It was dark when we met again, for this was only the fifth day of March, and it was about half-past six in the evening. Ruffiano told me that he had left word at Brunow's lodgings that he might be found here, and we ate our simple dinner, drank our half-flask of Chianti together, and had already reached our coffee and cigars when Brunow came to keep his appointment. He was astonished to find me there, and, I thought, disagreeably astonished. Remembering the terms on which we had parted when we had last Been each other, I was a little surprised at this. I have said already that at our parting on that occasion we shook hands for the last time. It was not because I did not offer him my hand on this occasion, but he seemed not to see it, and I took it back again, resolved in my own mind not to be angry with him, and thinking it probable that he had some attack of his old infirmity of temper. “Ah, you are here!” cried Ruffiano, rising and half embracing him. “It is a pity you were not here earlier. We have had a jolly little dinner and a jolly little talk.” I seem to hear the old fellow's voice now, with its quaint accent, the “jollia leetle dinnera” and the “jol-lia leetle talka,” with his half-childish-sounding vowel at the end of almost every word. Poor old Ruffiano! He has seen the end of his trouble this many and many a year. I never knew a more loyal gentleman, or one less capable of digging such a wicked trap as he fell into. Brunow's manner was altogether a puzzle to me, and even next day, enlightened as I was by events, I was unable to understand it, because it seemed altogether so silly a thing for him to run his neck into the noose as he did. I have sometimes thought it possible that he counted on his own apparent simplicity for safety, but in that case he could not have counted how far his embarrassment at the beginning had invited suspicion and misunderstanding.