"I stay on from day to day, I am so much interested."
"Eh, it's the beautiful moment. I'm glad our city pleases you!"
"Florence pleases me--and I take a paternal interest to our young
friend," I added, glancing at Stanmer. "I have become very fond of him."
"_Bel tipo inglese_," said my hostess. "And he is very intelligent; he
has a beautiful mind."
She stood there resting her smile and her clear, expressive eyes upon me.
"I don't like to praise him too much," I rejoined, "lest I should appear
to praise myself; he reminds me so much of what I was at his age. If
your beautiful mother were to come to life for an hour she would see the
resemblance."
She gave me a little amused stare.
"And yet you don't look at all like him!"
"Ah, you didn't know me when I was twenty-five. I was very handsome!
And, moreover, it isn't that, it's the mental resemblance. I was
ingenuous, candid, trusting, like him."
"Trusting? I remember my mother once telling me that you were the most
suspicious and jealous of men!"
"I fell into a suspicious mood, but I was, fundamentally, not in the
least addicted to thinking evil. I couldn't easily imagine any harm of
any one."
"And so you mean that Mr. Stanmer is in a suspicions mood?"
"Well, I mean that his situation is the same as mine."
The Countess gave me one of her serious looks. "Come," she said, "what
was it--this famous situation of yours? I have heard you mention it
before."
"Your mother might have told you, since she occasionally did me the
honour to speak of me."
"All my mother ever told me was that you were--a sad puzzle to her."
At this, of course, I laughed out--I laugh still as I write it.
"Well, then, that was my situation--I was a sad puzzle to a very clever
woman."
"And you mean, therefore, that I am a puzzle to poor Mr. Stanmer?"
"He is racking his brains to make you out. Remember it was you who said
he was intelligent."
She looked round at him, and as fortune would have it, his appearance at
that moment quite confirmed my assertion. He was lounging back in his
chair with an air of indolence rather too marked for a drawing-room, and
staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man who has just been
asked a conundrum. Madame Scarabelli seemed struck with his attitude.
"Don't you see," I said, "he can't read the riddle?"
"You yourself," she answered, "said he was incapable of thinking evil. I
should be sorry to have him think any evil of _me_."
And she looked straight at me--seriously, appealingly--with her beautiful
candid brow.
I inclined myself, smiling, in a manner which might have meant--"How
could that be possible?"
"I have a great esteem for him," she went on; "I want him to think well
of me. If I am a puzzle to him, do me a little service. Explain me to
him."
"Explain you, dear lady?"
"You are older and wiser than he. Make him understand me."
She looked deep into my eyes for a moment, and then she turned away.
26th.--I have written nothing for a good many days, but meanwhile I have
been half a dozen times to Casa Salvi. I have seen a good deal also of
my young friend--had a good many walks and talks with him. I have
proposed to him to come with me to Venice for a fortnight, but he won't
listen to the idea of leaving Florence. He is very happy in spite of his
doubts, and I confess that in the perception of his happiness I have
lived over again my own. This is so much the case that when, the other
day, he at last made up his mind to ask me to tell him the wrong that
Madame de Salvi had done me, I rather checked his curiosity. I told him
that if he was bent upon knowing I would satisfy him, but that it seemed
a pity, just now, to indulge in painful imagery.
"But I thought you wanted so much to put me out of conceit of our
friend."
"I admit I am inconsistent, but there are various reasons for it. In the
first place--it's obvious--I am open to the charge of playing a double
game. I profess an admiration for the Countess Scarabelli, for I accept
her hospitality, and at the same time I attempt to poison your mind;
isn't that the proper expression? I can't exactly make up my mind to
that, though my admiration for the Countess and my desire to prevent you
from taking a foolish step are equally sincere. And then, in the second
place, you seem to me, on the whole, so happy! One hesitates to destroy
an illusion, no matter how pernicious, that is so delightful while it
lasts. These are the rare moments of life. To be young and ardent, in
the midst of an Italian spring, and to believe in the moral perfection of
a beautiful woman--what an admirable situation! Float with the current;
I'll stand on the brink and watch you."
"Your real reason is that you feel you have no case against the poor
lady," said Stanmer. "You admire her as much as I do."
"I just admitted that I admired her. I never said she was a vulgar
flirt; her mother was an absolutely scientific one. Heaven knows I
admired that! It's a nice point, however, how much one is bound in
honour not to warn a young friend against a dangerous woman because one
also has relations of civility with the lady."
"In such a case," said Stanmer, "I would break off my relations."