You have nothing to do but to keep it to yourself." "That is precisely--" She checked herself, and struck a loud chord upon the instrument.

She had turned from Del Ferice, and could not see the smile upon his face, which flickered across the pale features and vanished instantly.
"Think no more about it," he said pleasantly.

"It is so easy to forget such stories when one resolutely puts them out of one's mind." Donna Tullia smiled bitterly, and was silent.

She began playing from the sheet before her, with indifferent accuracy, but with more than sufficient energy.

Del Ferice sat patiently by her side, turning over the leaves, and glancing from time to time at her face, which he really admired exceedingly.