"If regret some time assail thee For the days when first we met, And thy weary spirit fail thee, And thine eyes grow dim and wet, Oh, 'tis I, love, At thy heart, love, Murmuring, 'How couldst thou forget?'" The music lingers still for a moment, ebbs, and then dies away. Ronayne steps back, and all seems over. How Olga has proved so utterly unmoved by the passionate protest is exercising more minds than one, when suddenly she rises and with a swift movement bends over the fountain. Another moment, and she has dropped the guitar into the water. Some little silver ornament upon its neck flashes for an instant in the moonlight, and then it is gone. "Oh, Olga!" says Hermia, making an involuntary step towards her. "I shall never play on it again," says Olga, with a gesture that is almost impassioned. An instant, and it is all over,--her little burst of passion, the thought that led to it,--everything! "I hate it!" she says, with a petulant laugh. "I am glad to be rid of it. Somebody made me a present of it whom I learned to detest afterwards. No, Owen, do not try to bring it to life again: let it lie down there out of sight where I may learn to forget it." "As you will, madame," says Owen Kelly, who has been fruitlessly fishing for the drowned guitar. "It is curious how hateful anything, however pretty, can become to us if we dislike the giver of it," says Mary Browne, pleasantly. "Yes," says Hermia, quickly, glancing at her with a sudden gleam in her eyes,--of gratitude, perhaps. A moment ago there had been a certain awkwardness following on Olga's capricious action; now these few careless, kindly words from this ugly stranger have dispelled it. And is she so plain, after all? The fastidious Hermia, gazing at her intently, asks herself this question. Surely before that bright and generous gleam in her eyes her freckles sink into insignificance. "I knew you would like her," says Mr. Kelly, at this moment, speaking low in Hermia's ear. When a woman is startled she is generally angry. Mrs. Herrick is angry now, whether because of his words, or the fact that she did not know he was so close to her, let who will decide. "You are very, very clever," she says, glancing at him from under drooping lids, and then turning away. "So they all tell me," returns he, modestly. Rossmoyne, crossing the brilliant moonlit path that divides him from the group round Hermia, seats himself beside her, thereby leaving Olga and Ulic Ronayne virtually alone. "You will regret that guitar to-morrow," says Ronayne,--"at least not the thing itself (I can replace that), but----" "I regret nothing," says Mrs. Bohun, carelessly,--"unless I regret that you have taken an absurdly ill-tempered action so much to heart. I am ill-tempered, you know." "I don't," says Ronayne.