“Not quite. Prince Mirkovics’s daughter, one of her _Hofdamen_, gave it to her once at Christmas. It had one very large diamond in it, and to the uninitiated that was all. But the diamond was so cut that by looking at it at a certain angle you could see a portrait in the setting behind it. The Queen was delighted.” “And it was your portrait? and she was wearing it still?” “She was wearing it still. That is my sole ground of hope. But why I should be pouring out my sorrows to you in this way, like young Werther or the celebrated Mr Rochester, I don’t know. It isn’t for a warning, because I can’t by any stretch of imagination conceive you to be in need of it, and it certainly isn’t because I was yearning for a confidant. It must have been simply your astonishing cheek in leading up to the subject. Well, now your idol is broken, and I hope you are pleased.” “I can’t think what made me do it,” said Mansfield, awkwardly. “I know I must seem disgustingly inquisitive to you, but I only wanted to--to----” “To annihilate time and space for my benefit, I know. Well, don’t distress yourself. I could have shut you up at any moment I chose. As I said, I wished to see whether you would quite turn your back upon me when you knew the whole truth.” “I could never do that, whatever happened. Try me.” “I believe you. And now, if you have probed into my past history sufficiently, perhaps you would not mind going round to the steward’s and seeing what he has to say about the mule-litter that Hicks mentioned this morning?” Mr Hicks himself entered the room as Mansfield stumbled out of it, and cast a glance of quizzical reproof at Cyril as he sat down on the divan. “I’d lay my last red cent, Count, that you’ve been tormenting that unhappy young man again. The way you work upon his finer feelings is the cruellest thing I ever saw. You play upon him like an organ.” “Then why does he lend himself to it?” asked Cyril. “It’s not in human nature to neglect such an opportunity. The luckless youth is provokingly sane otherwise. My brother values his opinion, my nephew and niece look up to him devoutly; I believe he even fancies himself a little as a man of the world. Why should he take it into his head to conceive such an adoration for me that he becomes like a child in my hands? I can make him blush and stammer like a girl, and for no reason whatever.” “He don’t get much show out of his adoration, sir, any way.” “No, indeed; and yet he keeps it up. Why does a woman torment her lovers, Hicks? To show her power, I suppose--not necessarily because she delights in seeing them miserable. It gives me a kind of pleasure, no doubt, to know that I can raise the unfortunate Mansfield from despair to the seventh heaven by a word, and plunge him down into the depths again by another, and therefore I do it.” “Guess you are keeping your hand in, Count, against the time they fix you up with a whole territory to practise your fascinations upon.”