posite to him dropped her eyes before his daring glance. As he left the table he was humming to himself with gallant martial air—

"He either fears his fate too much,

Or his desert is small,

Who fears to put it to the touch

To win or lose it all."

The next morning firm of purpose he demanded

a ticket for Venice.

R

258

CHAPTER XXII.

"Here comes the little villain :
How now my nettle of India?"

Now it chanced that on that very day, which the amiable Bonamy passed so sadly in Milan, the Contessa Belrotoli after weeks of unnatural seclusion emerged once more to light and life. Who can tell the cause of her solitude? Perhaps she had been the prey of a devouring melancholy: perhaps she had had a pimple on her nose. It may be that like the moon she had veiled herself in clouds that she might break upon the jaded world as a new marvel. But whatever its cause, the mysterious loneliness now came to an end; and the gentle heart of Lady Lappin which had been deeply pained by her friend's neglect was again refreshed by an opportunity of affording sympathy. There was the swish of a long silken gown upon the

stairs, and a quick high voice calling. Then the door of the studio was thrust open, and the Belrotoli darting in flung herself against the workingapron of her artistic Brigida, and was lost in her embrace. But even in the joy of the moment the English woman sighed for her Art, which was again to be sacrificed to the ephemeral interests of the day. Reassured as to the intentions of Hugo Deane and having almost satisfied her heart by gathering around her an entire ready-made family, she had turned again to her beloved work with dignity and ardour. Now the outer world broke in on her again; and she received it open-armed. In spite of the regret in her bosom the inexhaustible fountain of sympathy leapt at the lightest call. It was unlucky for the artist that the woman was so sympathetic and so comfortable, that people, when they saw her, began to wonder if there were nothing which they could confide to her. She was like a fountain in a dry plain of Palestine, whose waters are ever troubled by thirsty creatures. Disturbed and interested by a thousand trifles she could attain but rarely to complete abstraction, to receptive calm, could but rarely yield herself wholly to the divine afflatus.

The Countess was so absorbed by her own condi

tion that she had no idea that she had marred a rare moment. "He is coming," she cried; "he is coming back to me."

Who?" asked the other breathlessly, as her thoughts passed slowly from man to man, and dwelt with a peculiar fear on young Lord Cheepyre, whose late arrival in Venice she was most anxious to conceal from the Belrotoli.

"Who! Ah wicked little one!" cried the Countess pushing herself abruptly back from her more solid friend. "Who but the Count, my husband."

Lady Lappin looked at her with infantine eyes and mouth round with astonishment. It was not the first time that the Countess had flung herself into her arms, and poured forth torrents of speech about this same lord and master; but on all previous occasions the confidant had shivered before the fiery language of the injured wife, and the Clapham element in her composition had been shocked by too energetic expressions. She had formed in her mind an image of the Count, in which the ingenuity of Mephistopheles, the sensuality of Don Juan, and the brutality of a Lancashire wife-kicker were concealed under one highly-polished surface.

Threatened with the nearer acquaintance of this awful if fascinating mixture and abruptly called

upon for delight in the prospect, the worthy lady trembled and turned pale. "Ah you too think," cried the Belrotoli, "even you, that my passion is not domestic. You are wrong: it is my dream, my frenzy, always-always the 'ome and 'earth!"

"You are so right," said her friend, "so right." She was recovering her equanimity, and saw the path of duty.

"And I have come to you, my own," continued the Contessa clasping her long fingers together; "I am so out of the round, so forgetful of how it is done. I cannot tell how to become in a moment your Derby and John. But you will guide me? you will teach me? will you not?"

"That I will," promised Lady Lappin boldly though there was awe in her heart, for slowly were coming back to her many stories more or less black of the Conte Belrotoli, and her troubled eyes wandered uneasily over the golden and silver trifles with which she loved to decorate her tables. Moreover infant prejudices still found a home in that ample and hospitable person, prejudices which were especially thick around the title of Count as worn by a foreigner. It had been generally held by the girls at the Clapham school that the dancing-master who came once a-week was a Count, and had