the Countess that as his fault had been so was his punishment. I think,
however, that the feeling of which I speak was at the bottom of my saying
to her that I hoped that, unlike her mother's, her own brief married life
had been happy.

"If it was not," she said, "I have forgotten it now."--I wonder if the
late Count Scarabelli was also killed in a duel, and if his adversary . . .
Is it on the books that his adversary, as well, shall perish by the
pistol? Which of those gentlemen is he, I wonder? Is it reserved for
poor little Stanmer to put a bullet into him? No; poor little Stanmer, I
trust, will do as I did. And yet, unfortunately for him, that woman is
consummately plausible. She was wonderfully nice last evening; she was
really irresistible. Such frankness and freedom, and yet something so
soft and womanly; such graceful gaiety, so much of the brightness,
without any of the stiffness, of good breeding, and over it all something
so picturesquely simple and southern. She is a perfect Italian. But she
comes honestly by it. After the talk I have just jotted down she changed
her place, and the conversation for half an hour was general. Stanmer
indeed said very little; partly, I suppose, because he is shy of talking
a foreign tongue. Was I like that--was I so constantly silent? I
suspect I was when I was perplexed, and Heaven knows that very often my
perplexity was extreme. Before I went away I had a few more words _tete-
a-tete_ with the Countess.

"I hope you are not leaving Florence yet," she said; "you will stay a
while longer?"

I answered that I came only for a week, and that my week was over.

"I stay on from day to day, I am so much interested."