“And who, then, is Diana?” said Pandolfini, smiling. He had heard the name a great many times; but that any one should be ignorant who Diana was seemed so unlikely to the little party, that the Italian, though a constant visitor, knew nothing of her but her name. “Oh, Diana! Why, you know she---- Who is that, my dear, at the door? We don’t expect any one, do we, to-night?” “_I_ don’t expect any one--unless you have forgotten what night it was, as I’ve known you to do, and asked somebody----” “Why, why!” said Mr. Hunstanton--“God bless me! listen: if I did not know she was safe in England I should say that voice---- My dear!--why, it is! Diana, her very self!” The Italian stood behind backs, smiling and looking on. The room was large and but partially lighted, with frescoes on the walls shining out here and there where there was light enough to see them. He saw a lady come in against one of these illuminated bits of wall, relieved against a mass of dark-crimson drapery, holding out her hands. She was in black, with a lace veil wound about her head. The smile faded off his face as he stood and gazed. He had been thinking of Sophy’s type of English womankind, which was what he had seen most, with that same amused, indulgent, kind semi-contempt which had been in Diana’s mind. But here he was stopped suddenly short. The beautiful face which met his look without being aware of it was pale, partly by nature, partly by fatigue. Her hair was dark, shining with a soft gloss, yet ruffled over her forehead by a tendency to curl which had often disturbed Diana: her eyes of that lustrous and dewy grey which is so rare: her face as perfect in its somewhat long oval as if it had been painted by Luini, but not weak as Luini’s faces sometimes are. She stood smiling, putting out her hands, which looked like snow through the cloud of drooping lace. “Yes, it is Diana--the last person in the world you expected to see!” she said.