If it had been dictated to her she had of course to know what it was about; though the effect of it withal was to repudiate the idea of any connexion with the poet. I held it probable at all events that Miss Tina had n't read a word of his poetry. Moreover if, with her companion, she had always escaped invasion and research, there was little occasion for her having got it into her head that people were ›after‹ the letters. People had not been after them, for people had n't heard of them. Cumnor's fruitless feeler would have been a solitary accident.

When midnight sounded Miss Tina got up; but she stopped at the door of the house only after she had wandered two or three times with me round the garden. »When shall I see you again?« I asked before she went in; to which she replied with promptness that she should like to come out the next night. She added however that she should n't come – she was so far from doing everything she liked.

»You might do a few things I like,« I quite sincerely sighed.

»Oh you – I don't believe you!« she murmured at this, facing me with her simple solemnity.

»Why don't you believe me?«

»Because I don't understand you.«

»That's just the sort of occasion to have faith.« I could n't say more, though I should have liked to, as I saw I only mystified her; for I had no wish to have it on my conscience that I might pass for having made love to her. Nothing less should I have seemed to do had I continued to beg a lady to »believe in me« in an Italian garden on a midsummer night. There was some merit in my scruples, for Miss Tina lingered and lingered: I made out in her the conviction that she should n't really soon come down again and the wish therefore to protract the present. She insisted too on making the talk between us personal to ourselves; and altogether her behaviour was such as would have been possible only to a perfectly artless and a considerably witless woman.

»I shall like the flowers better now that I know them also meant for me.«

»How could you have doubted it? If you'll tell me the kind you like best I'll send a double lot.«

»Oh I like them all best!« Then she went on familiarly: »Shall you study – shall you read and write – when you go up to your rooms?«

»I don't do that at night – at this season. The lamplight brings in the animals.«

»You might have known that when you came.«

»I did know it!«

»And in winter do you work at night?«

»I read a good deal, but I don't often write.« She listened as if these details had a rare interest, and suddenly a temptation quite at odds with all the prudence I had been teaching myself glimmered at me in her plain mild face. Ah yes, she was safe and I could make her safer! It seemed to me from one moment to another that I could n't wait longer – that I really must take a sounding. So I went on: »In general before I go to sleep (very often in bed; it's a bad habit, but I confess to it) I read some great poet. In nine cases out of ten it's a volume of Jeffrey Aspern.«

I watched her well as I pronounced that name, but I saw nothing wonderful. Why should I indeed? Was n't Jeffrey Aspern the property of the human race?

»Oh we read him – we have read him,« she quietly replied.

»He's my poet of poets – I know him almost by heart.«

For an instant Miss Tina hesitated; then her sociability was too much for her. »Oh by heart – that's nothing;« and, though dimly, she quite lighted. »My aunt used to know him, to know him« – she paused an instant and I wondered what she was going to say – »to know him as a visitor.«

»As a visitor?« I guarded my tone.

»He used to call on her and take her out.«

I continued to stare. »My dear lady, he died a hundred years ago!«

»Well,« she said amusingly, »my aunt's a hundred and fifty.«

»Mercy on us!« I cried; »why did n't you tell me before? I should like so to ask her about him.«

»She would n't care for that – she would n't tell you,« Miss Tina returned.

»I don't care what she cares for! She must tell me – it's not a chance to be lost.«

»Oh you should have come twenty years ago. Then she still talked about him.«

»And what did she say?« I eagerly asked.

»I don't know – that he liked her immensely.«

»And she – did n't she like him?«

»She said he was a god.« Miss Tina gave me this information flatly, without expression; her tone might have made it a piece of trivial gossip. But it stirred me deeply as she dropped the words into the summer night; their sound might have been the light rustle of an old unfolded love-letter.

»Fancy, fancy!« I murmured. And then: »Tell me this, please – has she got a portrait of him? They're distressingly rare.«

»A portrait? I don't know,« said Miss Tina; and now there was discomfiture in her face. »Well, goodnight!« she added; and she turned into the house.

I accompanied her into the wide dusky stone-paved passage that corresponded on the ground floor with our great sala. It opened at one end into the garden, at the other upon the canal, and was lighted now only by the small lamp always left for me to take up as I went to bed. An extinguished candle which Miss Tina apparently had brought down with her stood on the same table with it. »Good-night, good-night!« I replied, keeping beside her as she went to get her light. »Surely you'd know, should n't you, if she had one?«

»If she had what?« the poor lady asked, looking at me queerly over the flame of her candle.

»A portrait of the god. I don't know what I would n't give to see it.«

»I don't know what she has got. She keeps her things locked up.« And Miss Tina went away toward the staircase with the sense evidently of having said too much.

I let her go – I wished not to frighten her – and I contented myself with remarking that Miss Bordereau would n't have locked up such a glorious possession as that: a thing a person would be proud of and hang up in a prominent place on the parlour-wall. Therefore of course she had n't any portrait. Miss Tina made no direct answer to this and, candle in hand, with her back to me, mounted two or three degrees.