“Tell him so!  Try him just once more, and I have an abiding faith that he will generously respond to your appeal.”

Olga looked compassionately at her companion for an instant, and the old bitter laugh jarred upon the girl’s ears.

“Poor little dove trying your wings in the upper air, flashing the silver in the sun; fancying you are free to circle in the heavens so blue above you!  Your wary hawk watches patiently, only waiting for you to soar a little higher, venture a little farther from the shelter of the dovecote; then he will strike you down, fasten his talons in your heart.  ’Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’  The first yon have yet to leap, and with Erle Palma as your preceptor, your prospective tuition fees are heavy.  You are a sweet good earnest-hearted child, but in this house you need to be something quite different—­a Seraph.  Do you understand?  Now you are only a cherub, which in the original means dove; but some day, if you live here, you will learn the wisdom of the Seraph, which means serpent!  I know little ‘Latin, less of Greek,’ no Hebrew; but a learned seer of New England taught me this.”

She tossed aside the bedclothes, and sprang out upon the floor, wrapping herself in her cherry-coloured shawl.

“Five o’clock, I daresay.  Out of doors it is grey daylight, and I must go back to my own room unobserved.  What a world of sorrowful sympathy shines in your wonderful eyes!  What a pity you can’t die now, just as you are, for then your pure sinless soul would float straight to that Fifth Heaven of the Midrash, ‘Gan-Eden,’ which is set apart exclusively for the souls of noble women, and Pharaoh’s daughter, who is presumed to be Queen there, would certainly make you maid of honour!  One word more, before I run away.  Do you know why Cleopatra is coming here?’’

“Olga, I do not in the least understand half you are saying.”

Olga’s large white hand smoothed back the hair that clouded the girl’s forehead, and she asked almost incredulously: 

“Don’t you really know that the Sorceress of the Nile drifts hither in her gilded barge?  You have heard of Brunella Carew, the richest woman in the Antilles?  She is the most dangerous of smooth-skinned witches, as fascinating as Phryne, but more wisely discreet.  When you see her you will be at once reminded of Owen Meredith’s ‘Fatality’: 

’Live hair afloat with snakes of gold,
And a throat as white as snow,
And a stately figure and foot
And that faint pink smile, so sweet, so cold.’

Just now this Cuban widow is the fashionable lioness; she is also a pet clientele of Erle Palma, and comes here to-day on a brief visit.  Heaven grant she prove his Lamia!  As she affects Oriental style, I call her Cleopatra, which pleases her vastly.  Having been endowed at birth with beauty and fortune, her remaining ambition is to appear fastidious in literature, and dilettante in art, and if you