“But now it has happened, Signora,” said the Marchese, emboldened by the smile, and by a shy sidelong glance, which she shot from under her eye-lashes with a laugh in her eyes, as she spoke; “now it has happened that I have been permitted to see you in a toilet all the more exquisitely charming in that it wants the formality of the costume in which the world is wont to see you,—­may I not say what I came for the purpose of saying?”

“Will you be very discreet, Signor?” she said, putting a slender rosy finger up to her smiling lips; “and never, never let it be known to any human being, that I ever received you save in the fullest of full dress, as would become me in receiving the honour of a visit from your Excellency!”

“Not a syllable, not a whisper!” replied the Marchese, taking her tone, and putting his own finger on his lips.  “And then, I may say, Signora, that in Ravenna a visit at any hour from old Lamberto di Castelmare would do your fair name no harm!” he added, taking the arm-chair by the side of the sofa to which she pointed, as she resumed her former place and attitude on the couch.

“I dare say it might not, if I am to judge of his position in the society from your own, Signor Marchese.  But I did not know, that there was any old Signor Lamberto di Castelmare.  I supposed you were the head of the family, your uncle, perhaps?” said Bianca, very innocently.

“I have no uncle, Signora!  I am the oldest Castelmare extant,” said the Marchese.

“And you call yourself old Lamberto, Marchese!  Why I would wager my pearl necklace,—­and that is the most valuable possession I have—­ against a daisy chain, that you are not ten years older than I am.  I shall be called old Bianca Lalli next, at that rate!”

“And how many years, since you are ready to wager on it,—­have gone to the bringing the face and form I see before me to their matchless perfection?” said the Marchese.

“Who was ever before so prettily asked how old she was?” said Bianca, suffering her large blue eyes to rest fully on the Marchese’s face for an instant, and then dropping them with an air of conscious embarrassment.  “Well, a frank question deserves—­or at least shall have—­a frank answer!  I shall never see my twenty-fourth birthday again?”

“And you judge me then to be thirty-four!” said the Marchese, looking at her laughingly.

“Certainly I don’t think any room full of strangers would judge you to be more than that,” replied Bianca, looking at him seriously.

“Ta!—­ta!—­ta!  Add fifteen years to that; and you will be nearer the mark.  So you see, bella Signora, that you may safely trust yourself to a tete-a-tete with me under any circumstances.”