“If love can make it flower, dear my heart, that day shall come quickly.” “So I feel it,” he said. “Tend it; touch it; breathe on it--no more will be needed. It will think the spring is in its green veins; it will open its little smiling eyes, like a waking infant, to you its mother. Fancy it our sleeping baby, Isabel.” They were silent for awhile, the girl looking down with flushed cheeks. Presently she said: “Will Bissy wonder, do you think?” “Bissy?” “Why you gave him gold for it--that other?” “Ah-ha! Bissy is astute, a shrewd calculating elfin. He will not kill his goose with the golden eggs. The mine is not emptied of its possibilities for him. Trust him to be silent; and perish all scruples!” He deprecated meeting trouble half-way; he bade her just drift and be happy. He was in one of his irresponsible moods, indolent and garrulous. Sometimes, he told her, he felt like a warm mass of animated jelly, afloat on a tropic sea, and just dreamily conscious of the sun and the soft swaying of the water. If only he could roll lazily round, and feel the contact of his lady radiate, and with her drift on for ever through the glassy silences! “But I think there would be two sides to that,” responded Isabella very sensibly; “and only one would be turned to the sun. Picture the black abysses underneath, and what might rise up from them.” He laughed: “Then we will be two birds floating on tranced wings through the limitless blue.” “And the storms, Bonbec?” “Then two angels, it must be; and think of another side to that if you can.” “I can only think of God, Bonbec.” He looked at her, and laughed again; but suddenly was silent. That night Fanchette, preparing her mistress for bed, made an impromptu statement, quite innocently: “I have put the pot of basil in your Highness’s chambre-à-coucher.” Isabella, guilty of an involuntary start, paused a moment to recover her self-possession. “What pot of basil, girl?” “O! I thought your Highness would know. It was delivered as from M. le chevalier, with his respectful compliments.” “I recollect now. M. Tiretta, uncertain of his movements, begged me to hold the stakes, as it were, between himself and Aquaviva. You remember the challenge?” Indeed, that explanation of his gift had been offered to the Infanta by M. Tiretta himself; and not as a contingent one. If there was to be any question of subterfuge, the guilt should rest with him. Fanchette remembered very distinctly. “I think then, with your Highness’s permission, it is well placed where it is,” she said. Isabella, her colour a little heightened, found a difficulty in asking why. “O, I have a sentiment about these things,” said Fanchette. “Warm thoughts will make the flowers in one’s bosom open prematurely--I have noticed that.” “Are you proposing to me,” said Isabella, “to wear this entire bush as a posy?”