“I think you say that only for form,” I answered.  “I imagine you know.”

“Che! what have I done?”

“Nothing at all.  You are too wise for that.”

She looked at me a while.  “I think you are a little crazy.”

“Ah no, I am only too sane.  I have too much reason rather than too little.”

“You have, at any rate, what we call a fixed idea.”

“There is no harm in that so long as it’s a good one.”

“But yours is abominable!” she exclaimed, with a laugh.

“Of course you can’t like me or my ideas.  All things considered, you have treated me with wonderful kindness, and I thank you and kiss your hands.  I leave Florence tomorrow.”

“I won’t say I’m sorry!” she said, laughing again.  “But I am very glad to have seen you.  I always wondered about you.  You are a curiosity.”

“Yes, you must find me so.  A man who can resist your charms!  The fact is, I can’t.  This evening you are enchanting; and it is the first time I have been alone with you.”

She gave no heed to this; she turned away.  But in a moment she came back, and stood looking at me, and her beautiful solemn eyes seemed to shine in the dimness of the room.

“How could you treat my mother so?” she asked.

“Treat her so?”

“How could you desert the most charming woman in the world?”

“It was not a case of desertion; and if it had been it seems to me she was consoled.”

At this moment there was the sound of a step in the ante-chamber, and I saw that the Countess perceived it to be Stanmer’s.

“That wouldn’t have happened,” she murmured.  “My poor mother needed a protector.”

Stanmer came in, interrupting our talk, and looking at me, I thought, with a little air of bravado.  He must think me indeed a tiresome, meddlesome bore; and upon my word, turning it all over, I wonder at his docility.  After all, he’s five-and-twenty—­and yet I must add, it does irritate me—­the way he sticks!  He was followed in a moment by two or three of the regular Italians, and I made my visit short.

“Good-bye, Countess,” I said; and she gave me her hand in silence.  “Do you need a protector?” I added, softly.

She looked at me from head to foot, and then, almost angrily—­“Yes, Signore.”

But, to deprecate her anger, I kept her hand an instant, and then bent my venerable head and kissed it.  I think I appeased her.

BOLOGNA, 14th.—­I left Florence on the 11th, and have been here these three days.  Delightful old Italian town—­but it lacks the charm of my Florentine secret.

I wrote that last entry five days ago, late at night, after coming back from Casa Salsi.  I afterwards fell asleep in my chair; the night was half over when I woke up.  Instead of going to bed, I stood a long time at the window, looking out at the river.  It was a warm, still night, and the first faint streaks of sunrise were in the sky.  Presently I heard a slow footstep beneath my window, and looking down, made out by the aid of a street lamp that Stanmer was but just coming home.  I called to him to come to my rooms, and, after an interval, he made his appearance.