"My name is Eloise," said the apparition of light. "Do you like my dress?" "Oui, mademoiselle!" She pursed her lips. "Oui, mademoiselle? Oh, how dull you are! Now, if I wert thou, and thou wert I, know you what I would have said?" "Non, mademoiselle." "Non, mademoiselle! Oh, how droll you are. I would have said: 'Mademoiselle, your toilet is ravishing!' Now say it." "Mademoiselle, your toilet is ravishing." She laughed with pleasure at having made me repeat the words. Despite her conversation, she had no touch of the old-fashioned, or the pert, or the objectionable about her. Brimming over with life, pure from its source, fresh as a daisy, sparkling as a dewdrop, sweetness was written upon her brow, across that ineffable mark of purity with which God stamps His future angels. "And your name?" said she. "Patrick," I replied. "Pawthrick," said she, trying to put her small mouth round the word. "I cannot say it. I will call you Toto. Come with me," leading me by the sleeve, "and I will introduce you to my mother. She is here"--drawing towards the door of the room from whence she had come--"in here. Do you know why I call you Toto?" "Non, mademoiselle." "He was my rabbit, and he died," said Eloise, as we entered a great salon where several ladies were seated conversing. Toward one of these ladies, more beautiful in my eyes than the dawn, Eloise led me. "Maman," said she, "this is Toto." The Countess Feliciani, for that was the name of the mother of Eloise, smiled upon us. I dare say we made a quaint and pretty enough pair. She was perhaps, thirty--the Countess Feliciana, a woman of Genoa, blue-eyed and golden-haired, and beautiful--Ah! when a blonde is beautiful, her beauty transcends the beauty of all brunettes. I bowed, she spoke to me, I stammered. She put my awkwardness down to bashfulness, no doubt, but it was not bashfulness. I was in love with the Countess Feliciani, stricken to the heart at first sight. The love of a child of nine for a beautiful woman of thirty! How absurd it seems, but how real, and what a mystery! I swear that the love I had for that woman, love that haunted me for a long, long time, was equal in strength to the love of a full-grown man, with this difference: that it was immaterial, and, as far as my conscience tells me, utterly divorced from earthly passion. "Now go and play," said the Countess. And Eloise led me away, I knew not whither. CHAPTER V I SEE MYSELF, NOT KNOWING But to the mind of a child the moment is everything. Had I been a man, my inamorata would have driven me to solitude and cigars. Being what I was, supper pushed her image to one side for the moment. Such a supper! Served specially for the pair of us in a little room, once, I suppose, some lady's boudoir, for the walls were hung with blue silk, and the ceiling was painted with flowers and cupids. "Where is Carl?" asked Eloise of the German woman who served us.