master, and he inquired especially whether
the latter ever sang any of his own music to her. To these questions she
answered that she was too anxious to profit by the lessons she was
receiving, through her uncle's kindness, to waste the precious time in
which she might be studying his immortal works.

She used those very words, without a blink, and Pignaver swallowed the
flattery as a dog bolts a gobbet of meat. She added that the Maestro
himself was so enthusiastic about the Senator's songs that he now cared
for nothing else.

Yet the truth was that Stradella had summed up his criticism in a few