“Have you seen a ghost, my lord?” asked Phelim.

The earl did not answer; he did not even hear.  He stood gazing at Lady Nora.  For one brief moment, when he stood before the cup, he had questioned whether a woman who would impose such a condition could be worth winning; and now, before her, her beauty overwhelmed him.  He forgot Phelim; he forgot the passers-by; he forgot everything, except the woman he loved—­the woman he had lost.

“Nora,” he said, “I give you back your promise.  I cannot give you the cup.”

The color left her cheeks and her hands flew up to her heart—­she gazed at him with love and pity in her eyes, and then, suddenly, her cheeks flamed, her white teeth pressed her lower lip, her little foot stamped upon the pavement.

“Very well,” she said, “I regret having given you so much trouble;” and she went toward the landing.  She took three steps and then turned.  The two men stood as she had left them.

“Phelim,” she said, smiling, “you would do something for me, if I were to ask you, would you not?”

“Try me,” said Phelim.  “Would you like the Campanile for a paper-weight?”

“No,” she said, “not that, but something else.  Come here.”

He went to her, and she whispered in his ear.

“I’ll bring it you in half an hour, aboard the yacht,” said Phelim, and he started across the Piazza.

Lady Nora went on toward the landing.  The earl stood watching her.  She did not look back.  The earl looked up at the clock-tower.  “In half an hour,” he said to himself, “he will bring it to her, aboard the yacht;” and he turned and re-entered the church.  He went up the aisle, nodded to the sacristan, entered the treasury, took the turquoise cup, came out with it in his hand, nodded again to the sacristan, went down the steps, crossed the Piazza, ran down the landing-stairs, and jumped into a gondola.

“To the English yacht!” he cried.

He looked at his watch.  “It seems,” he said to himself “that one can join the criminal classes in about six minutes.  I’ve twenty-four the start of Phelim.”

They came alongside the Tara, and the earl sprang up the ladder.

“Lady Nora?” he asked of the quartermaster.

“She is below, my lord.  She has just come aboard, and she left orders to show you down, my lord.”

“Me?” exclaimed the earl.

“She didn’t name you, my lord;” said the quartermaster, “what she said was—­’A gentleman will come on board soon; show him below.’”

The earl speculated a moment as to whether he were still a gentleman, and then went down the companion-way.  He came to the saloon.  The door was open.  He looked in.  Lady Nora was seated at the piano, but her hands were clasped in her lap.  Her head was bent and the earl noticed, for the thousandth time, how the hair clustered in her neck and framed the little, close-set ear.  He saw the pure outlines of her shoulders; beneath the bench, he saw her foot in its white shoe; he saw, or felt, he could not have told you which, that here was the one woman in all this great world.  To love her was a distinction.  To sin for her was a dispensation.  To achieve her was a coronation.