“My dear fellow, how can you doubt? Of course we shall be delighted to see you, both I and my wife. We always feel together, she and I. Of course you will think me an old fool and all that for speaking with so little enthusiasm. I am past the age of _les grandes passions_; but a good wife is a very good thing, I can tell you, Pandolfini. It is astonishing how many worries a man is spared when he has somebody always by him who knows his ways, and sees that he is comfortable. Many a great calamity is easier put up with than having your tastes disregarded, and your customs broken in upon.” “This may be very true, my good Hunstanton, but why to me--why say it to me? I have no--wife.” His voice changed a little, with a tone which would have been very instructive to the lady spoken of, but which conveyed no particular information to her husband. Mr. Hunstanton rubbed his hands: then he took his cigar out of his mouth in his energy, and puffed a large mouthful of smoke into his companion’s face. “That is exactly the question--exactly the question. My dear fellow, that is just what I wanted to say to you. You ought to have a wife.” Pandolfini gave a quick look up into his friend’s eyes. What he thought or hoped he might find there who can tell? Many things were possible to his Italian ideas that no Englishman would have thought possible. From whom might this suggestion come? His heart gave a wild leap upward, then sank with a sudden plunge and chill. What a fool, what a miserable vain fool he was! She to hold out a little finger, a corner of her handkerchief, to him or any man! His eyes fell, and his heart; he shook his head. “Come, come, Pandolfini! that is the way with all you foreign fellows. You are as afraid of marriage as if it were purgatory. You have had full time to have your fling surely. I don’t mean to insinuate anything against you. So far as I know, you have always been the most irreproachable of men. But supposing that you hadn’t, why, you have had time enough to have your fling. How old are you, forty? Well, then, it is time to range yourself as the French say. An English wife would be the making of you----” “Hunstanton,” cried the Italian, “all this that you are saying is as blasphemy. Is it to me you speak of ranging myself, of accepting unwillingly marriage, of having an English wife offered to me like a piece of useful furniture? It is that you do not know me--do not know anything about me--notwithstanding _buon amico_, that you are my best friend.” Mr. Hunstanton looked at him with complacent yet humorous eyes. “Aha!” he said, “didn’t I divine it! I knew, of course, how the wind was blowing. Bravo, Pandolfini! so you are hit, eh? I knew it, man! I saw it sooner than you did yourself.”