me? Then we will listen to you together, and you will get
twice as much applause, for it is really very good acting, I must
admit!'

A professional love-maker always knows when to stop being serious during
the early stages of the game, and when to leave off laughing later on;
for there is nothing so sure to weary and irritate an average woman as
perpetual seriousness at first, when she has not yet made up her mind
and perhaps never may, nor is there anything more ruinous than to jest
about love when she herself feels it and bestows it. The reason of this
must be that if you are too grave while she is still undetermined, she
will believe that you are taking her love for granted, which is an
unpardonable sin, whereas after she has unfolded her heart and given you
the most precious part of herself, she trembles at the merest suggestion
that you may not be in earnest.

Don Alberto was a professional love-maker, and at Ortensia's last speech
he laughed so readily and naturally that she could not help joining him.

'The truth is,' he said presently, 'the Queen is going to have a little
comedy performed by her friends, and I have been giving you some bits
from my part. If you really think I do it well, I will wait for the
Maestro, as you say, and he shall hear it too, for his opinion is
valuable.'

'If you had told me the other day at the palace that you were only
rehearsing, it would have been better,' Ortensia said, still smiling.

'No,' answered the young man, 'for I can only judge of my own acting
when it carries so much conviction with it that it is mistaken for
truth. Is that not sound reason?'

'Sound reason, but poor compliment, sir! In future, pray choose some one
else for your experiments. I have heard a Latin proverb quoted which
says that the experiment should be made on a body of small value! You
hold me cheap, sir, since you try your experiments on me.'

'I hold you dearer than you guess,' answered Don Alberto gaily. 'But I
am no match for you in argument. Giovanni Fiorentino tells the story of
a lady who played lawyer to defend her lover against a money-lender to
whom he had promised a pound of his flesh if he failed to pay. I think
you must be of her family, and a Doctor in Law!'

'If I have won my case against you,' retorted Ortensia, 'there is
nothing left for you but to retire from the court, acknowledging that
you are beaten.'

'Beaten as a lawyer, but successful as an actor,' laughed Altieri, 'an