“If she was intending to marry again, it was all the more reason she should have been careful.”

I looked at her a moment; she met my eyes gravely, over the top of her fan.  “Are you very careful?” I said.

She dropped her fan with a certain violence.  “Ah, yes, you are impertinent!”

“Ah no,” I said.  “Remember that I am old enough to be your father; that I knew you when you were three years old.  I may surely ask such questions.  But you are right; one must do your mother justice.  She was certainly thinking of her second marriage.”

“You have not forgiven her that!” said the Countess, very gravely.

“Have you?” I asked, more lightly.

“I don’t judge my mother.  That is a mortal sin.  My stepfather was very kind to me.”

“I remember him,” I said; “I saw him a great many times—­your mother already received him.”

My hostess sat with lowered eyes, saying nothing; but she presently looked up.

“She was very unhappy with my father.”

“That I can easily believe.  And your stepfather—­is he still living?”

“He died—­before my mother.”

“Did he fight any more duels?”

“He was killed in a duel,” said the Countess, discreetly.

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.