"Ah," said I, laughing, "you are quite as clever as your mother." "And they tell me that you are a great soldier," she continued; "you have lived in India. It was very kind of you, so far away, to have remembered our poor dear Italy." "One always remembers Italy; the distance makes no difference. I remembered it well the day I heard of your mother's death!" "Ah, that was a sorrow!" said the Countess. "There's not a day that I don't weep for her. But _che vuole_? She's a saint its paradise." "_Sicuro_," I answered; and I looked some time at the ground. "But tell me about yourself, dear lady," I asked at last, raising my eyes. "You have also had the sorrow of losing your husband." "I am a poor widow, as you see. _Che vuole_? My husband died after three years of marriage." I waited for her to remark that the late Count Scarabelli was also a saint in paradise, but I waited in vain. "That was like your distinguished father," I said. "Yes, he too died young. I can't be said to have known him; I was but of the age of my own little girl. But I weep for him all the more." Again I was silent for a moment. "It was in India too," I said presently, "that I heard of your mother's second marriage." The Countess raised her eyebrows. "In India, then, one hears of everything! Did that news please you?" "Well, since you ask me--no." "I understand that," said the Countess, looking at her open fan. "I shall not marry again like that." "That's what your mother said to me," I ventured to observe. She was not offended, but she rose from her seat and stood looking at me a moment. Then--"You should not have gone away!" she exclaimed. I stayed for another hour; it is a very pleasant house. Two or three of the men who were sitting there seemed very civil and intelligent; one of them was a major of engineers, who offered me a profusion of information upon the new organisation of the Italian army. While he talked, however, I was observing our hostess, who was talking with the others; very little, I noticed, with her young Inglese. She is altogether charming--full of frankness and freedom, of that inimitable _disinvoltura_ which in an Englishwoman would be vulgar, and which in her is simply the perfection of apparent spontaneity. But for all her spontaneity she's as subtle as a needle-point, and knows tremendously well what she is about. If she is not a consummate coquette . . . What had she in her head when she said that I should not have gone away?--Poor little Stanmer didn't go away. I left him there at midnight. 12th.--I found him today sitting in the church of Santa Croce, into which I wandered to escape from the heat of the sun.