Don Philip prepared to amuse himself at his friend’s expense. He was always ready to exact such payment for the familiarity he invited. “Meaning,” he said, with a just perceptible wink at the other intimate, “that she shows signs of succumbing after all to what, for our part, we found instantly irresistible.” “I neither meant that, nor detect here any such indication,” was the glowering answer. “You puzzle me, Charles,” said the duke. “What _did_ you mean then, may I ask?” “I meant just what I said.” “Was ever such a cross enigma!” protested Philip to la Roque. “Here is our daughter, though in an unaccommodating mood, almost confessing herself at last a captive to the charm to which we all yielded at the first assault, and our friend will have us insensible by comparison. But I say we shall refuse to surrender to the Infanta that first place in appreciating M. Tiretta, in taking which we were all unanimous.” “Say with one exception,” cried la Coque. “One? Yourself, do you mean?” “Certainly I do.” “What! You valued him at first at something lower than the rest of us?” He knew very well the spiteful jealousy aroused in this rival bosom by the stranger’s success, and delighted to prick and goad it. La Coque ignored the exclamation. His patron’s amiable purpose was perfectly plain to him. “I recognise, at this moment, M. Tiretta’s art to be supreme,” he said; “only I spell it, for my part, with a little a.” “‘Elles ne sont point bonnes,’ remarked the little low fox of the big high mulberries,” murmured la Roque silkily. The other darted a malignant glance at the speaker, but restrained himself. The duke, his nose wrinkled in a covert snigger, saw something in the insolent face which stiffened his own. “An innuendo, Charles my friend?” he said. “Or are you meaning nothing but to belittle, after your way, M. Tiretta’s gift?” La Coque set his white teeth and nodded. He looked very much like a snapping terrier, whom it would be dangerous to handle incautiously. “I do not belittle his gift,” he said. “I spell it with a smaller letter than you, that is all.” “And with another significance--you imply something,” said the duke, after frowning at him awhile. “What is it?” “Perhaps my ears,” replied la Coque, “are more sensitive than most to the subtle nuances of sound--to discords, disharmonies, so slight as to be imperceptible to less exquisite understandings. Perhaps her Highness is likewise constituted, so that within this Tiretta’s mellifluous tones she is able to detect a something insidious, incorrect, which at once fascinates and repels her.” The duke did not answer; and presently he went on: