She listened to us--or rather to him; I was too awestruck to advance much beyond monosyllables--and laughed at him, and smiled encouragingly on my _gaucherie_ (and when a boy is _gauche_, how ready he is to worship such a helping hand!), and beamed upon us both with an effulgence compared with which the radiance of Helen, Galatea, Oenone, Messalina, Laïs, and all the legendary beauties one reads about, must have been what the railway night-lamps that _never_ burn are to the prismatic luminaries of Cremorne. They were all uncommonly pleasant, all except the girl who was reading, whom they introduced as the Signorina da' Guari, a Tuscan, and daughter to Orangia Magnolia, with one of those marvellously beautiful faces that one sees in the most splendid painters' models of the Campagna, who never lifted her head scarcely, though Guatamara and Saint-Jeu did their best to make her. But all the others were wonderfully agreeable, and quite _fête'd_ Little Grand and me, at which, they, being more than double our age, and seemingly at home alike with Belgravia and Newmarket, the Faubourg and the Pytchley, we felt to grow at least a foot each in the aroma of this Casa di Fiori. "This is rather stupid, Doxie," began Lord Adolphus, addressing his sister; "not much entertainment for our guests. What do you say to a game of vingt-et-un, eh, Mr. Grandison?" Little Grand fixed his blue eyes on the Marchioness, and said he should be very happy, but, as for entertainment--_he_ wanted no other. "No compliments, _petit ami_," laughed the Marchioness, with a dainty blow of her fan. "Yes, Dolph, have vingt-et-un, or music, or anything you like. Sing us something, Lucrezia." The Italian girl thus addressed looked up with a passionate, haughty flush, and answered, with wonderfully little courtesy I considered, "I shall not sing to-night." "Are you unwell, fairest friend?" asked the Duc de Saint-Jeu, bending his little wiry figure over her. She shrank away from him, and drew back, a hot color in her cheeks. "Signore, I did not address _you_." The Marchioness looked angry, if those divine eyes could look anything so mortal. However, she shrugged her shoulders. "Well, my dear Lucrezia, we can't make you sing, of course, if you won't. I, for my part, always do any little thing I can to amuse anybody; if I fail, I fail; I have done my best, and my friends will appreciate the effort, if not the result. No, my dear Prince, do not tease her," said the Marchioness to Orangia Magnolia, who was arguing, I thought, somewhat imperatively for such a well-bred and courtly man, with Lucrezia; "we will have vingt-et-un, and Lucrezia will give us the delight of her voice some other evening, I dare say."