70 TWELFTH NIGHT.

“ Ah,” said the Duke to his page that night, “you too have been in
love.”

“A little,” answered Viola.

‘What kind of woman is it?” he asked.

“Of your complexion,” she answered.

“What years, 1’ faith?” was his next question.

To this came the pretty answer, ‘‘ About your years, my lord.”

“Too old, by Heaven!” cried the Duke. “Let still the woman
take an elder than herself.”

And Viola very meekly said, “I think it well, my lord.”

By and by Orsino begged Cesario once more to visit Olivia and ‘to
plead his love-suit. But she, thinking to dissuade him, said—

“Tf some lady loved you as you love.Olivia?”

“Ah! that cannot be,” said the Duke.

“But I know,” Viola went on, “what love woman may have for a
man. My father had a daughter loved a man, as it might be,” she added
blushing, “ perhaps, were I a woman, I should love your lordship.”

‘And what is her history ?” he asked.

“A blank, my lord,’ Viola answered. ‘She never told her love, -
but let concealment like a worm in the bud feed on her damask cheek :
she pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy she sat,
like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was not this love
indeed ?” :

“But died thy sister of her love, my boy?” the Duke asked; and
Viola, who had all the time been telling her own love for him in this
pretty fashion, said—

‘“T am all the daughters my father has and all the brothers—Sir,
shall I go to the lady ?”

‘To her in haste,” said the Duke, at once forgetting all about the
story, “and give her this jewel.”

So Viola went, and this time poor Olivia was unable to hide her
love, and openly confessed it with such passionate truth, that Viola left
her hastily, sayinge—

“ Nevermore will I deplore my master’s tears to you.”

But in vowing this, Viola did not know the tender pity she would
feel for other's suffering. So when Olivia, in the violence of her love, sent