“Bobby,” said Lady Nora, finally, “it is nice to be here, just you and I.”

He made a quick motion to take her in his arms, but she started back.  “No, no,” she said, “not yet; not till you earn me.  There may be many a slip ’twixt the cup and”—­she put her fingers to her lips.

Miss O’Kelly’s chin fell upon her topazes so sharply that she wakened with a start.

“Nora, darlin’?” she cried, looking about her.

“Here I am,” said Lady Nora, coming into the light.

“Ah,” said her aunt, “and Lord Robert, too.  I thought he had gone.  I must have had forty winks.”

“I was only waiting,” said the earl, “to bid you good-night.”

“An Irishman,” said Miss O’Kelly, “would have taken advantage of me slumbers, and would have kissed me hand.”

“An Englishman will do it when you are awake,” said the earl.

“That’s nice,” said Miss O’Kelly; “run away home now, and get your beauty-sleep.”

VI

During the following week the cardinal was so occupied with his poor that he nearly forgot his rich.  He saw the yacht whenever he took his barca at the molo, and once, when he was crossing the Rialto, he caught a glimpse of Lady Nora and her aunt, coming up the canal in their gondola.

As for the earl, he haunted St. Mark’s.  Many times each day he went to the treasury only to find it locked.  The sacristan could give him no comfort.  “Perhaps to-morrow, my lord,” he would say when the earl put his customary question; “it is the annual cleaning, and sometimes a jewel needs resetting, an embroidery to be repaired—­all this takes time—­perhaps to-morrow.  Shall I uncover the Palo d’Oro, my Lord, or light up the alabaster column; they are both very fine?” And the earl would turn on his heel and leave the church, only to come back in an hour to repeat his question and receive his answer.

One day the earl spoke out—­“Tommaso,” he said, “you are not a rich man, I take it?”

“My lord,” replied Tommaso, “I am inordinately poor.  Are you about to tempt me?”

The earl hesitated, blushed, and fumbled in his pocket.  He drew out a handful of notes.

“Take these,” he said, “and open the treasury.”

“Alas, my lord,” said Tommaso, “my virtue is but a battered thing, but I must keep it.  I have no key.”

The earl went out and wandered through the arcades.  He came upon Lady Nora and Miss O’Kelly.  They were looking at Testolini’s shop-windows.  Lady Nora greeted him with a nod—­Miss O’Kelly with animation.

“I’m havin’ a struggle with me conscience,” she said.

So was the earl.

“Do ye see that buttherfly?” continued Miss O’Kelly, putting her finger against the glass; “it’s marked two hundred lire, and that’s eight pounds.  I priced one in Dublin, just like it, and it was three hundred pounds.  They don’t know the value of diamonds in Italy.  I’ve ten pounds that I got from Phelim yesterday, in a letther.  He says there’s been an Englishman at the Kildare Club for three weeks, who thought he could play piquet.  Phelim is travellin’ on the Continent.  Now, the question in me mind is, shall I pay Father Flynn the ten pounds I promised him, a year ago Easter, or shall I buy the buttherfly?  It would look illigant, Nora, dear, with me blue bengaline.”