Musingly, with downcast eyes, I returned to the ball-room. At the door a young girl faced me--she was the only daughter of a great Neapolitan house. Dressed in pure white, as all such maidens are, with a crown of snow-drops on her dusky hair, and her dimpled face lighted with laughter, she looked the very embodiment of early spring. She addressed me somewhat timidly, yet with all a child's frankness.
"Is not this delightful? I feel as if I were in fairy-land! Do you know this is my first ball?"
I smiled wearily.
"Ay, truly? And you are happy?"
"Oh, happiness is not the word--it is ecstasy! How I wish it could last forever! And--is it not strange?--I did not know I was beautiful till to-night."
She said this with perfect simplicity, and a pleased smile radiated her fair features. I glanced at her with cold scrutiny.
"Ah! and some one has told you so."
She blushed and laughed a little consciously.
"Yes; the great Prince de Majano. And he is too noble to say what is not true, so I MUST be 'la piu bella donzella,' as he said, must I not?"
I touched the snow-drops that she wore in a white cluster at her breast.
"Look at your flowers, child," I said, earnestly. "See how they begin to droop in this heated air. The poor things! How glad they would feel could they again grow in the cool wet moss of the woodlands, waving their little bells to the wholesome, fresh wind! Would they revive now, think you, for your great Prince de Majano if he told them they were fair? So with your life and heart, little one--pass them through the scorching fire of flattery, and their purity must wither even as these fragile blossoms. And as for beauty--are you more beautiful than SHE?"
And I pointed slightly to my wife, who was at that moment courtesying to her partner in the stately formality of the first quadrille.
My young companion looked, and her clear eyes darkened enviously.
"Ah, no, no! But if I wore such lace and satin and pearls, and had such jewels, I might perhaps be more like her!"
I sighed bitterly. The poison had already entered this child's soul. I spoke brusquely.
"Pray that you may never be like her," I said, with somber sternness, and not heeding her look of astonishment. "You are young--you cannot yet have thrown off religion. Well, when you go home to-night, and kneel beside your little bed, made holy by the cross above it and your mother's blessing--pray--pray with all your strength that you may never resemble in the smallest degree that exquisite woman yonder! So may you be spared her fate."