Herbert, charmed, looking at the beautiful speaker, thought she blushed; and this moved him mightily, for Giovanna was not like a little girl at a dance, an ingénue, who blushed for nothing. She was a woman, older than himself, and not pretty, but grand and great and beautiful; nor ignorant, but a woman who knew more of that wonderful “life” which dazzled the boy--a great deal more than he himself did, or any one here. That she should blush while she spoke to him was in some way an intoxicating compliment to Herbert’s own influence and manly power. “You mean _like_,” said Reine, who persistently acted the part of a wet blanket. “That is what we say in English, when it means something not so serious as friendship and not so close as love--a feeling on the surface; when you would say ‘Il me plait’ in French, in English you say ‘I like him.’ It means just that, and no more.” Giovanna shrugged her shoulders with a little shiver. “Comme c’est froid, ça!” she said, snatching up Miss Susan’s shawl, which lay on a chair, and winding it round her. Miss Susan half turned round, with a consciousness that something of hers was being touched, but she said nothing, and her eye was dull and veiled. Reine, who knew that her aunt did not like her properties interfered with, was more surprised than ever, and half alarmed, though she did not know why. “Ah, yes, it is cold, very cold, you English,” said Giovanna, unwinding the shawl again, and stretching it out behind her at the full extent of her white arms. How the red drapery threw out her fine head, with the close braids of black hair, wavy and abundant, twined round and round it, in defiance of fashion! Her hair was not at all the hair of the period, either in color or texture. It was black and glossy and shining, as dark hair ought to be; and she was pale, with scarcely any color about her except her lips. “Ah, how it is cold! Mademoiselle Reine, I will not say _like_--I will say de l’amitié! It is more sweet. And then, if it should come to be love after, it will be more natural,” she said with a smile.