“O! very well,” she said. “There is no harm done. If I am mistaken I am mistaken, that is all.” He should have gone; but he unwisely lingered. “I believe,” he said, “I ought to probe this to the bottom. Only gossip takes good care to be elusive.” “It cannot help itself, monsieur,” said the girl. “It is all shaped upon signs and hints and glances--upon a mystic code which only the initiated can interpret.” “Then in that case you are not one of the initiated.” “I do my best, monsieur. Hey-day! Well, from my own point of view, I am sorry for my mistress--especially as she looks, for her entertainment, to the company this afternoon of so chill a cavalier.” “What do you mean?” “O! nothing, but that we are going, she and I, to that old Aquaviva’s garden; and without the she-dragon, who will be engaged over M. du Tillot.” “Her Highness expects me to accompany her?” “I did not say that. To think she could so commit herself! But she sighs over the incompleteness of her dear orange-grove, which, says she, only needs its Orpheus to be the sweetest garden under heaven.” “It is melancholy to have to produce music to order, is it not, Fanchette?” “I think it is, monsieur.” “Well, I must respond, I suppose. It will only be a little while longer. It has this use, that you shall convince yourself by my behaviour of the wickedness of your innuendo.” Convince herself as he convinced himself, no doubt. He told his conscience, as he walked away, that thus to go forward, steadfastly and dutifully, his eyes set to his mission, his ears deaf to the jeers and chuckles of scandal, was his only safe course. There was a story somewhere he had read of a prince whose way to a definite purpose lay up a stone-strewn hill, every pebble of which, when he came to the test, was clamant with an agonised or seductive voice entreating him to turn. And he did turn, and was changed into stone. Well, he must not be like that prince, that was all--an easy matter, it seemed. But the spirits of evil know their business better than man, or they would not provide so simple a lure for his ruin. It is the complicated trap which fails to beguile the confiding little mouse; the deadly snare consists in no more than a fragment of bait and a wire spring.