Clear from the depths of the pine woods beyond, the notes ascend, softly, tenderly. Not often do they enrich our Irish air, but sometimes they come to gladden us with a music that can hardly be termed of earth. The notes rise and swell and die, only to rise and to slowly fade again, like "linked sweetness long drawn out." Seating themselves on the edge of the fountain, they acknowledge silently the beauty of the hour. Olga's hand, moving through the water, breaks it into little wavelets on which the riotous moonbeams dance. "Where are your bangles, Olga? you used to be famous for them?" asks Desmond, idly. "I have tired of them." "Poor bangles!" says Ulic Ronayne, in a low tone heard only by her. "What a heavy sigh!" "A selfish one, too. More for myself than for the discarded bangles. Yet their grievance is mine." "I thought they suited you," says Desmond. "Did you? Well, but they had grown so common; every one used to go about laden with them. And then they made such a tiresome tinkle-tinkle all over the place." "What place?" says Lord Rossmoyne, who objects to slang of even the mildest description from any woman's lips, most of all from the lips of her whom he hopes to call his wife. "Don't be stupid!" says this prospective wife, with considerable petulance. "You are fickle, I doubt," goes on Rossmoyne, unmoved. "A few months ago you raved about your bangles, and had the prettiest assortment I think I ever saw. Thirty-six on each arm, or something like it. We used to call them your armor. You said you were obliged to wear the same amount exactly on each arm, lest you might grow crooked." "I know few things more unpleasant than having one's silly remarks brought up to one years afterwards," says Olga, with increasing temper. "_Months_ not _years_," says Rossmoyne, carefully. Whereupon Mrs. Bohun turns her back upon him, and Mrs. Herrick tells herself she would like to give him a good shake for so stupidly trying to ruin his own game, and Ulic Ronayne feels he is on the brink of swearing with him an eternal friendship. "Bangles?" breaks in Owen Kelly, musingly. "Harmless little circular things women wear on their wrists, aren't they? But awkward too at times,--amazingly awkward. As Olga has feelingly remarked, they _can_ make a marvellously loud tinkle-tinkle at times. I know a little story about bangles, that ought to be a warning against the use of them. Would any one like to hear my little story? It is short, but very sweet." Every one instantly says "Yes," except Olga, who has drawn herself together and is regarding him with a stony glare. "Well, there was once on a time a young woman, who had some bangles, and a young man; she had other things too, such as youth and beauty, but they weren't half so important as the first two items; and wherever she and her bangles went, there went the young man too. And for a long time nobody knew which he loved best, the beauteous maiden or the gleaming bangles. Do I make myself clear?"