acted!

14th.--I went again, last evening, to Casa Salvi, where I found the same
little circle, with the addition of a couple of ladies. Stanmer was
there, trying hard to talk to one of them, but making, I am sure, a very
poor business of it. The Countess--well, the Countess was admirable. She
greeted me like a friend of ten years, toward whom familiarity should not
have engendered a want of ceremony; she made me sit near her, and she
asked me a dozen questions about my health and my occupations.

"I live in the past," I said. "I go into the galleries, into the old
palaces and the churches. Today I spent an hour in Michael Angelo's
chapel at San Loreozo."

"Ah yes, that's the past," said the Countess. "Those things are very
old."

"Twenty-seven years old," I answered.

"Twenty-seven? _Altro_!"

"I mean my own past," I said. "I went to a great many of those places
with your mother."

"Ah, the pictures are beautiful," murmured the Countess, glancing at
Stanmer.

"Have you lately looked at any of them?" I asked. "Have you gone to the
galleries with _him_?"