“No, I am sure he doesn’t realize how sweet you are,” she whispered. “You darling little thing,--you little, shy, frightened thing--you must tell me all about it! I’ll try not to tease you--I really will! What a clever, naughty little girl, it has been, peeping and glancing at a poor elderly farmer and inflaming his simple heart! But all your friends are rather well advanced in age, aren’t they, dear? I expect uncle John is really no older than Mr. Quincunx or James Andersen. What tricks do you use, darling, to attract all these people? “I’ll tell you what it is! It’s the way you clasp your fingers, and keep groping with your hands in the air in front of you, as if you were blind. I’ve noticed that trick of yours for a long time. I expect it attracts them awfully! I expect they all long to take those little wrists and hold them tight! And the drooping, dragging way you walk, too; that no doubt they find quite enthralling. It has often irritated _me_, but I can quite see now why you do it. It must make them long to support you in their strong arms! What a crafty little puss she is! And I have sometimes taken her for no better than a little simpleton! I see I shall not for long be the only person allowed to kiss our charming Lacrima! So I must make the best of my opportunities, mustn’t I?” Suiting her action to her words she turned the girl towards her with a vigorous movement, and overcoming her reluctance, embraced her softly, whispering, as she kissed her averted mouth,-- “Uncle John won’t do this half so prettily as I do, will he? But oh, how you must have played your tricks upon him--cunning, cunning little thing!” Lacrima had by this time reached the end of her endurance. With a sudden flash of genuine Italian anger she flung her cousin back, with such unexpected violence, that the elder girl would actually have fallen to the floor, if she had not encountered in her collapse the arm of the wicker chair which stood behind her. She rose silent and malignant. “So that’s what we gentle, wily ones do, is it, when we lose our little tempers! All right, my friend, all right! I shall remember.” She walked haughtily to the door that divided their rooms. “The sooner I am married,” she cried, as a final hit, “the sooner _you_ will be--and I shall be married soon--soon--soon; perhaps before this summer is out!” Lacrima stood for some moments rigid and unmoving. Then there came over her an irresistible longing to escape from this house, and flee far off, anywhere, anyhow, so long as she could be alone with her misery, alone with her tragic resolution. The invasion of Gladys had made this resolution a very different thing from what it had seemed an hour ago. But she must recover herself! She must see things again in the clearer, larger light of sublime sacrifice. She must purge the baseness of her cousin’s sensual magnetism out of her brain and her heart!