"Ah," said Lady William with a particular intonation which made Cosmo wonder what he could have said to provoke scepticism. But Lady William was asking herself how it was that this young Englishman seemed to be familiar with the freakish girl who was an object of many surmises in Genoa, and whose company, it was understood, Count Helion of Montevesso had imposed upon his wife. Meantime Cosmo, with the eyes of all the women concentrated upon him with complete frankness, began to feel uncomfortable. Lady William noticed it and out of pure kindness spoke to him again. "If I understood rightly you have known Madame de Montevesso from childhood." "I can't call myself really a childhood's friend. I was so much away from home," explained Cosmo. "But she lived for some years in my parents' house and everybody loved her there; my mother, my father, my sister--and it seems to me, looking back now, that I too must have loved her at that time; though we very seldom exchanged more than a few words in the course of the day." He spoke with feeling and glanced in the direction of the group near the console where the head of Adèle appeared radiant under the sparkling crystals of the lustre. Lady William, bending sideways a little, leaned her cheek against her hand in a listening attitude. Cosmo felt that he was expected to go on speaking, but it seemed to him that he had nothing more to say. He fell back upon a general remark. "I think boys are very stupid creatures. However, I wasn't so stupid as not to feel that Adèle d'Armand was very intelligent and quite different from us all. Her very gentleness set her apart. Moreover, Henrietta and I were younger. To my sister and myself she seemed almost grown up. A couple of years makes a very great difference at that age. Soon after she went away we children heard that she was married. She seemed lost to us then. Presently she went back to France, and once there she was lost indeed. When one looked towards France in those days it seems to me there was nothing to be seen but Napoleon. And then her marriage, too. A Countess de Montevesso didn't mean anything to us. I came here expecting to see a stranger." Cosmo checked himself. It was impossible to say whether Lady William had heard him, or even whether she had been listening at all, but she asked: "You never met Count Helion?" "I haven't the slightest idea of the man. He is not in this room, is he? What is he like?" Lady William looked amused for a moment at the artless curiosity of the Countess de Montevesso's young friend; but it was in an indifferent tone that she said: "Count Helion is a man of immense wealth which he amassed in India somewhere. He is much older than his wife. More than twice her age." Cosmo showed his surprise, and Lady William continued smoothly: "Of course all the world knows that Adèle has been a model wife."