"Come to my rooms this evening and I will tell you."
He declared he would, but he never came. Exactly the way I should have
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_?"
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.
"I hope you are not leaving Florence yet," she said; "you will stay a
while longer?"