It seems almost monstrous, especially as I can give no reason for it--but this announcement, instead of shocking me, caused me to feel a strange exhilaration. Most assuredly, after all these years, I bear the poor man no resentment. Of course I controlled my manner, and simply remarked to the Countess that as his fault had been so was his punishment. I think, however, that the feeling of which I speak was at the bottom of my saying to her that I hoped that, unlike her mother's, her own brief married life had been happy. "If it was not," she said, "I have forgotten it now."--I wonder if the late Count Scarabelli was also killed in a duel, and if his adversary . . . Is it on the books that his adversary, as well, shall perish by the pistol? Which of those gentlemen is he, I wonder? Is it reserved for poor little Stanmer to put a bullet into him? No; poor little Stanmer, I trust, will do as I did. And yet, unfortunately for him, that woman is consummately plausible. She was wonderfully nice last evening; she was really irresistible. Such frankness and freedom, and yet something so soft and womanly; such graceful gaiety, so much of the brightness, without any of the stiffness, of good breeding, and over it all something so picturesquely simple and southern. She is a perfect Italian. But she comes honestly by it. After the talk I have just jotted down she changed her place, and the conversation for half an hour was general. Stanmer indeed said very little; partly, I suppose, because he is shy of talking a foreign tongue. Was I like that--was I so constantly silent? I suspect I was when I was perplexed, and Heaven knows that very often my perplexity was extreme. Before I went away I had a few more words _tete- a-tete_ with the Countess. "I hope you are not leaving Florence yet," she said; "you will stay a while longer?" I answered that I came only for a week, and that my week was over. "I stay on from day to day, I am so much interested." "Eh, it's the beautiful moment. I'm glad our city pleases you!" "Florence pleases me--and I take a paternal interest to our young friend," I added, glancing at Stanmer. "I have become very fond of him." "_Bel tipo inglese_," said my hostess. "And he is very intelligent; he has a beautiful mind." She stood there resting her smile and her clear, expressive eyes upon me. "I don't like to praise him too much," I rejoined, "lest I should appear to praise myself; he reminds me so much of what I was at his age. If your beautiful mother were to come to life for an hour she would see the resemblance." She gave me a little amused stare. "And yet you don't look at all like him!" "Ah, you didn't know me when I was twenty-five. I was very handsome! And, moreover, it isn't that, it's the mental resemblance. I was ingenuous, candid, trusting, like him." "Trusting? I remember my mother once telling me that you were the most suspicious and jealous of men!"