"So courteous a liar must needs obtain pardon. But let us forget everything but this lovely night. Was there ever so serene a sky? see how the stars shine and glimmer through the dark interstices of the blue-gray clouds!" "They remind me of something,--of some words," says Ronayne, in a low voice. "They come to me now, I hardly know why, perhaps because of the night itself, and perhaps because--" he hesitates. Olga is staring dreamily at the studded vault above her. "About the stars?" she asks, without looking at him. "Yes:-- 'A poet loved a star, And to it whispered nightly, Being so fair, why art thou, love, so far, Or why so coldly shine who shin'st so brightly?' The poet was presumptuous, it seems to me." "Was he? I don't know. All things come to him who knows how to wait." "Who's waiting?" says Kelly's voice from the other side of the fountain; "and for what?" "_Toujours_ Owen," says Mrs. Bohun, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "Well, no one even in this life is altogether without a taste of purgatory: mine (this is a delicate compliment to you, Owen, so listen to it) might have been worse. Do you know I have sometimes thought----" "She has really!" interrupts Mr. Kelly, turning with cheerful encouragement to the others. "You wouldn't think it to look at her, would you? but I know her intimately, and can vouch for the truth of her words. Go on, my dear Olga." But "my dear Olga" has turned aside, and declines to take any notice of his remark beyond a faint grimace. "She's very shy," says Mr. Kelly, in an explanatory aside, "and _so_ retiring. Can't bear to hear herself publicly praised, or feel herself the centre of attraction. Let us haste to change the subject." This with many becks, and nods, and wreathed smiles, meant to explain the delicacy of the feeling that prompts him to this course. "By the by, Desmond, doesn't this fairy-like spot, and the moonlight, and the pathos of the silent night, and everything, remind you forcibly of old O'Connor?" "But I always heard----" begins Monica, in a voice of much amazement; then she stops confusedly and presently goes on again, but in a different key. "Was The O'Connor, then, aesthetic?" she says. At this even Lord Rossmoyne, who was in the lowest depths of despair, gives way to open mirth. "Well, no, not exactly," says Ulic Ronayne. "There was a fatal healthiness about his appearance that disagreed with that idea. But he certainly was fond of this little place; he put up the fountain himself, had it brought all the way from Florence for the purpose; and he had a trick of lying here on his face and hands for hours together, grubbing for worms,--or studying the insect world I think he used to call it." "I have always thought," says Mr. Kelly, in a tone of reflective sadness, "what an uncomfortable position that must be." "What must be?"