Beppo tried hard to get her to carry the fan; but she lifted her fingers in a perfect Susannah horror of it, though still bidding him to follow.  Naturally she did not go fast through the dark passages, where the game of the fan was once more played out, and with accompaniments.  The accompaniments she objected to no further than a fish is agitated in escaping from the hook; but ‘Nein, nein!’ in her own language, and ’No, no!’ in his, burst from her lips whenever he attempted to transfer the fan to her keeping.  ‘These white women are most wonderful!’ thought Beppo, ready to stagger between perplexity and impatience.

‘There; in there!’ said Aennchen, pointing to a light that came through the folds of a curtain.  Beppo kissed her fingers as they tugged unreluctantly in his clutch, and knew by a little pause that the case was hopeful for higher privileges.  What to do?  He had not an instant to spare; yet he dared not offend a woman’s vanity.  He gave an ecstatic pressure of her hand upon his breastbone, to let her be sure she was adored, albeit not embraced.  After this act of prudence he went toward the curtain, while the fair Austrian soubrette flew on her previous errand.

It was enough that Beppo found himself in a dark antechamber for him to be instantly scrupulous in his footing and breathing.  As he touched the curtain, a door opened on the other side of the interior, and a tender gabble of fresh feminine voices broke the stillness and ran on like a brook coming from leaps to a level, and again leaping and making noise of joy.  The Duchess of Graatli had clasped the Signora Laura’s two hands and drawn her to an ottoman, and between kissings and warmer claspings, was questioning of the little ones, Giacomo and her goddaughter Amalia.

‘When, when did I see you last?’ she exclaimed.  ’Oh! not since we met that morning to lay our immortelles upon his tomb.  My soul’s sister! kiss me, remembering it.  I saw you in the gateway—­it seemed to me, as in a vision, that we had both had one warning to come for him, and knock, and the door would be opened, and our beloved would come forth!  That was many days back.  It is to me like a day locked up forever in a casket of pearl.  Was it not an unstained morning, my own!  If I weep, it is with pleasure.  But,’ she added with precipitation, ’weeping of any kind will not do for these eyelids of mine.’  And drawing forth a tiny gold-framed pocket-mirror she perceived convincingly that it would not do.

‘They will think it is for the absence of my husband,’ she said, as only a woman can say it who deplores nothing so little as that.

‘When does he return from Vienna?’ Laura inquired in the fallen voice of her thoughtfulness.