“Come in, Euphra.”

“No.  I am afraid I have been very naughty in coming here at all.”

“Do come in.  I want you to tell me something about Funkelstein.”

“What do you want to know about him?  I suppose you are jealous of him.  Ah! you men can both be jealous and make jealous at the same moment.”  A little broken sigh followed.  Hugh answered: 

“I only want to know what he is.”

“Oh! some twentieth cousin of mine.”

“Mr. Arnold does not know that?”

“Oh dear! no.  It is so far off I can’t count it, In fact I doubt it altogether.  It must date centuries back.”

“His intimacy, then, is not to be accounted for by his relationship?”

“Ah! ah!  I thought so.  Jealous of the poor count!”

“Count?”

“Oh dear! what does it matter?  He doesn’t like to be called Count, because all foreigners are counts or barons, or something equally distinguished.  I oughtn’t to have let it out.”

“Never mind.  Tell me something about him.”

“He is a Bohemian.  I met him first, some years ago, on the continent.”

“Then that was not your first meeting —­ at Sir Edward Laston’s?”

“No.”

“How candid she is!” thought Hugh.

“He calls me his cousin; but if he be mine, he is yet more Mr. Arnold’s.  But he does not want it mentioned yet.  I am sure I don’t know why.”

“Is he in love with you?”

“How can I tell?” she answered archly.  “By his being very jealous?  Is that the way to know whether a man is in love with one?  But if he is in love with me, it does not follow that I am in love with him —­ does it?  Confess.  Am I not very good to answer all your impertinent downright questions?  They are as point blank as the church-catechism; —­ mind, I don’t say as rude. —­ How can I be in love with two at —­ a —­ ?”

She seemed to cheek herself.  But Hugh had heard enough —­ as she had intended he should.  She turned instantly, and sped —­ surrounded by the “low melodious thunder” of her silken garments —­ to her own door, where she vanished noiselessly.

“What care I for oratorios?” said Hugh to himself, as he put the light out, towards morning.

Where was all this to end?  What goal had Hugh set himself?  Could he not go away, and achieve renown in one of many ways, and return fit, in the eyes of the world, to claim the hand of Miss Cameron?  But would he marry her if he could?  He would not answer the question.  He closed the ears of his heart to it, and tried to go to sleep.  He slept, and dreamed of Margaret in the storm.