"She's out of her mind," Victorine whispered excitedly to Ludwig. "You can't be in love with a mad creature! No, no. Tell me at once--on the spot--that you can't possibly be in love with a maniac!"
"Good gracious, no! Of course not," Ludwig cried, considerably alarmed. He found the greatest possible difficulty in properly adapting himself to the excessively passionate manifestation which Victorine's affection had taken to displaying.
While the hostess was refreshing Emanuela with sweet wine and biscuits the valiant little guitarist, Biagio Cubas, who had sunk down in a corner and was sobbing profusely, was served with a glass of genuine Xeres, which he drained to the last drop with a gladsome "Donna, viva hasta mil annos."
It may readily be supposed that the ladies attacked Emanuela with a string of enquiries as to her country, circumstances, and so forth. The hostess felt the painfulness of her position too keenly not to so contrive that the firmly-closed circle should disperse itself into several subsidiary eddies, in which every one, the piquet players included, soon began to revolve. The consistorial president considered the little Spanish girl a delightful, natty little creature; the only thing was that somehow her dancing got into his own legs and made his head feel as giddy as if he were waltzing with the devil in person. The singing struck him as something quite out of the common; it delighted him immensely.
Count Walther Puck was of quite a different opinion. Of her singing he thought nothing at all; there was no such thing as a trillo in it all. But he praised her dancing most warmly, and thought it quite delicious. He said that his opinion on the subject was of some value, seeing that at one time he had been as good a performer as the most celebrated Maîtres de ballet.
"Will you believe me, brother Consistorial-President," he said, "when I tell you that in my youthful days, when I was a perfect model specimen of nimbleness and vigour, I used to be able to spring the fiocco and knock down a tambourine hung up nine feet above the tip of my nose with my toe! And as for this egg-fandago, why I have often smashed more eggs in performing that dance than seven hens would lay in four-and-twenty hours."
"Bless my soul," said the Consistorial-President, "that was doing the thing in a most stupendous style!"
"Yes," said the Count. "And then I must tell you my good old Cochenille plays the flageolet really very nicely indeed. And now and then I get him to play for me in the dressing-room; and then I really give myself full swing in the dancing line--of course, only there quite in private. You see what I mean?"
"Of course, of course," answered the Consistorial-President, "I quite understand."
Meanwhile Emanuela and her companion had disappeared.