CHAPTER V


Marionetta felt secure of Scythrop's heart; and notwithstanding the
difficulties that surrounded her, she could not debar herself from the
pleasure of tormenting her lover, whom she kept in a perpetual fever.
Sometimes she would meet him with the most unqualified affection;
sometimes with the most chilling indifference; rousing him to anger by
artificial coldness--softening him to love by eloquent tenderness--or
inflaming him to jealousy by coquetting with the Honourable Mr
Listless, who seemed, under her magical influence, to burst into
sudden life, like the bud of the evening primrose. Sometimes she would
sit by the piano, and listen with becoming attention to Scythrop's
pathetic remonstrances; but, in the most impassioned part of his
oratory, she would convert all his ideas into a chaos, by striking up
some Rondo Allegro, and saying, 'Is it not pretty?' Scythrop would
begin to storm; and she would answer him with,

'Zitti, zitti, piano, piano,
Non facciamo confusione,'

or some similar _facezia_, till he would start away from her, and
enclose himself in his tower, in an agony of agitation, vowing to
renounce her, and her whole sex, for ever; and returning to her
presence at the summons of the billet, which she never failed to
send with many expressions of penitence and promises of amendment.
Scythrop's schemes for regenerating the world, and detecting his seven