He ventured to delay her one moment: “I am to be permitted to speak henceforth, as a true ambassador, what my heart dictates?” “O, fie, monsieur!” she said; “to think that perfection could need any trumpeting!” And, with those smiling ambiguous words, she left him. For some moments after she was gone Tiretta stood motionless, frowning into vacancy. Then, with a sigh, he stirred, and, perceiving in the act a little spray of some blue flower which had fallen from her bosom to the ground, stooped, and secured it, and held the thing wonderingly in his hand. “Love-in-a-mist!” he whispered: “So in the strange North lands--my lands--they call it. Love-in-a-mist!” CHAPTER VIII. CORRESPONDENCE A couple of communications, relating to the rather fantastic business in hand, were despatched about this date from Colorno, the one by Tiretta and the other by the _gouvernante_. The soldier wrote, _inter alia_, to his royal friend and patron: “You will recall your words, that in this _affaire_--one of policy, it is true, but still an _affaire_--you were determined to woo your own way--c’est-à-dire, the way of a prince, who cannot desire plums but he must have a lackey to put them into his mouth for him. Well, as your Highness’s lackey, I have the honour to inform your Highness that the plum forthcoming is a very blooming and delectable one, promising satisfaction on all the points specified, and indeed, I think, on others supernumerary. The question is merely if the plum, for her part, wishes to be devoured; but, even so, there is always a sweet provocation in coyness. Rest assured, at least, that I have left nothing undone to commend to it the fine taste of the connoisseur for whose enjoyment it is distinguished in being selected. I put it so for the reason that, whether by way of intuition or tittle-tattle, my mission, as I soon discovered, was suspect. That made my task none the easier; and none the easier the allaying of the prejudice which, as your Highness correctly surmised, _did_ exist against yourself. There is no blinking the fact that the lady had learnt to associate the Count of Falckenstein of a certain occasion with the heir to the Austrian throne, and that the knowledge stood at first in the way of a perfect reconciliation between her impressions of fact and the laudatory image, even a little strained, which I was moved to draw of your Highness. But that impression, I flatter myself, and the true devotion which gives fervour to my poor art, is surely if slowly in process of readjusting itself; and I look confidently to the near time when the complete conversion I anticipate shall see eye to eye with me in the regard of your Highness’s true character, its essential greatness and nobility. In the meanwhile I pray that that state of grace may be quickly forthcoming, in order to my release from a task to which nothing but my sense of friendship (I say it with all deference) could reconcile me. Carpet-mongering is not to my taste,