“You have told a sad and a noble tale, sir, and told it well; but, though your story was to set forth a perfect husband, it has ended rather by setting forth a perfect wife.”

“And if I have forgotten, madam, in praising her to praise him also, have I not done that which would have best pleased his heroical and chivalrous spirit?  He, be sure, would have forgotten his own virtue in the light of hers; and he would have wished me, I doubt not, to do the same also.  And beside, madam, where ladies are the theme, who has time or heart to cast one thought upon their slaves?” And the Don made one of his deliberate and highly-finished bows.

“Don Guzman is courtier enough, as far as compliments go,” said one of the young ladies; “but it was hardly courtier-like of him to find us so sad an entertainment, upon a merry evening.”

“Yes,” said another; “we must ask him for no more stories.”

“Or songs either,” said a third.  “I fear he knows none but about forsaken maidens and despairing lovers.”

“I know nothing at all about forsaken ladies, madam; because ladies are never forsaken in Spain.”

“Nor about lovers despairing there, I suppose?”

“That good opinion of ourselves, madam, with which you English are pleased to twit us now and then, always prevents so sad a state of mind.  For myself, I have had little to do with love; but I have had still less to do with despair, and intend, by help of Heaven, to have less.”

“You are valiant, sir.”

“You would not have me a coward, madam?” and so forth.

Now all this time Don Guzman had been talking at Rose Salterne, and giving her the very slightest hint, every now and then, that he was talking at her; till the poor girl’s face was almost crimson with pleasure, and she gave herself up to the spell.  He loved her still; perhaps he knew that she loved him:  he must know some day.  She felt now that there was no escape; she was almost glad to think that there was none.

The dark, handsome, stately face; the melodious voice, with its rich Spanish accent; the quiet grace of the gestures; the wild pathos of the story; even the measured and inflated style, as of one speaking of another and a loftier world; the chivalrous respect and admiration for woman, and for faithfulness to woman—­what a man he was!  If he had been pleasant heretofore, he was now enchanting.  All the ladies round felt that, she could see, as much as she herself did; no, not quite as much, she hoped.  She surely understood him, and felt for his loneliness more than any of them.  Had she not been feeling for it through long and sad months?  But it was she whom he was thinking of, she whom he was speaking to, all along.  Oh, why had the tale ended so soon?  She would gladly have sat and wept her eyes out till midnight over one melodious misery after another; but she was quite wise enough to keep her secret to herself; and sat behind the rest, with greedy eyes and demure lips, full of strange and new happiness—­or misery; she knew not which to call it.