On reaching the gate after our three hours’ ramble I consigned Miss St. Clair to some friends who were waiting for her, and stepped into the count’s carriage.  He seemed to feel bound in honor not to speak of love to Miss St. Clair since the revelation of the Sistine Chapel, but he must have a little solace in talking to me about it.  “It would be easy,” said he, “if she were not fiancee, but that makes it difficult—­very difficult indeed.  I am glad it is not going to be for three years:  that is a long time, a very long time.”  Then, with a sudden illumination of face and a delicious intonation of the musical voice, “Perhaps they will never marry:  perhaps it will be another man—­I.” (Blessed infatuation of youth, with its wonderful perhapses, which never come to maturer years!)

“One of these years I shall hope to hear that you are married to a beautiful lady of your own country and your own religion.”

“You never will.”

“Oh yes, you will be astonished to find how easy it is to forget.”

“I come of a constant race,” said he proudly.  “My father loved my mother, and they sent him all over the world to forget her, but he came home in five years and married her.”

“Even if it were otherwise possible (which it is not), the difference in religion ought to prevent it.  How could so good a Catholic as you distress your family by marrying a heretic?”

“Perhaps she would be a Catholic.” (I noticed that he did not say, “Perhaps I shall become a Protestant.”) “Don’t you think her father would let her marry a Catholic?”

“No,” I replied stoically.

He was silent and dejected.

“You must forget her,” said I kindly.  “It is only a little while since you first saw her.”

“A little while!  It is my whole life!” “Only a few weeks,” I continued.  “We shall soon be across the ocean, and you will see other ladies.”

“There is only one Miss St. Clair.”

“I beg your pardon—­there are three of them.”  But the boy was too miserable to notice this poor little sally.

We were approaching the hotel.  “I shall not see you again at present,” said he.  “Monsignore will arrive this evening, and I must be at home to receive him.  But I shall be in Paris by the middle of May, and I shall see you there:  farewell till then.”

The next morning Miss St. Clair and I were on our way to Florence.  A week later, on our return from the convent of San Marco, where we had seen the cell of Savonarola and many lovely but faded frescoes of Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo, whom should we find waiting for us in our temporary home on the Via Pandolfini but Count Alvala?  I felt annoyed, and my face must have revealed it, for he said deprecatingly, “You ought to be glad to see your boy, Madame Fleming, for I have come this long journey only for a day, expressly to see you.”

“Well,” said I, “you took me so by surprise that I had not my welcome ready.  I did not expect the pleasure of seeing you till after our arrival in Paris.”