With these words Marchese Tortoni turned to his guest, who, for the last quarter of an hour had taken hardly any part in the conversation, and whom the young lord just caught in the act of a surreptitious yawn.
"Indeed not," said Hugo, defending himself. "I only feel myself so utterly unimportant and ignorant in these ideal art discussions, and so deeply impressed with the sense of my ignorance, that I have just gone hurriedly through all the words of command during a storm, in order to obtain for myself the consolatory conviction that I do understand something."
"All evasion!" cried the Marchese. "You miss the female element here, which you adore so much, and now appear unable to forego. Unfortunately, my Mirando cannot offer you that charm, as yet. You know I am not married, and have not been able to resolve upon sacrificing my freedom."
"Not resolve upon sacrificing your freedom," intimated Hugo. "My God, that sounds shocking. If you have not yet ascended the highest ladder of earthly happiness, as books express it--"
"Do not believe him, Cesario," broke in Reinhold. "Notwithstanding all his gallantry and knightliness, at heart he is of an icy nature, which nothing warms too easily. He plays with all--has no feeling for any; the ever-recurring romance, which he even sometimes calls passion, lasts just so long as he is on shore, and disappears with the first fresh breeze which wafts his 'Ellida' away on the sea. Nothing has ever yet stirred his heart."
"Abominable character!" cried Hugo, throwing away his cigar. "I protest against it most solemnly."
"Well you, perhaps, maintain that it is untrue?"
The Captain laughed and turned to Tortoni. "I assure you, Signor Marchese, that I too can be unimpeachably true to my beautiful blue ocean bride"--he pointed towards the sea--"to her I am pledged with heart and hand. She alone understands how to chain and hold me fast again and again, and if she do allow me now and then to look into a pair of beautiful eyes, she never tolerates serious faithlessness."
"Until you look at last into a pair of eyes which teach you that you also are not proof against the universal fate of mortals," said Reinhold, half-jokingly, half with a bitterness which was intelligible only to his brother. "There are such eyes."
"Oh, yes, there are such eyes," repeated Hugo, looking out over the sea with an almost dreamy expression.