Pandolfini felt the words echo down to the very bottom of his heart. Surely the very last person in the world he had expected to see,--such a woman as he had been looking for all his life! Fortunately he was in the shade, and she was occupied with her friends and the welcome they gave; and though she saw there was a stranger present, could not see, and therefore could not be offended by, his gaze. And an Italian can gaze at a woman without impertinence as a man of no other nation can. If she is beautiful, is it not the homage he owes her? and if she is not beautiful, it is kind to make her think so--to give the admiration due to her sex, if not to her. Presently, however, he awoke to the recollection that English susceptibilities were sometimes shocked by this simple homage. He did not go away as an Englishman would have done, but he went to one of the distant windows, and, half hidden in the curtains, looked on still while they put her in a chair, discharging volleys of questions--while they offered her everything, dinner, tea, wine, all that a traveller might be supposed to require, and she replied with soft laughter and explanations, declaring herself fully refreshed and rested. Then there was a flutter and a rush, and the two little ladies from the third floor came rushing in, called by Reginald, and blotted out the beautiful new-comer with their embracings. When the party remembered him at last, and brought him out of the shadow and presented him to the stranger, Pandolfini, much against his will, had to go away. Not even his Italian simplicity was proof against the little chill that came over the English group as he was brought (of course by good Mr. Hunstanton’s officious kindness) into the midst of it. “I must not disturb the happiness of the re-seeing,” he said in his formal English, carefully pronouncing every syllable. Sophy had been sent by her aunt to fetch something as he got his hat in the anteroom, and lingered a moment in the great gloomy staircase, lighted only by the little coiled taper she carried, and by the lamp of the servant who stood ready to show him the way down that dark cavern of stairs. It made a curious picture,--the light all centring in Sophy’s whiteness, her muslin dress, and the flower face that bloomed over it in all the English glory of complexion. She lingered to say good-night to him, putting out her soft little hand. “You are happy to-night?” he said, looking at her with that kind smile. “How can I help it?” cried Sophy, but with a curious wistful look in her eyes; “Diana has come.” Then she ran with a thrill and vibration of light and brightness up into the dark, carrying her taper, and he more heavily went down to the night and the outside world.