She pointed to the heads of Mr. and Mrs. Waul just visible over the mass of ruins that intervened, and lifting her handkerchief, waved it twice.

“You have established a system of signal service with those antique ogres, griffons?  Really they resemble crouching cougars, ready to spring upon the unwary who dare penetrate to the sacred precincts that enclose you.  Why do you always travel with that grim body-guard?  Surely they are not relatives?”

“They are faithful old friends who followed me across the Atlantic, who are invaluable, and shield me from impertinent annoyances, to which all women of my profession are more or less subjected.  The world to which you belong sometimes seem disposed to forget that beneath and behind the paint and powder, false hair and fine tragic airs and costumes they pay to strangle time for them at San Carlo, or Teatro de’ Fiorentini there breathes a genuine human thing; a creature with a true, pure, womanly heart beating under the velvet, gauze, and tinsel, and with blood that now and then boils under unprovoked and dastardly insult.  If I were cross-eyed, or had been afflicted with small-pox, or were otherwise disfigured, I should not require Mr. and Mrs. Waul; but Madame Orme, the lonely widow deprived by death of a father’s or brother’s watchful protection, finds her humble companions a valuable barrier against presumption and insolence.  For instance, when strangers, pleased with my carefully practised jeu de theatre, send fulsome notes and costly bijouterie to my lodgings, praying in return a lock of my hair or a photograph, my griffons, as you facetiously term them, rarely even consult me, but generally send back the jewels by the bearer, and twist the billets-doux into tapers to light Mr. Waul’s pipe.  Sometimes I see them; often I am saved the trouble of knowing anything about the impertinence.”

Her voice was sweet and mellow as a Phrygian flute sounding softly on moonlight nights through acacia and oleander groves, but the scorn burning in her eyes was intolerable, and before it the old man seemed to shrink, while a purplish flush swept across his proud face.

“Mrs. Orme is an anomaly among lovely women, and especially among popular tragediennes, and as I am suffering the consequences of that unexpected fact, may I venture, in pleading for pardon, to remind her of that grand prayer:  ’Be it my will that my mercy overpower my justice.’  Will she not nobly forgive errors committed in ignorance of the peculiar sensitiveness of her nature, the mimosa delicacy of her admirable character?”

Not until this moment had the likeness between father and son shown itself so conspicuously, and in the handsome features and insinuating, beguiling velvet voice she found sickening resemblances that made her heart surge, until she seemed suffocating.  Hastily she loosened the ribbons of her hat that were tied beneath her chin.