Cecilia crouched behind the sofa, bewildered and astonished. What did they mean? She grew hot and cold, her heart throbbed violently, she clinched her little hand. Why had these wicked creatures come here to sing their dreary duet? How their tone changed when the hostess appeared! She experienced the swift, intense indignation of youth at hypocrisy, ignorant that these voices would sound the same notes in every house to which they gained admission, after the manner of society. Instinct taught her they alluded to her own mother, before the allusion to the Nile voyage, of which she had already heard. Her mamma and the count were going, with some friends, up the Nile after Christmas. Why might not she go also? Her lips quivered resentfully. Only that morning she had found the count in the aviary, petting the birds; she had wound her arms about his neck, and said, "Oh, how beautiful you are! When I have grown as tall and handsome as a woman can be I shall marry you." The count had showered kisses on her fair hair, and pinched her cheek in his caressing way. "We need not wait long, carina," he had replied. Then mamma had appeared on the threshold, a bright spot on each cheek, and that new flash in her eye. "You are too old for such nonsense, Cecilia. Go back to mademoiselle directly," she had said, in her dry tones. Cecilia had departed, crest-fallen, mortified, with some vague remembrance of a father who had not thus dismissed her. To be sure, the count had sent her, later in the day, a gift of bonbons as atonement for mamma's snubbing--one of those white satin boots, mounted on a gilded rink skate, from Spillman's, in the Via Condotti. _He_ was never cross, only a big playfellow, all amiability, little clever tricks, frolic, easily tyrannized over, and serenely content to spin balls or sift cards all day long for a child's amusement. They had known him two or three years; he was their oldest friend abroad; he came and went at all hours. The count was a great gentleman, too, of princely lineage, easy, graceful, and elegant. How kind he was to interest himself in the Denvils, when they were strangers in a foreign land! The young girl had ample leisure for these reflections in her hiding-place. She whispered to the image, demanding what it thought of these croakers. The world was so beautiful, and people so kind. Then the two visitors were replaced by a bevy of ladies, and amid the rustlings of more silken draperies on the floor and the taps of heeled shoes, Cecilia heard her mother exclaim: "What a horrid man! I am always relieved when he departs, and yet one meets him everywhere. He told me that frightful scandal about Lady B---- (and no doubt it is true, unfortunately) as if he enjoyed the recital." A moment before Mrs. Denvil had said: "Going so soon, Major Kettledrum? I am always delighted to see you." Now the sofa creaked beneath the weight of two dowagers.