“And yet you have left me none,” he answered with, sudden boldness.

“No?  How so?”

He held up the silver knife and smiled.

“I do not understand,” she said, affecting a look of surprise.

“I was going to ask your permission to take your hand.”

“Indeed?  Why?  There it is.”  She held it out frankly.

He took the beautiful fingers in his and looked at them for a moment.  Then he quietly raised them to his lips.

“That was not included in the permission,” she said, with a little laugh and drawing back.  “Now you ought to go away at once.”

“Why?”

“Because that little ceremony can belong only to the beginning or the end of a visit.”

“I have only just come.”

“Ah?  How long the time has seemed!  I fancied you had been here half an hour.”

“To me it has seemed but a minute,” answered Orsino promptly.

“And you will not go?”

There was nothing of the nature of a peremptory dismissal in the look which accompanied the words.

“No—­at the most, I will practise leave-taking.”

“I think not,” said Maria Consuelo with sudden coldness.  “You are a little too—­what shall I say?—­too enterprising, prince.  You had better make use of the gift where it will be a recommendation—­in business, for instance.”

“You are very severe, Madame,” answered Orsino, deeming it wiser to affect humility, though a dozen sharp answers suggested themselves to his ready wit.

Maria Consuelo was silent for a few seconds.  Her head was resting upon the little red morocco cushion, which heightened the dazzling whiteness of her skin and lent a deeper colour to her auburn hair.  She was gazing at the hangings above the door.  Orsino watched her in quiet admiration.  She was beautiful as he saw her there at that moment, for the irregularities of her features were forgotten in the brilliancy of her colouring and in the grace of the attitude.  Her face was serious at first.  Gradually a smile stole over it, beginning, as it seemed, from the deeply set eyes and concentrating itself at last in the full, red mouth.  Then she spoke, still looking upwards and away from him.

“What would you think if I were not a little severe?” she asked.  “I am a woman living—­travelling, I should say—­quite alone, a stranger here, and little less than a stranger to you.  What would you think if I were not a little severe, I say?  What conclusion would you come to, if I let you take my hand as often as you pleased, and say whatever suggested itself to your imagination—­your very active imagination?”

“I should think you the most adorable of women—­”

“But it is not my ambition to be thought the most adorable of women by you, Prince Orsino.”

“No—­of course not.  People never care for what they get without an effort.”

“You are absolutely irrepressible!” exclaimed Maria Consuelo, laughing in spite of herself.