Slowly, as they stepped, they came at length to a little summerhouse.  It was covered with a thick jessamin vine; and the mysterious, languorous perfume of its starlike flowers filled the narrow resting-place with the very atmosphere of love.  They sat down there, and in a few moments the seal was broken and Hyde’s heart found out all the sweetest words that love could speak.  Cornelia trembled; she blushed, she smiled, she suffered herself to be drawn close to his side; and, at last, in some sweet, untranslatable way, she gave him the assurance of her love.  Then they found in delicious silence the eloquence that words were incompetent to translate; time was forgotten, and on earth there was once more an interlude of heavenly harmony in which two souls became one and Paradise was regained.

Arenta’s voice, petulant and not pleasant, broke the charm.  With a sigh they rose, dropped each other’s hand, and went out of their heaven on earth to meet her.

“Tea is waiting,” she said, “and Rem is waiting, and my aunt is tired, and you two have forgotten that the clock moves.”  Then they laughed, and laughter is always fatal to feeling; the magical land of love was suddenly far away, and there was the sound of china, and the heavy tones of Rem’s voice—­dissatisfied, if not angry—­and Arenta’s lighter fret; and they stood once more among fetishes and forms so foreign, fabulous and fantastical, that it was difficult to pass from the land of love, and all its pure delights, into their atmosphere.

It would have been harder but for Madame Jacobus.  She understood; and she sympathized; and there was a kindly element in her nature which disposed her to side with the lovers.  Her smile,—­quick and short as a flash of the eyes—­revealed to Hyde her intention of favour, and without one spoken word, these two knew themselves to be of the same mind.  And, in parting, she held his hand while she talked, saying at last the very words he longed to hear—­

“We shall expect you again on Thursday, Lieutenant.  Everything is yet undecided, and the work you have begun, it is right that you should finish.”

He answered only, “Thank you, madame!” but he accompanied the words with a look which asked so much, and confessed so much, that madame felt herself to be a silent confidante and a not unwilling accomplice.  And when she had closed the door on her guests, she acknowledged it.  “But then,” she whispered, “I always did dearly love a lover; and this promises to be a love affair that will need my help—­plenty of good honest hatred for it to combat—­and wealth and rank and all sorts of conflicting conditions to get the better of—­Well, then, my help is ready.  In plain truth, I don’t like such perfection as Doctor John; and my nephew Rem is not interesting.  He is sulky, and Hyde is good-tempered, just like his father, too; and there never was a more fascinating man than Dick Hyde.  He-Ho!  I remember!—­I remember!—­and yet I dare say Dick has forgotten my very name—­this is a marriage that will exactly suit me—­I don’t care who is against it!” Then she said softly to herself—­