“Oh, I forgot. You were a nun. There was a nun in Venice once, about two hundred years ago, when you lived there, and a young English lord who was passing through the town was taken to the convent to hear her sing; for she was not only of 'an admirable beauty,' as he says, but sang 'extremely well.' She sang to him through the grating of the convent, and when she stopped he said, 'Die whensoever you will, you need to change neither voice nor face to be an angel!' Do you think—do you dimly recollect anything that makes you think—it might—Consider carefully: the singing extremely well, and—” He leant over again, and looked up into her face, which again she could not wholly withdraw.
“No, no!” she said, still in his mood.
“Well, you must allow it was a pretty speech.”
“Perhaps,” said Lydia, with sudden gravity, in which there seemed to Staniford a tender insinuation of reproach, “he was laughing at her.”
“If he was, he was properly punished. He went on to Rome, and when he came back to Venice the beautiful nun was dead. He thought that his words 'seemed fatal.' Do you suppose it would kill you now to be jested with?”
“I don't think people like it generally.”
“Why, Miss Blood, you are intense!”
“I don't know what you mean by that,” said Lydia.
“You like to take things seriously. You can't bear to think that people are not the least in earnest, even when they least seem so.”
“Yes,” said the girl, thoughtfully, “perhaps that's true. Should you like to be made fun of, yourself?”