“I?  I don’t see that you have any heart at all, Sir.”

“I swallow my tea and my mortification.”

“Do you remember your first repast at the Bawn?” asked Mrs. Purcell.

“Why not?”

“And the jelly like molten rubies that I made?  It keeps well.”  And she moved a glittering dish toward him.

“All things of that summer keep well,” he replied.

“Except yourself, Mr. Raleigh.  The Indian jugglers are practising upon us, I suspect.  You are no more like the same person who played sparkling comedy and sang passionate tragedy than this bamboo stick is like that willow wand.”

“I wish I could retort, Miss Helen,” he replied.  “I beg your pardon!”

She was silent, and her eye fell and rested on the sheeny damask beneath.  He glanced at her keenly an instant, then handed her his cup, saying,—­

“May I trouble you?”

She looked up again, a smile breaking over the face wanner than youth, but which the hour’s gayety had flushed to a forgetfulness of intervening years, extended her left hand for the cup, still gazing and smiling.

Various resolves had flitted through Marguerite’s mind since her entrance.  One, that she would yet make Mr. Raleigh feel her power, yielded to shame and self-contempt, and she despised herself for a woman won unwooed.  But she was not sure that she was won.  Perhaps, after all, she did not care particularly for Mr. Raleigh.  He was much older than she; he was quite grave, sometimes satirical; she knew nothing about him; she was slightly afraid of him.  On the whole, if she consulted her taste, she would have preferred a younger hero; she would rather be the Fornarina for a Raffaello; she had fancied her name sweetening the songs of Giraud Riquier, the last of the Troubadours; and she did not believe Beatrice Portinari to be so excellent among women, so different from other girls, that her name should have soared so far aloft with that escutcheon of the golden wing on a field azure.  “But they say that there cannot be two epic periods in a nation’s literature,” thought Marguerite hurriedly; “so that a man who might have been Homer once will be nothing but a gentleman now.”  And at this point, having decided that Mr. Raleigh was fully worth unlimited love, she added to her resolves a desire for content with whatever amount of friendly affection he chose to bestow upon her.  And all this, while sifting the sugar over her raspberries.  Nevertheless, she felt, in the midst of her heroic content, a strange jealousy at hearing the two thus discuss days in which she had no share, and she watched them furtively, with a sharp, hateful suspicion dawning in her mind.  Now, as Mrs. Purcell’s eyes met Mr. Raleigh’s, and her hand was still extended for the cup, Marguerite fastened her glance on its glittering ring, and said abruptly,—­

“Mrs. Purcell, have you a husband?”

Mrs. Purcell started and withdrew her hand, as if it had received a blow, just as Mr. Raleigh relinquished the cup, so that between them the bits of pictured porcelain fell and splintered over the equipage.