"
Gherardi was silent a moment, smiling a little to himself. "What a
simpleton is this Saint Felix!" he thought. "What a fool to run
amuck at his own chances of distinction and eminence!"
"And the boy is clever?" he said presently in kindly accents--
"Docile in conduct?--and useful to you?"
"He is a wonderful child!" answered the Cardinal with unsuspecting
candour and feeling, "Thoughtful beyond his years,--wise beyond his
experience."
Gherardi shot a quick glance from under his eyelids at the fine
tranquil face of the venerable speaker, and again smiled.
"You have no further knowledge of him?--no clue to his parentage?"
"None."
Just then the conversation was interrupted by a little movement of
eagerness,--people were pressing towards the grand piano which
Florian Varillo had opened,--the Comtesse Sylvie Hermenstein was
about to grant a general request made to her for a song. She moved
slowly and with a touch of reluctance towards the instrument, Aubrey
Leigh walking beside her.
"You are a musician yourself?--" she said, glancing up at him, "You
play--or you sing?"
"I do a little of both," he answered, "But I shall be no rival to
you! I have heard YOU sing!"
"You have? When?"
"The other night, or else I dreamed it," he said softly, "I have a
very sweet echo of a song in my mind with words that sounded like
'Ti volglio bene', and a refrain that I caught in the shape of a
rose!"
Their eyes met--and what Emerson calls "the deification and
transfiguration of life" began to stir Sylvie's pulses, and set her
heart beating to a new and singular exaltation.
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