“There is no risk of my being discovered,” he said to himself, confidently.  “The story of the near relation was well imagined, and besides, it is true.  Am I not my own nearest relation?  I certainly have no others that I know of.  And this baroness—­what can she want of me?  She speaks Italian like a Spanish cow, and indeed she needs a professor badly enough.  But why should she take a fancy for me as a teacher.  Ah! those eyes!  Not the baroness’.  Edvigia—­Edvigia di Lira—­Edvigia Ca—­Cardegna!  Why not?” He stopped to think, and looked long at the moonbeams playing on the waters of the fountain.  “Why not?  But the baroness—­may the diavolo fly away with her!  What should I do—­I indeed! with a pack of baronesses?  I will go to bed and dream—­not of a baroness!  Macche, never a baroness in my dreams, with eyes like a snake, and who cannot speak three words properly in the only language under the sun worth speaking!  Not I—­I will dream of Edvigia di Lira—­she is the spirit of my dreams.  Spirto gentil—­” and away he went, humming the air from the “Favorita” in the top of his head, as is his wont.

The next day the contessina could talk of nothing during her lesson but the unknown singer who had made the night so beautiful for her, and Nino flushed red under his dark skin and ran his fingers wildly through his curly hair, with pleasure.  But he set his square jaw, that means so much, and explained to his pupil how hard it would be for her to hear him again.  For his friend, he said, was soon to make his appearance on the stage, and of course he could not be heard singing before that.  And as the young lady insisted, Nino grew silent, and remarked that the lesson was not progressing.  Thereupon Hedwig blushed—­the first time he had ever seen her blush—­and did not approach the subject again.

After that he went to the house of the baroness, where he was evidently expected, for the servant asked his name and immediately ushered him into her presence.  She was one of those lithe, dark women of good race, that are to be met with all over the world, and she has broken many a heart.  But she was not like a snake at all, as Nino had thought at first.  She was simply a very fine lady who did exactly what she pleased, and if she did not always act rightly, yet I think she rarely acted unkindly.  After all, the buon Dio has not made us all paragons of domestic virtue.  Men break their hearts for so very little, and, unless they are ruined, they melt the pieces at the next flame and join them together again like bits of sealing wax.

The baroness sat before a piano in a boudoir, where there was not very much light.  Every part of the room was crowded with fans, ferns, palms, Oriental carpets and cushions, books, porcelain, majolica, and pictures.  You could hardly move without touching some ornament, and the heavy curtains softened the sunshine, and a small open fire of wood helped the warmth.  There was also an odour of Russian tobacco.  The baroness smiled and turned on the piano seat.