“You surely forget,” she urged, “that they know my offence, and do not know—­must not know—­what in your judgment excuses it.  Let them once learn that it is possible so to force the springs [bolts] without a sting, it will take a salt-fountain [of tears] to blot the lesson from their memory.”

“What would you have, Eveena?  Am I to deal unjustly that I may seem just?  That course steers straight to disaster.  And, had you been in fault, could, I humble you in other eyes?”

“If I feel hurt by any mark of your displeasure, or humbled that it should be known to my equals in your own household,” she replied, “it is time I were deprived of the privileges that have rendered me so overweening.”

My answer was intercepted by the sound of an electric bell or miniature gong, and a slip of tafroo fell upon the desk.  The first words were in that vocal character which I had mastered, and came from Esmo.

“Hysterical folly,” he had said.  “Mountain air might be fatal; and clear nights are dangerously cold for more than yourselves.”

“What does he mean?” I asked, as I read out a formula more studiously occult than those of the Pharmacopoeia.

“That I am unpardonably silly, and that you must not dream of going back to your vessel.  The last words, I suppose, warn you how carefully in such a household you need to guard the secrets of the Starlight.”

“Well, and what is this in the stylic writing?”

Eveena glanced over it and coloured painfully, the tears gathering in her eyes.

“That,” she said, pointing to the first cipher, “is my mother’s signature.”

“Then,” I said, “it is meant for you, not for me.”

“Nay,” she answered.  “Do you think I could take advantage of your not knowing the character?”—­and she read words quite as incomprehensible to me as the writing itself.

“Can a star mislead the blind?  I should veil myself in crimson if I have trained a bird to snatch sugar from full hands.  Must even your womanhood reverse the clasps of your childhood?”

“It chimes midnight twice,” I said—­a Martial phrase meaning, ’I am as much in the dark as ever.’  “Do not translate it, carissima.  I can read in your face that it is unjust—­reproachful where you deserve no reproach.”

“Nay, when you so wrong my mother I must tell you exactly what she means:—­’Can a child of the Star take advantage of one who relies on her to explain the customs of a world unknown to him?  I blush to think that my child can abuse the tenderness of one who is too eager to indulge her fancies.’

“You see she is quite right.  You do trust me so absolutely, you are so strangely over-kind to me, it is shameful I should vex you by fretting because you are forced to do what you might well have done at your own pleasure.”

“My own, I was more than vexed; chiefly perhaps for your sake, but not by you.  Where any other woman would have stung the sore by sending fresh sparks along the wire, you thought only to spare me the pain of seeing you pained.  But what do the last words mean?  No”—­for I saw the colour deepen on her half-averted face—­“better leave unread what we know to be written in error.”