’I am carried along too rapidly by my feelings.  I feel that I must get my idea on canvas.  But when I was in London I saw such a lovely woman—­one of the most exquisite creatures possible to imagine!  Oh, so sweet, and so feminine!  I have it all in my head.  I shall do something like her to-morrow.’

Here he began to sketch with his stick in the dust, and from his face it might be judged he was satisfied with the invisible result.  At last he said: 

’You needn’t say anything about it, but she sent me some songs, with accompaniments written for the guitar.  You shall hear some of the songs to-night. . . .  Ah, there is the dinner-bell!’

Olive was placed next to Milord, and the compliments paid to her by the old courtier delighted her.  She pretended to understand when he said:  ’La femme est comme une ombre:  si vous la suives, elle vous fuit; si vous fuyez, elle vous poursuit.’  A little later the champagne she had drunk set her laughing hysterically, and she begged him to translate (he had just whispered to her mother, ’L’amour est la conscience du plaisir donne et recu, la certitude de donner et de recevoir’); and he would have complied with her request, but Mrs. Barton forbade him.  Alice, who had understood, found herself obliged to say that she had not understood, which little fib begot a little annoyance in her against her mother; and Milord, as if he thought that he had been guilty of a slight indiscretion, said, addressing himself to both girls:  ’Gardez bien vos illusions, mon enfant, car les illusions sont le miroir de l’amour.’

‘Ah! mais il ne faut pas couvrir trop l’abime avec des fleurs,’ said Mrs. Barton, as a sailor from his point of vantage might cry, ’Rocks ahead!’

Arthur only joined occasionally in the conversation; he gazed long and ardently on his daughter, and then sketched with his thumb-nail on the cloth, and when they arose from the table, Mrs. Barton said: 

’Now, now, I am not going to allow you gentlemen to spend any more time over your wine.  This is our first evening together; come into the drawing-room with us, and we shall have some music.’

Like most men of an unevenly balanced mind, Arthur loved an eccentric costume, and soon after he appeared in a long-tasselled cap and a strangely coloured smoking jacket; he wore a pair of high-heeled brocaded slippers, and, twanging a guitar, hummed to himself plaintively.  Then, when he thought he had been sufficiently admired, he sang A che la morte, Il Balen, and several other Italian airs, in which frequent allusion was made to the inconstancy of woman’s and the truth of man’s affection.  At every pause in the music these sentiments were laughingly contested by Mrs. Barton.  She appealed to Milord.  He never had had anything to complain of.  Was it not well known that the poor woman had been only too true to him?  Finally, it was arranged there should be a little dancing.