have occasion again to ask me if I had an arriere-pensee.
Poor woman, before we parted for the night my mind was at rest
as to HER capacity for entertaining one.

She told me more about their affairs than I had hoped;
there was no need to be prying, for it evidently drew
her out simply to feel that I listened, that I cared.
She ceased wondering why I cared, and at last, as she spoke of
the brilliant life they had led years before, she almost chattered.
It was Miss Tita who judged it brilliant; she said that when they
first came to live in Venice, years and years before (I saw
that her mind was essentially vague about dates and the order
in which events had occurred), there was scarcely a week
that they had not some visitor or did not make some delightful
passeggio in the city. They had seen all the curiosities;
they had even been to the Lido in a boat (she spoke as if I might
think there was a way on foot); they had had a collation there,
brought in three baskets and spread out on the grass.
I asked her what people they had known and she said, Oh! very
nice ones--the Cavaliere Bombicci and the Contessa Altemura,
with whom they had had a great friendship. Also English people--
the Churtons and the Goldies and Mrs. Stock-Stock, whom
they had loved dearly; she was dead and gone, poor dear.
That was the case with most of their pleasant circle
(this expression was Miss Tita's own), though a few were left,
which was a wonder considering how they had neglected them.
She mentioned the names of two or three Venetian old women; of a
certain doctor, very clever, who was so kind--he came as a friend,
he had really given up practice; of the avvocato Pochintesta,
who wrote beautiful poems and had addressed one to her aunt.