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 più bella donzella,’ as he said, must I not?”
I touched the snow-drops that she wore in a white cluster at her breast.