I walked back to the hotel, wondering how I could learn something about the Contessa Salvi-Scarabelli. In the doorway I found the innkeeper, and near him stood a young man whom I immediately perceived to be a compatriot, and with whom, apparently, he had been in conversation. "I wonder whether you can give me a piece of information," I said to the landlord. "Do you know anything about the Count Salvi-Scarabelli?" The landlord looked down at his boots, then slowly raised his shoulders, with a melancholy smile. "I have many regrets, dear sir--" "You don't know the name?" "I know the name, assuredly. But I don't know the gentleman." I saw that my question had attracted the attention of the young Englishman, who looked at me with a good deal of earnestness. He was apparently satisfied with what he saw, for he presently decided to speak. "The Count Scarabelli is dead," he said, very gravely. I looked at him a moment; he was a pleasing young fellow. "And his widow lives," I observed, "in Via Ghibellina?" "I daresay that is the name of the street." He was a handsome young Englishman, but he was also an awkward one; he wondered who I was and what I wanted, and he did me the honour to perceive that, as regards these points, my appearance was reassuring. But he hesitated, very properly, to talk with a perfect stranger about a lady whom he knew, and he had not the art to conceal his hesitation. I instantly felt it to be singular that though he regarded me as a perfect stranger, I had not the same feeling about him. Whether it was that I had seen him before, or simply that I was struck with his agreeable young face--at any rate, I felt myself, as they say here, in sympathy with him. If I have seen him before I don't remember the occasion, and neither, apparently, does he; I suppose it's only a part of the feeling I have had the last three days about everything. It was this feeling that made me suddenly act as if I had known him a long time. "Do you know the Countess Salvi?" I asked. He looked at me a little, and then, without resenting the freedom of my question--"The Countess Scarabelli, you mean," he said. "Yes," I answered; "she's the daughter." "The daughter is a little girl." "She must be grown up now. She must be--let me see--close upon thirty." My young Englishman began to smile. "Of whom are you speaking?" "I was speaking of the daughter," I said, understanding his smile. "But I was thinking of the mother." "Of the mother?" "Of a person I knew twenty-seven years ago--the most charming woman I have ever known. She was the Countess Salvi--she lived in a wonderful old house in Via Ghibellina." "A wonderful old house!" my young Englishman repeated.