--our young man had afterward
wondered; his companion's reply having lost itself in the prelude of an
outburst by another vocalist who had approached the piano.

It was after these things that she so incredibly came to him, attended
by her adorer--since he took it for absolute that the young Lord was her
adorer, as who indeed mightn't be?--and scarce waiting, in her bright
simplicity, for any form of introduction. It may thus be said in a word
that this was the manner in which she made our hero's acquaintance, a
satisfaction that she on the spot described to him as really wanting of
late to her felicity. "I've read everything, you know, and 'The Heart of
Gold' three times": she put it all immediately on that ground, while the
young Lord now smiled, beside her, as if it were quite the sort of thing
he had done too; and while, further, the author of the work yielded to
the consciousness that whereas in general he had come at last scarce to
be able to bear the iteration of those words, which affected him as
a mere vain vocal convulsion, so not a breath of this association now
attended them, so such a person as the Princess could make of them what
she would.

Unless it was to be really what _he_ would!--this occurred to him in the
very thick of the prodigy, no single shade of possibility of which
was less prodigious than any other. It was a declaration, simply, the
admirable young woman was treating him to, a profession of "artistic
sympathy"--for she was in a moment to use this very term that made for
them a large, clear, common ether, an element all uplifted and rare, of
which they could equally partake.

If she was Olympian--as in her rich and regular young beauty, that of
some divine Greek mask over-painted say by Titian, she more and more
appeared to him--this offered air was that of the gods themselves:
she might have been, with her long rustle across the room, Artemis
decorated, hung with pearls, for her worshippers, yet disconcerting them
by having, under an impulse just faintly fierce, snatched the cup of
gold from Hebe. It was to him, John Berridge, she thus publicly offered
it; and it was his over-topping _confrere_ of shortly before who was the
worshipper most disconcerted. John had happened to catch, even at its
distance, after these friends had joined him, the momentary deep,
grave estimate, in the great Dramatist's salient watching eyes, of the
Princess's so singular performance: the touch perhaps this, in