ar nights are dangerously cold for more than yourselves."

"What does he mean?" I asked, as I read out a formula more studiously
occult than those of the Pharmacopoeia.

"That I am unpardonably silly, and that you must not dream of going
back to your vessel. The last words, I suppose, warn you how carefully
in such a household you need to guard the secrets of the Starlight."

"Well, and what is this in the stylic writing?"

Eveena glanced over it and coloured painfully, the tears gathering in
her eyes.

"That," she said, pointing to the first cipher, "is my mother's
signature."

"Then," I said, "it is meant for you, not for me."

"Nay," she answered. "Do you think I could take advantage of your not
knowing the character?"--and she read words quite as incomprehensible
to me as the writing itself.

"Can a star mislead the blind? I should veil myself in crimson if I
have trained a bird to snatch sugar from full hands. Must even your
womanhood reverse the clasps of your childhood?"

"It chimes midnight twice," I said--a Martial phrase meaning, 'I am as
much in the dark as ever.' "Do not translate it, carissima. I can read
in your face that it is unjust--reproachful where you deserve no
reproach."

"Nay, when you so wrong my mother I must tell you exactly what she
means:--'Can a child of the Star take advantage of one who relies on
her to explain the customs of a world unknown to him? I blush to think
that my child can abuse the tenderness of one who is too eager to
indulge her fancies.'

"You see she is quite right. You do trust me so absolutely, you are so
strangely over-kind to me, it is shameful I should vex you by fretting
because you are forced to do what you might well have done at your own
pleasure."

"My own, I was more than vexed; chiefly perhaps for your sake, but not
by you. Where any other woman would have stung the sore by sending
fresh sparks along the wire, you thought only to spare me the pain of
seeing you pained. But what do the last words mean? No"--for I saw the
colour deepen on her half-averted face--"better leave unread what we
know to be written in error."

But the less agreeable a supposed duty, the more resolute was Eveena
to fulfil it.

"They were meant to recall a saying familiar in every school and
household," she said:--

"'Sandal loosed and well-clasped zone--
Childhood spares the woman grown.
Change the clasps, and woman yet
Pays with interest childhood's de