During this tirade, Vittoria was singing one of her old songs, well known
to Wilfrid, which brought the vision of a foaming weir, and moonlight
between the branches of a great cedar-tree, and the lost love of his
heart sitting by his side in the noising stillness. He was sure that she
could be singing it for no one but for him. The leap taken by his spirit
from this time to that, was shorter than from the past back to the
present.

"You do not applaud," said Lena, when the song had ceased.

He murmured: "I never do, in drawing-rooms."

"A cantatrice expects it everywhere; these creatures live on it."

"I'll tell her, if you like, what we thought of it, when I take her down
to my sister, presently."

"Are you not to take me down?"

"The etiquette is to hand her up to you."

"No, no!" Lena insisted, in abhorrence of etiquette; but Wilfrid said
pointedly that his sister's feelings must be spared. "Her husband is an
animal: he is a millionaire city-of-London merchant; conceive him! He
has drunk himself gouty on Port wine, and here he is for the grape-cure."

"Ah! in that England of yours, women marry for wealth," said Lena.

"Yes, in your Austria they have a better motive" he interpreted her