to him, and away from Lord
Rossmoyne, who is talking to her in low, short, angry tones. But the
latter, laying his hand on her arm, half compels her to turn to him
again.

"Let some one else accompany him if he _must_ sing," he says; "_any_ one
but you."

"No one else can."

"I object to your doing it."

"You won't when you hear him; he sings _so_ sweetly," with the
prettiest, most enthusiastic smile. "You really should hear him."

"You persist, then? you compel me to believe the worst,--to regard you
as implicated in that story of Kelly's."

"I compel you to nothing. And as for the story, I thought it very
amusing: didn't you?"

"_No!_" says Rossmoyne, with subdued fury.

"Do you know, I often said you lacked humor?" says Mrs. Bohun, with a
little airy laugh; "and now I am sure of it. I thought it intensely
comic; such a situation! I should like to have seen your face when the
curtain was drawn, if _you_ had been the young man."

"I must beg you to understand that such a situation would be
_impossible_ to _me_."

"I am to understand, then, that you would not 'emb----' that was what he
said, wasn't it?--a woman if you loved her?"

"Not without permission, certainly," very stiffly.

"Oh, dear!" says Olga; "what a stupid man! Well, I shouldn't think you
would do it _often_. And so you wouldn't have liked to be that
particular young man?"

This is a poser; Lord Rossmoyne parries the thrust.

"Would _you_ have liked to be that young woman,--who, as it appears to
me, wasn't at all particular?" he asks, in turn.

"That is no answer to my question," says Olga, who is angry with his
last remark. "Are you afraid to say what you mean?"

"Afraid! No. To give publicity to a thing means always to vulgarize it:
therefore, on consideration, I should not have cared to be that young
man."

"Ah! I should have thought otherwise," says Olga, in an indescribable
tone. "Well, there must be consolation for you in the thought that you
never can be.--Mr. Ronayne," calling to Ulic lightly, "are you coming,
or must I sit fingering my lyre in vain?"

Ulic, coming slowly up to her, stands beside her, as she seats herself
again upon the marble edge of the fountain, and runs her fingers
gracefully over its strings.

His voice, a rich sweet tenor, breaks upon the air, blends with the
beauty of the night, and sinks into it until all seems one great
harmony. "'Tis I" is the song he has chosen, and a wonderful pathos that
bord