'I know not if I should tell you in reply, Arsindo,' replied Lauso, 'that I believe you invite me rather out of compliment than for anything else to return to our huts, having as much to do in those of others, as your ten days' absence from me has shown. But leaving on one side most of what I could say to you thereon for a better time and opportunity, tell me again if it is true what you say of Lenio; for if it is, I may declare that Love has wrought in these days two of the greatest miracles he has wrought in all the days of his life, namely, to subdue and enslave Lenio's hard heart, and to set free mine which was so subjected.' 'Look to what you are saying, friend Lauso,' then said Orompo, 'for if Love held you subject, as you have indicated hitherto, how has the same Love now set you in the freedom you proclaim?' 'If you would understand me, Orompo,' replied Lauso, 'you will see that I in no wise contradict myself, for I say, or mean to say, that the love that reigned and reigns in the breast of her whom I loved so dearly, as it directs itself to a purpose different from mine, though it is all love,--the effect it has wrought in me is to place me in freedom and Lenio in slavery; and do not compel me, Orompo, to relate other miracles with these.' And as he said this he turned his eyes to look at the old Arsindo, and with them uttered what with his tongue he kept back; for all understood that the third miracle he might have related would have been the sight of Arsindo's gray hairs in love with the few green years of Maurisa. She was talking apart all this time with Galatea and Florisa, telling them that on the morrow Grisaldo would be in the village in shepherd's garb, and that he thought there to wed Rosaura in secret, for publicly he could not, because the kinsmen of Leopersia, to whom his father had agreed to marry him, had learned that Grisaldo was about to fail in his plighted word, and they in no wise wished such a wrong to be done them; but nevertheless Grisaldo was determined to conform rather to what he owed to Rosaura than to the obligation in which he stood to his father. 'All that I have told you, shepherdesses,' went on Maurisa, 'my brother Galercio told me to tell you. He was coming to you with this message, but the cruel Gelasia whose beauty ever draws after it the soul of my luckless brother, was the cause why he could not come to tell you what I have said, since, in order to follow her, he ceased to follow the way he was taking, trusting in me as a sister. You have now learned, shepherdesses, why I have come. Where is Rosaura to tell it her? or do you tell it her, for the anguish in which my brother lies does not permit me to remain here a moment longer.'