compliment, and granted its request, with ease, with purity, but with an English accent. Nevil and the Count were equally astonished; but the latter, who believed that he might say what he pleased, provided he did so with a grace, imagining that impoliteness dwelt not in matter but in manner, put the direct question to Corinne, on the reason of this singularity. She seemed at first somewhat uneasy, beneath this sudden interrogation; then recovering herself, said, "It seems, monsieur, that I must have learned French of an English person." He renewed his attack with earnest gayety. Corinne became more confused, and at last said, gravely, "During the four years that I lived in Rome, monsieur, none even of the friends most interested in me have ever inquired into my fate; they understood, from the first, that it was painful for me to speak of it." This check silenced the Count; but Corinne feared that she had hurt him; and, as he seemed so intimate with Lord Nevil, she dreaded still more, without confessing it to herself, that he might speak unfavorably of her to his companion, and therefore took sufficient pains in atoning to him. The Prince Castel Forte now arrived, with many of their mutual acquaintance, men of lively and amiable minds, of kind and courteous manners, so easily animated by the conversation of others, so capable of appreciating all that deserved approval, that they made the best listeners possible. The Italians are usually too indolent to display in society, or often in any way, the wit they really possess. The generality of them cultivate not, even in seclusion, the intellectual faculties of their natures; but they revel in the mental delights which find them without any trouble of their own. Corinne had all a Frenchwoman's sense of the ridiculous, and evinced it with all the fancy of an Italian; but she mingled in both such sweetness of temper that nothing appeared preconcerted or hostile--for, in most things, it is coldness which offends; while vivacity, on the contrary, has almost invariably an air of good-nature. Oswald found in Corinne a grace which he had never before met.