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“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?“

She hesitated a moment, smiling. “It seems to me that your question is a little impertinent. But I think you are like that.”

“A little impertinent? Never. As I say, your mother did me the honour, more than once, to accompany me to the Uffizzi.”

“My mother must have been very kind to you.”

“So it seemed to me at the time.”

“At the time only?”

“Well, if you prefer, so it seems to me now.”

“Eh,” said the Countess, “she made sacrifices.”

“To what, cara Signora? She was perfectly free. Your lamented father was dead–and she had not yet contracted her second marriage.”

“If she was intending to marry again, it was all the more reason she should have been careful.”

I looked at her a moment; she met my eyes gravely, over the top of her fan. “Are you very careful?” I said.

She dropped her fan with a certain violence. “Ah, yes, you are impertinent!”

“Ah no,” I said. “Remember that I am old enough to be your father; that I knew you when you were three years old. I may surely ask such questions. But you are right; one must do your mother justice. She was certainly thinking of her second marriage.”

“You have not forgiven her that!” said the Countess, very gravely.

“Have you?” I asked, more lightly.

“I don’t judge my mother. That is a mortal sin. My stepfather was very kind to me.”

“I remember him,” I said; “I saw him a great many times–your mother already received him.”

My hostess sat with lowered eyes, saying nothing; but she presently looked up.

“She was very unhappy with my father.”

“That I can easily believe. And your stepfather–is he still living?”

“He died–before my mother.”

“Did he fight any more duels?”

“He was killed in a duel,” said the Countess, discreetly.

It seems almost monstrous, especially as I can give no reason for it–but this announcement, instead of shocking me, caused me to feel a strange exhilaration. Most assuredly, after all these years, I bear the poor man no resentment. Of course I controlled my manner, and simply remarked to 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.