“Few—­none—­find what they love or could have loved,—­
     Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
     Necessity of loving, have removed
     Antipathies—­but to recur ere long
     Envenom’d with irrevocable wrong.”

And the “blind contact” is the worst of all influences brought to bear upon the mind and heart,—­the most pernicious, and the most deeply weighted with responsibility.  In this regard, Sylvie Hermenstein had acted wisely by removing herself from association, or “blind contact” with her would-be lover,—­and yet, though she was aware that her doing so had caused a certain dispersal of the atmosphere which almost veered towards complete disillusion, she found nevertheless, that Rome as she had said, was “dull”; her heart was empty, and longing for she knew not what.  And that deep longing she felt could not have been completely gratified by the brief ardours of Fontenelle.  And so she sat thinking wearily,—­wondering what was to become of her life.  She had riches in plenty, a fine estate and castle in Hungary,—­servants at her beck and call—­and yet with all her wealth and beauty and brilliancy, she felt that she was only loved by two persons in the world, her old butler, and Madame Bozier, who had been her first governess, and who now lived with her, as a sort of dame d’honneur surrounded with every comfort and luxury, and who certainly served her former pupil with a faithful worship that would not have changed, even if the direst poverty instead of riches had been the portion of her beloved patroness.  This elderly lady it was who entered now with a soft and hesitating step, and raising her glasses to her eyes, peered anxiously through the lighted room towards the dark balcony where Sylvie stood, like a fairy fallen out of the moon, and who presently ventured to advance and call softly,

“Sylvie!”

The pretty Comtesse turned and smiled.

“Is it you, Katrine?  Will you come out here?  It is not cold, and there is a lace wrap on the chair,—­put it round your dear old head and come and be romantic with me!” and she laughed as the worthy Bozier obeyed her, and came cautiously out among the angels’ sculptured wings.  “Ah, dear Katrine!  The happy days are gone when a dark-eyed Roman lover would come strolling down a street like this to strike the chords of his mandoline, and sing the dear old song,

    “‘Ti voglio bene assai, E tu non pensi a me!’”

Without thinking about it, she sang this refrain suddenly in her sweet mezzo-soprano, every note ringing clear on the silence of the night, and as she did so a man of slim figure and medium height, stepped out of the dark shadows and looked up.  His half laughing eyes, piercing in their regard, met the dreamy soft ones of the pretty woman sitting among the angels’ heads above him—­and pausing a moment he hesitated—­then lifted his hat.  His face was excessively delicate in outline and very pale, but a half mischievous smile softened and sweetened the firm lines of his mouth and chin, and as the moonbeams played caressingly on his close curling crop of fair hair, he looked different enough to most of the men in Rome to be considered singular as well as handsome.  Sylvie, hidden as she was among the shadows, blushed and drew back, a little vexed with herself,—­the worthy Madame Bozier was very properly scandalised.