"Oh! now you are laughing at me! Princess Agatha has more than all three of us together, nor do I think that even my father has any more than she has. Ah! if you knew her as well as I do, Magnani! Such a head and heart! such charm! such kindness! I could pass my whole life listening to her; and, if my father and she would allow it, I would like to be her servant, although obedience is not my leading characteristic." Magnani was silent for a few moments. He could not succeed in disentangling his thoughts in his excitement. Hitherto Agatha had seemed to him so far above all praise that he was indignant and hurt when anyone ventured to say that she was lovely, charitable and sweet. He preferred to listen to those who said that she was ugly and mad, when they did not know her and had never seen her. They at all events said nothing about her in which there was the slightest sense, whereas the others praised her too feebly, and annoyed Magnani beyond words by their inability to comprehend her. But on Mila's lips Agatha lost nothing of the idea he had formed of her. Only Mila seemed to him pure enough to utter her name without profaning it, and because she shared his adoration, she was almost equal to his idol in his eyes. "Dear Mila," he said at last, still holding her hand, which he had forgotten to give back to her, "to love and to understand as you do indicates a great mind. But what did you say about me to the princess? Ought I not to ask you?" Mila blessed the darkness, which concealed her blushes, and she grew bolder as a timid woman gradually becomes intoxicated by the assured impunity of a masquerade. "I am really afraid that it will be indiscreet in me to repeat it to you," she said, "and I should not dare to do it!" "So you said unkind things about me, did you, naughty Mila?" "No; for Princess Agatha had said so much good of you that it would have been impossible for me to think any evil of you. I cannot look at anything except through her eyes. But I let out something which Michel told me in confidence." "Really? I don't know what you mean." Mila noticed that Magnani's hand trembled. She ventured to strike a decisive blow. "Well," she said, in an artless, almost indifferent tone, "I told the princess that you were really very kind, very pleasant and very learned; but that one had either to know you very well, or else guess at you in order to find it out!" "Because ----?" "Because you were in love, and that made you so melancholy that you lived almost entirely alone, buried in meditation." Magnani trembled. "It was Michel who told you that!" he said, in a changed tone that made Mila's heart bleed. "And doubtless he betrayed my confidence to the end," he added; "he told you the name----"