“I don’t think you would altogether,” said Lydia with a quiet smile. She had no attention to bestow on Paolo. But she did what impulsive people are so apt to do with strangers, insignificant but sympathetic, often to the great damage of the victim. She leant forward a little and took him into her confidence. “You are a great friend of Mr. Oliver?” she said, “you told me so; then please don’t go away when Mr. Bonamy comes back, for he is asking me questions, and I would rather not answer. It might do Mr. Oliver harm.” “I will not go--for the King himself--if you thus tell me to remain,” cried Paolo, enchanted. But he was confounded too; he did not understand. The first and most natural idea seemed to be that Lydia and Harry were old friends or lovers, with a secret between them; or else this was a mere pretence to secure the pleasure of his, Paolo’s, society, instead of that of Mr. Bonamy. English young ladies, who were so free in their manners, so emancipated, did very strange things. Paolo smiled upon Lydia with his most captivating smile. “I could stay here for evare,” he said. Lydia gave him a look of amused surprise, but she did not mind the little man at all, nor did it for a moment occur to her that he might interpret her sudden confidential impulse according to any theory of nationalities. “It is very hard,” she said, leaning back in her chair with a little sigh of relief, “when anyone looks you in the face, and keeps on asking questions, not to tell everything that you know.” “You think so,” said Paolo. “Ah! Mees Joscelyn, it is that you are so true, what you call straightforwards in England; here one would take a pleasure in doing otherwise. In Italy, when it is imagined that you desire to know more than is necessary, that pleases to us to confuse you. Not to me,” he said, bethinking himself, and beating his breast lightly to indicate himself as an exception, “not to me, for I am also English: but to noi altri Italiani:” this little confusion of a double identity as English, yet one of _noi altri_, pleased Paolo; he laughed at his own cleverness with the frankest self-appreciation. “It pleases,” he said, “to put a too much inquirer wrong.” “But when he looks you in the face,” said Lydia, amused and relieved, “how can you say anything but what it really is? There is a--person in England whom I know. He is not a gentleman, but he has the same name as Mr. Oliver. Mr. Oliver’s name is Isaac, is it not? but then they call him something else, and I don’t know what to think.” “My amico, Oliver, pleases to Miss Joscelyn?” Paolo said.