"And his life so successful. No Scylla, no Charybdis for him. However,
Mademoiselle, I am not quite the Vandal you suppose, I do not say that
susceptibility to the influence of music may not be safe, nay, healthful,
to others it was not so to me in my youth. It can do me no harm now."

Here Duplessis came up and whispered his daughter "it was time to leave;
they had promised the Duchesse de Tarascon to assist at the soiree she
gave that night." Valerie took her father's arm with a brightening smile
and a heightened colour. Alain de Rochebriant might probably be at the
Duchesse's.

"Are you not going also to the Hotel de Tarascon, M. de Mauleon?" asked
Duplessis.

"No; I was never there but once. The Duchesse is an Imperialist, at once
devoted and acute, and no doubt very soon divined my lack of faith in her
idols."

Duplessis frowned, and hastily led Valerie away.

In a few minutes the room was comparatively deserted. De Mauleon,
however, lingered by the side of Isaura till all the other guests were
gone. Even then he lingered still, and renewed the interrupted
conversation with her, the Venosta joining therein; and so agreeable did
he make himself to her Italian tastes by a sort of bitter-sweet wisdom
like that of her native proverbs--comprising much knowledge of mankind on
the unflattering side of humanity in that form of pleasantry which has a
latent sentiment of pathos--that the Venosta exclaimed, "Surely you must
have been brought up in Florence!"