She lay back in her chair as if waiting for him to begin; he was thinking how well her costume became her—her dress of black silk touched here and there with yellow satin—the sharp scarlet stroke of her fan—the small crescent of diamonds in her jet-black hair. Then the softened lamplight seemed to lend depth and lustre to her dark eyes; and gave something of warmth, too, to the pale and clear complexion. She had crossed her feet; her fan lay idle in her lap; she regarded him from under those long, out-curving lashes. "They cannot hear you," she said—perhaps thinking that he was silent out of politeness to the innocent young damsels who were doing their best at the piano—"and you cannot hear them, which is also fortunate. Music is either divine—or intolerable; what they are doing is not divine; I have been listening. But good music—ah, well, it is not to be spoken of. Only this; isn’t it strange that the two things that can preserve longest for you associations with some one you have been fond of are music and scent? Not painting—not any portrait; not poetry—not anything you have read, or may read: but music and scent. You will discover that some day." He laughed. "How curiously you talk! I dare say I am older than you—though that is not saying much." "But I have seen the world," said she, with a smile, almost of sadness. "Not half of what I have seen of it, I’ll answer for that." "Oh, but you," she continued, regarding him with much favour and kindliness, "you are an _ingénu_—you have the frank English character—you would believe a good deal—in any one you cared for, I mean." "I suppose I should," he said, simply enough. "I hope so." "But as I say," she resumed, "the two things that preserve associations the longest—and are apt to spring on you suddenly—are music and scent. You may have forgotten in every other direction; oh, yes, forgetting is very easy, as you will find out; for ’constancy lives in realms above,’ and not here upon earth at all: well, when you have forgotten the one you were fond of, and cannot remember, and perhaps do not care to remember all that happened at that too blissful period of life—then, on some occasion or another there chances to come a fragment of a song, or a whiff of scent, and behold! all that bygone time is before you again, and you tremble, you are bewildered! Oh, I assure you," she went on, with a very charming smile, "it is not at all a pleasant experience. You think you had buried all that past time, and hidden away the ghosts; you are beginning to feel pretty comfortable and content with all existing circumstances; and then—a few notes of a violin—a passing touch of perfume—and your heart jumps up as if it had been shot through with a rifle-ball. What is your favourite scent?" she asked, somewhat abruptly. "Sandal-wood," said he (for surely that was revealing no secret?) "Then she wore a string of sandal-wood beads," said Mrs. de Lara, with a quick look. He was silent.