"Let us go as far as the fountain in the lower garden," says Olga: "it is always beautiful there when the moon is up." "Avoid the grass, however; wet feet are dangerous," says Lord Rossmoyne, carefully. "You will die an old bachelor," retorts Olga, saucily, "if you take so much 'thought for the morrow.'" "It will certainly not be my fault if I do," returns Rossmoyne, calmly, but with evident meaning. "Mrs. Bohun, bring your guitar," says Desmond, "and we will make Ronayne sing to it, and so imagine ourselves presently in the land of the olive and the palm." "Shall we ask the others to come with us?" says Monica, kindly, glancing back into the drawing-room. "Miss Browne, for example," suggests Owen Kelly. If he hopes by this speech to arouse jealousy in anybody present, he finds himself, later on, mightily mistaken. "If she is as good a sort as you say, I daresay she would like it," says Olga. "And, besides, if we leave her to Bella's tender mercies she will undoubtedly be done to death by the time we return." "Oh, do go and rescue her," says Mrs. Herrick, turning to Kelly. Her tone is almost appealing. "Perhaps Miss Fitzgerald will come too," says Monica, somewhat fearfully. "Don't be afraid," says Olga. "_Fancy_ Bella running the risk of having a bad eye or a pink nose in the morning! She knows much better than that." "Tell Miss Browne to make haste," says Mrs. Herrick, turning to Kelly. "Because we are impatient,--we are longing to precipitate ourselves into the moonlight. Come, Olga; come, Monica; they can follow." Miss Browne, however, on being appealed to, shows so honest a disregard for covering of any sort, beyond what decency had already clothed her with, that she and Kelly catch up with the others even before the fountain is reached. It is, indeed, a fairy dell to which they have been summoned,--a magic circle, closed in by evergreens with glistening leaves. "Dark with excessive light" appears the scene; the marble basin of the fountain, standing out from the deep background, gleams snow-white beneath Diana's touch. "The moon's an arrant thief." Perchance she snatches from great Sol some beauties even rarer than that "pale fire" he grants her--it may be, against his will. So it may well be thought, for what fairest day can be compared with a moonlit night in languorous July? The water of the fountain, bubbling ever upwards, makes sweet music on the silent air; but, even as they hark to it, a clearer, sweeter music makes the night doubly melodious. From bough to bough it comes and goes,--a heavenly harmony, not to be reproduced by anything of earthly mould. "O nightingale, that on yon gloomy spray Warbles at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill."