He almost forgot to whom he was speaking. Without associating her very distinctly with the child Adèle, he was taking the Countess de Montevesso for granted. He delighted in seeing her so quiet and so perfectly natural. The first effect of her appearance persisted, with only the added sense of the deep dark blue of her eyes, an impression of living profundity that made his thoughts about her pause. But he was unconsciously grateful to her for the fact that she had never given him a moment of that acute social awkwardness from which he used to suffer so much; though there could not be the slightest doubt that the little Adèle (if there had ever been a little Adèle) was now a very fine lady indeed. But she loved the old place and everything and everybody in it. Of that too there could be no doubt. The few references she made to his mother touched and surprised Cosmo. They seemed to imply some depth in her which he, the son, and Henrietta, the daughter, had failed to penetrate. In contrast with that, Cosmo remarked that after the inquiry after Sir Charles's health, which was one of her first questions, his father was not mentioned again. "Are you going to make a stay in Genoa?" she asked after a pause. "A few days," said Cosmo, in an irresolute tone, because he did not know what answer was expected to this inquiry, the first which had nothing to do with Yorkshire. His interest in the rest of Italy was, he perceived, very small. But by the association of ideas he thought suddenly of the passing hours. He raised his eyes to a faintly engraved brass disc with black hands hung on the wall above one of the two doors at that end of the room which he was facing. The black hands pointed to eleven, but what prevented his eyes from returning at once to the delighted contemplation of the Countess of Montevesso was the fact that the door below the clock seemed to have moved slightly. "I intend to see something of Italy," he said. "My time really is my own, I have nothing special to do. It seems to me that the principal object of my journey has been attained now. I don't think my father would be surprised to hear that I had turned back after leaving Genoa." The Countess looking up at this, their eyes remained fastened together for a time and Cosmo thought: "What on earth am I saying?" He watched her lips move to form the words which quite frightened him. "Did Sir Charles give you a message for me?" He thought he had brought this on himself. It was a painful moment. It lasted long enough to give the Countess the time to assume an expression of indifference, startling after the low tone of her question. "No," said Cosmo truthfully. "I have only a message for your father." He waited a moment. "But I will tell you one of the last things Henrietta told me. She told me that when you were married my father could think of nothing for days but you."