The curtain again drew up, amid the shuffling of the audience settling themselves in their places, and represented a _fête_ in the gardens of Cagliostra's palace, brilliant with coloured lights and fantastically-dressed people. According to the story, Cagliostra has obtained possession of his prize, and woos her successfully, when Prince Carnival enters and sings a ballad, "So Long Ago," in the hope of touching the heart of his false love. Caprice, dressed in a tight-fitting costume of silk and velvet, which showed off her beautiful figure to perfection, stood in the centre of the stage with a sad smile, and sang the waltz-refrain of the song with great feeling. "For it was long ago, love, That time of joy and woe, love! Yet still that heart of thine Is mine, dear love, is mine!" She gave to the jingling words a touch of pathos which was exquisitely beautiful. "I believe she feels what she sings," whispered Keith. "If you knew her story you would scarcely wonder at that," said Ezra bitterly. The song was redemanded, but Caprice refused to respond, and, the clamour still continuing, she shrugged her shoulders and walked coolly up the stage. "She's in a temper to-night," said Mortimer to Santon. "They can applaud till they're black in the face, but devil an answer they'll get from her, the jade! She isn't called Caprice for nothing." And so it happened, for the audience, finding she would not gratify them, subsided into a sulky silence, and Caprice went coolly on with the dialogue. Cagliostra, repentant, surrenders the girl to Prince Carnival, and the opera ended with a repetition of the galop chorus, wherein Keith saw the sad-eyed woman of a few moments before once more a mocking jibing fiend, dancing and singing with a reckless _abandon_ that half-fascinated and half-disgusted him. "What a contradiction," said Keith, as they left the theatre; "one moment all tears, the next all laughter!" "With a spice of the devil in both," replied Ezra cynically. "She is the Sphinx woman of Heine--her lips caress while her claws wound."