"The Court is here and most of the foreign ambassadors. We are waiting here for the arrival of the Queen of Sardinia, who may or may not come within the next month or so. This is considered a good post of observation, but there is very little to observe just now from the diplomatic point of view. Most of us have exhausted almost all emotions. Life has grown suddenly very dull. We gossip a little about each other; we wait for the end of the Vienna Congress and discuss the latest rumour that floats about. Yes. The play is over, the stage seems empty. If I were you I would stay a little longer here." "I certainly mean to stay here for some time," declared Cosmo with sudden resolution. "That's right," she continued in the same indifferent tone. "But wait a few days before you write home. You have awakened old memories in me. Inconceivably distant," she went on in a voice more expressionless than ever, "and the dormant feelings of what seems quite another age." Cosmo smiled at this. The girl with round eyes was keeping perfectly still with her watchful stare. Madame de Montevesso seemed to read Cosmo's thoughts. "Yes," she insisted. "I feel very old and everything is very far. I am twenty-six and I have been married very nearly ten years now." Cosmo, looking at her face, thought that those had been the most agitated ten years of European history. He said, "I have no doubt that Yorkshire must seem very far away to you." "I suppose you write very often home?" she said. Cosmo defended himself from being one of those people who write letters about their travels. He had no talent for that; and then what could one write to a young girl like Henrietta and to a man as austere as his father, who had so long retired from the world? Cosmo had found it very difficult. Of course he took care to let them know pretty often that he was safe and sound. Adèle could see this point of view. She seemed amused by the innocent difficulties of a young man having no one but a father and a sister to write to. She ascertained that he had no intimate friend left behind to whom he could confide his impressions. Cosmo said he had formed none of those intimacies that induce a man to share his innermost thoughts and feelings with somebody else. "Probably your father was like that too," said Madame de Montevesso. "I fancy he must have been very difficult to please, and still more difficult to conquer." "Oh, as to that," said Cosmo, "I can safely say I've never been conquered," and he laughed boyishly. He confessed further that he had the habit of thinking contradictorily about most things. "My father was never like that," he concluded. The gravity with which she listened to him now disconcerted him secretly. At last she nodded and opined that his difficulties had their source in the liveliness of his sympathies. He declared that he suffered most at times from the difficulty of making himself understood by men of his own age. "And the women?" she asked quietly.