“Do you know, Nino, it was once my dream to be a great musician.  If I had not been so rich I should have taken the profession in earnest.  But now, you see, it is different, is it not?”

“Yes, it is all different now,” he answered, not knowing exactly what she meant, but radiantly happy, all the same.

“I mean,” she said, hesitating—­“I mean that now that we are to be always together, what you do I do, and what I do you do.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, perfectly,” said Nino, rather puzzled, but quite satisfied.

“Ah no, dear,” said she, forgetting my presence, and letting her hand steal into his as he stood, “you do not understand—­quite.  I mean that so long as one of us can be a great musician it is enough, and I am just as great as though I did it all myself.”

Thereupon Nino forgot himself altogether, and kissed her golden hair.  But then he saw me looking, for it was so pretty a sight that I could not help it, and he remembered.

“Oh!” he said in a tone of embarrassment that I had never heard before.  Then Hedwig blushed very much too, and looked away, and Nino put himself between her and me, so that I might not see her.

“Could you play something for me to sing, Hedwig?” he asked suddenly.

“Oh, yes!  I can play ‘Spirto gentil,’ by heart,” she cried, hailing the idea with delight.

In a moment they were both lost, and indeed so was I, in the dignity and beauty of the simple melody.  As he began to sing, Nino bent down to her, and almost whispered the first words into her ear.  But soon he stood erect, and let the music flow from his lips just as God made it.  His voice was tired with the long watching and the dust and cold and heat of the journey; but, as De Pretis said when he began, he has an iron throat, and the weariness only made the tones soft and tender and thrilling, that would perhaps have been too strong for my little room.

Suddenly he stopped short in the middle of a note, and gazed open-mouthed at the door.  And I looked, too, and was horrified; and Hedwig, looking also, screamed and sprang back to the window, overturning the chair she had sat on.

In the doorway stood Ahasuerus Benoni, the Jew.

Mariuccia had imprudently forgotten to shut the door when Hedwig and Nino came, and the baron had walked in unannounced.  You may imagine the fright I was in.  But, after all, it was natural enough that after what had occurred he, as well as the count, should seek an interview with me, to obtain what information I was willing to give.

There he stood in his gray clothes, tall and thin and smiling as of yore.

CHAPTER XXIV

Nino is a man for great emergencies, as I have had occasion to say, and when he realised who the unwelcome visitor was, he acted as promptly as usual.  With a face like marble he walked straight across the room to Benoni and faced him.