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Part II
"S eeing that you suppose me to be a--a great admirer of the Countess," he said at last, "I am rather surprised at the freedom with which you speak of her." I confessed that I was surprised at it myself. "But it`s on account of the interest I take in you." "I am immensely obliged to you!" said the poor boy. "Ah, of course you don`t like it. That is, you like my interest--I don`t see how you can help liking that; but you don`t like my freedom. That`s natural enough; but, my dear young friend, I want only to help you. If a man had said to me--so many years ago--what I am saying to you, I should certainly also, at first, have thought him a great brute. But after a little, I should have been grateful--I should have felt that he was helping me." "You seem to have been very well able to help yourself," said Stanmer. "You tell me you made your escape." "Yes, but it was at the cost of infinite perplexity--of what I may call keen suffering. I should like to save you all that." "I can only repeat--it is really very kind of you." "Don`t repeat it too often, or I shall begin to think you don`t mean it." "Well," said Stanmer, "I think this, at any rate--that you take an extraordinary responsibility in trying to put a man out of conceit of a woman who, as he believes, may make him very happy." I grasped his arm, and we stopped, going on with our talk like a couple of Florentines. "Do you wish to marry her?" He looked away, without meeting my eyes. "It`s a great responsibility," he repeated. "Before Heaven," I said, "I would have married the mother! You are exactly in my situation." "Don`t you think you rather overdo the analogy?" asked poor Stanmer. "A little more, a little less--it doesn`t matter. I believe you are in my shoes. But of course if you prefer it, I will beg a thousand pardons and leave them to carry you where they will." He had been looking away, but now he slowly turned his face and met my eyes. "You have gone too far to retreat; what is it you know about her?" "About this one--nothing. But about the other--" "I care nothing about the other!" "My dear fellow," I said, "they are mother and daughter--they are as like as two of Andrea`s Madonnas." "If they resemble each other, then, you were simply mistaken in the mother." I took his arm and we walked on again; there seemed no adequate reply to such a charge. "Your state of mind brings back my own so completely," I said presently. "You admire her--you adore her, and yet, secretly, you mistrust her. You are enchanted with her personal charm, her grace, her wit, her everything; and yet in your private heart you are afraid of her." "Afraid of her?" "Your mistrust keeps rising to the surface; you can`t rid yourself of the suspicion that at the bottom of all things she is hard and cruel, and you would be immensely relieved if some one should persuade you that your suspicion is right." Stanmer made no direct reply to this; but before we reached the hotel he said--"What did you ever know about the mother?" "It`s a terrible story," I answered. He looked at me askance. "What did she do?" "Come to my rooms this evening and I will tell you." He declared he would, but he never came. Exactly the way I should have acted! 14th.--I went again, last evening, to Casa Salvi, where I found the same little circle, with the addition of a couple of ladies. Stanmer was there, trying hard to talk to one of them, but making, I am sure, a very poor business of it. The Countess--well, the Countess was admirable. She greeted me like a friend of ten years, toward whom familiarity should not have engendered a want of ceremony; she made me sit near her, and she asked me a dozen questions about my health and my occupations. "I live in the past," I said. "I go into the galleries, into the old palaces and the churches. Today I spent an hour in Michael Angelo`s chapel at San Loreozo." "Ah yes, that`s the past," said the Countess. "Those things are very old." "Twenty-seven years old," I answered. "Twenty-seven? Altro!" "I mean my own past," I said. "I went to a great many of those places with your mother." "Ah, the pictures are beautiful," murmured the Countess, glancing at Stanmer. "Have you lately looked at any of them?" I asked. "Have you gone to the galleries with HIM?" She hesitated a moment, smiling. "It seems to me that your question is a little impertinent. But I think you are like that." "A little impertinent? Never. As I say, your mother did me the honour, more than once, to accompany me to the Uffizzi." "My mother must have been very kind to you." "So it seemed to me at the time." "At the time only?" "Well, if you prefer, so it seems to me now." "Eh," said the Countess, "she made sacrifices." "To what, cara Signora? She was perfectly free. Your lamented father was dead--and she had not yet contracted her second marriage." "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. "I hope you are not leaving Florence yet," she said; "you will stay a while longer?" I answered that I came only for a week, and that my week was over. "I stay on from day to day, I am so much interested." "Eh, it`s the beautiful moment. I`m glad our city pleases you!" "Florence pleases me--and I take a paternal interest to our young friend," I added, glancing at Stanmer. "I have become very fond of him." "Bel tipo inglese," said my hostess. "And he is very intelligent; he has a beautiful mind." She stood there resting her smile and her clear, expressive eyes upon me. "I don`t like to praise him too much," I rejoined, "lest I should appear to praise myself; he reminds me so much of what I was at his age. If your beautiful mother were to come to life for an hour she would see the resemblance." She gave me a little amused stare. "And yet you don`t look at all like him!" "Ah, you didn`t know me when I was twenty-five. I was very handsome! And, moreover, it isn`t that, it`s the mental resemblance. I was ingenuous, candid, trusting, like him." "Trusting? I remember my mother once telling me that you were the most suspicious and jealous of men!" "I fell into a suspicious mood, but I was, fundamentally, not in the least addicted to thinking evil. I couldn`t easily imagine any harm of any one." "And so you mean that Mr. Stanmer is in a suspicions mood?" "Well, I mean that his situation is the same as mine." The Countess gave me one of her serious looks. "Come," she said, "what was it--this famous situation of yours? I have heard you mention it before." "Your mother might have told you, since she occasionally did me the honour to speak of me." "All my mother ever told me was that you were--a sad puzzle to her." At this, of course, I laughed out--I laugh still as I write it. "Well, then, that was my situation--I was a sad puzzle to a very clever woman." "And you mean, therefore, that I am a puzzle to poor Mr. Stanmer?" "He is racking his brains to make you out. Remember it was you who said he was intelligent." She looked round at him, and as fortune would have it, his appearance at that moment quite confirmed my assertion. He was lounging back in his chair with an air of indolence rather too marked for a drawingroom, and staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man who has just been asked a conundrum. Madame Scarabelli seemed struck with his attitude. "Don`t you see," I said, "he can`t read the riddle?" "You yourself," she answered, "said he was incapable of thinking evil. I should be sorry to have him think any evil of ME." And she looked straight at me--seriously, appealingly--with her beautiful candid brow. I inclined myself, smiling, in a manner which might have meant--"How could that be possible?" "I have a great esteem for him," she went on; "I want him to think well of me. If I am a puzzle to him, do me a little service. Explain me to him." "Explain you, dear lady?" "You are older and wiser than he. Make him understand me." She looked deep into my eyes for a moment, and then she turned away. 26th.--I have written nothing for a good many days, but meanwhile I have been half a dozen times to Casa Salvi. I have seen a good deal also of my young friend--had a good many walks and talks with him. I have proposed to him to come with me to Venice for a fortnight, but he won`t listen to the idea of leaving Florence. He is very happy in spite of his doubts, and I confess that in the perception of his happiness I have lived over again my own. This is so much the case that when, the other day, he at last made up his mind to ask me to tell him the wrong that Madame de Salvi had done me, I rather checked his curiosity. I told him that if he was bent upon knowing I would satisfy him, but that it seemed a pity, just now, to indulge in painful imagery. "But I thought you wanted so much to put me out of conceit of our friend." "I admit I am inconsistent, but there are various reasons for it. In the first place--it`s obvious--I am open to the charge of playing a double game. I profess an admiration for the Countess Scarabelli, for I accept her hospitality, and at the same time I attempt to poison your mind; isn`t that the proper expression? I can`t exactly make up my mind to that, though my admiration for the Countess and my desire to prevent you from taking a foolish step are equally sincere. And then, in the second place, you seem to me, on the whole, so happy! One hesitates to destroy an illusion, no matter how pernicious, that is so delightful while it lasts. These are the rare moments of life. To be young and ardent, in the midst of an Italian spring, and to believe in the moral perfection of a beautiful woman-what an admirable situation! Float with the current; I`ll stand on the brink and watch you." "Your real reason is that you feel you have no case against the poor lady," said Stanmer. "You admire her as much as I do." "I just admitted that I admired her. I never said she was a vulgar flirt; her mother was an absolutely scientific one. Heaven knows I admired that! It`s a nice point, however, how much one is hound in honour not to warn a young friend against a dangerous woman because one also has relations of civility with the lady." "In such a case," said Stanmer, "I would break off my relations." I looked at him, and I think I laughed. "Are you jealous of me, by chance?" He shook his head emphatically. "Not in the least; I like to see you there, because your conduct contradicts your words." "I have always said that the Countess is fascinating." "Otherwise," said Stanmer, "in the case you speak of I would give the lady notice." "Give her notice?" "Mention to her that you regard her with suspicion, and that you propose to do your best to rescue a simple-minded youth from her wiles. That would be more loyal." And he began to laugh again. It is not the first time he has laughed at me; but I have never minded it, because I have always understood it. "Is that what you recommend me to say to the Countess?" I asked. "Recommend you!" he exclaimed, laughing again; "I recommend nothing. I may be the victim to be rescued, but I am at least not a partner to the conspiracy. Besides," he added in a moment, "the Countess knows your state of mind." "Has she told you so?" Stanmer hesitated. "She has begged me to listen to everything you may say against her. She declares that she has a good conscience." "Ah," said I, "she`s an accomplished woman!" And it is indeed very clever of her to take that tone. Stanmer afterwards assured me explicitly that he has never given her a hint of the liberties I have taken in conversation with--what shall I call it?--with her moral nature; she has guessed them for herself. She must hate me intensely, and yet her manner has always been so charming to me! She is truly an accomplished woman! May 4th.--I have stayed away from Casa Salvi for a week, but I have lingered on in Florence, under a mixture of impulses. I have had it on my conscience not to go near the Countess again--and yet from the moment she is aware of the way I feel about her, it is open war. There need be no scruples on either side. She is as free to use every possible art to entangle poor Stanmer more closely as I am to clip her fine-spun meshes. Under the circumstances, however, we naturally shouldn`t meet very cordially. But as regards her meshes, why, after all, should I clip them? It would really be very interesting to see Stanmer swallowed up. I should like to see how he would agree with her after she had devoured him--(to what vulgar imagery, by the way, does curiosity reduce a man!) Let him finish the story in his own way, as I finished it in mine. It is the same story; but why, a quarter of a century later, should it have the same denoument? Let him make his own denoument. 5th.--Hang it, however, I don`t want the poor boy to be miserable. 6th.--Ah, but did my denoument then prove such a happy one? 7th.--He came to my room late last night; he was much excited. "What was it she did to you?" he asked. I answered him first with another question. "Have you quarrelled with the Countess?" But he only repeated his own. "What was it she did to you?" "Sit down and I`ll tell you." And he sat there beside she candle, staring at me. "There was a man always there--Count Camerino." "The man she married?" "The man she married. I was very much in love with her, and yet I didn`t trust her. I was sure that she lied; I believed that she could be cruel. Nevertheless, at moments, she had a charm which made it pure pedantry to be conscious of her faults; and while these moments lasted I would have done anything for her. Unfortunately they didn`t last long. But you know what I mean; am I not describing the Scarabelli?" "The Countess Scarabelli never lied!" cried Stanmer. "That`s just what I would have said to any one who should have made the insinutation! But I suppose you are not asking me the question you put to me just now from dispassionate curiosity." "A man may want to know!" said the innocent fellow. I couldn`t help laughing out. "This, at any rate, is my story. Camerino was always there; he was a sort of fixture in the house. If I had moments of dislike for the divine Bianca, I had no moments of liking for him. And yet he was a very agreeable fellow, very civil, very intelligent, not in the least disposed to make a quarrel with me. The trouble, of course, was simply that I was jealous of him. I don`t know, however, on what ground I could have quarrelled with him, for I had no definite rights. I can`t say what I expected--I can`t say what, as the matter stood, I was prepared to do. With my name and my prospects, I might perfectly have offered her my hand. I am not sure that she would have accepted it--I am by no means clear that she wanted that. But she wanted, wanted keenly, to attach me to her; she wanted to have me about. I should have been capable of giving up everything--England, my career, my family--simply to devote myself to her, to live near her and see her every day." "Why didn`t you do it, then?" asked Stanmer. "Why don`t you?" "To be a proper rejoinder to my question," he said, rather neatly, "yours should be asked twenty-five years hence." "It remains perfectly true that at a given moment I was capable of doing as I say. That was what she wanted--a rich, susceptible, credulous, convenient young Englishman established near her en permanence. And yet," I added, "I must do her complete justice. I honestly believe she was fond of me." At this Stanmer got up and walked to the window; he stood looking out a moment, and then he turned round. "You know she was older than I," I went on. "Madame Scarabelli is older than you. One day in the garden, her mother asked me in an angry tone why I disliked Camerino; for I had been at no pains to conceal my feeling about him, and something had just happened to bring it out. `I dislike him,` I said, `because you like him so much.` `I assure you I don`t like him,` she answered. `He has all the appearance of being your lover,` I retorted. It was a brutal speech, certainly, but any other man in my place would have made it. She took it very strangely; she turned pale, but she was not indignant. `How can he be my lover after what he has done?` she asked. `What has he done?` She hesitated a good while, then she said: `He killed my husband.` `Good heavens!` I cried, `and you receive him!` Do you know what she said? She said, `Che voule?`" "Is that all?" asked Stanmer. "No; she went on to say that Camerino had killed Count Salvi in a duel, and she admitted that her husband`s jealousy had been the occasion of it. The Count, it appeared, was a monster of jealousy-he had led her a dreadful life. He himself, meanwhile, had been anything but irreproachable; he had done a mortal injury to a man of whom he pretended to be a friend, and this affair had become notorious. The gentleman in question had demanded satisfaction for his outraged honour; but for some reason or other (the Countess, to do her justice, did not tell me that her husband was a coward), he had not as yet obtained it. The duel with Camerino had come on first; in an access of jealous fury the Count had struck Camerino in the face; and this outrage, I know not how justly, was deemed expiable before the other. By an extraordinary arrangement (the Italians have certainly no sense of fair play) the other man was allowed to be Camerino`s second. The duel was fought with swords, and the Count received a wound of which, though at first it was not expected to be fatal, he died on the following day. The matter was hushed up as much as possible for the sake of the Countess`s good name, and so successfully that it was presently observed that, among the public, the other gentleman had the credit of having put his blade through M. de Salvi. This gentleman took a fancy not to contradict the impression, and it was allowed to subsist. So long as he consented, it was of course in Camerino`s interest not to contradict it, as it left him much more free to keep up his intimacy with the Countess." Stanmer had listened to all this with extreme attention. "Why didn`t SHE contradict it?" I shrugged my shoulders. "I am bound to believe it was for the same reason. I was horrified, at any rate, by the whole story. I was extremely shocked at the Countess`s want of dignity in continuing to see the man by whose hand her husband had fallen." "The husband had been a great brute, and it was not known," said Stanmer. "Its not being known made no difference. And as for Salvi having been a brute, that is but a way of saying that his wife, and the man whom his wife subsequently married, didn`t like him." Stanmer hooked extremely meditative; his eyes were fixed on mine. "Yes, that marriage is hard to get over. It was not becoming." "Ah," said I, "what a long breath I drew when I heard of it! I remember the place and the hour. It was at a hill-station in India, seven years after I had left Florence. The post brought me some English papers, and in one of them was a letter from Italy, with a lot of so-called `fashionable intelligence.` There, among various scandals in high life, and other delectable items, I read that the Countess Bianca Salvi, famous for some years as the presiding genius of the most agreeable seen in Florence, was about to bestow her hand upon Count Camerino, a distinguished Bolognese. Ah, my dear boy, it was a tremendous escape! I had been ready to marry the woman who was capable of that! But my instinct had warned me, and I had trusted my instinct." "`Instinct`s everything,` as Falstaff says!" And Stanmer began to laugh. "Did you tell Madame de Salvi that your instinct was against her?" "No; I told her that she frightened me, shocked me, horrified me." "That`s about the same thing. And what did she say?" "She asked me what I would have? I called her friendship with Camerino a scandal, and she answered that her husband had been a brute. Besides, no one knew it; therefore it was no scandal. Just YOUR argument! I retorted that this was odious reasoning, and that she had no moral sense. We had a passionate argument, and I declared I would never see her again. In the heat of my displeasure I left Florence, and I kept my vow. I never saw her again." "You couldn`t have been much in love with her," said Stanmer. "I was not--three months after." "If you had been you would have come back--three days after." "So doubtless it seems to you. All I can say is that it was the great effort of my life. Being a military man, I have had on various occasions to face time enemy. But it was not then I needed my resolution; it was when I left Florence in a post-chaise." Stanmer turned about the room two or three times, and then he said: "I don`t understand! I don`t understand why she should have told you that Camerino had killed her husband. It could only damage her." "She was afraid it would damage her more that I should think he was her lover. She wished to say the thing that would most effectually persuade me that he was not her lover--that he could never be. And then she wished to get the credit of being very frank." "Good heavens, how you must have analysed her!" cried my companion, staring. "There is nothing so analytic as disillusionment. But there it is. She married Camerino." "Yes, I don`t lime that," said Stanmer. He was silent a while, and then he added--"Perhaps she wouldn`t have done so if you had remained." He has a little innocent way! "Very likely she would have dispensed with the ceremony," I answered, drily. "Upon my word," he said, "you HAVE analysed her!" "You ought to he grateful to me. I have done for you what you seem unable to do for yourself." "I don`t see any Camerino in my case," he said. "Perhaps among those gentlemen I can find one for you." "Thank you," he cried; "I`ll take care of that myself!" And he went away--satisfied, I hope. 10th.--He`s an obstinate little wretch; it irritates me to see him sticking to it. Perhaps he is looking for his Camerino. I shall leave him, at any rate, to his fate; it is growing insupportably hot. 11th.--I went this evening to bid farewell to the Scarabelli. There was no one there; she was alone in her great dusky drawing-room, which was lighted only by a couple of candles, with the immense windows open over the garden. She was dressed in white; she was deucedly pretty. She asked me, of course, why I had been so long without coming. "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. "I want to bid you good-bye," I said; "I shall depart in the morning. Don`t go to the trouble of saying you are sorry. Of course you are not; I must have bullied you immensely." He made no attempt to say he was sorry, but he said he was very glad to have made my acquaintance. "Your conversation," he said, with his little innocent air, "has been very suggestive." "Have you found Camerino?" I asked, smiling. "I have given up the search." "Well," I said, "some day when you find that you have made a great mistake, remember I told you so." He looked for a minute as if he were trying to anticipate that day by the exercise of his reason. "Has it ever occurred to you that YOU may have made a great mistake?" "Oh yes; everything occurs to one sooner or later." That`s what I said to him; but I didn`t say that the question, pointed by his candid young countenance, had, for the moment, a greater force than it had ever had before. And then he asked me whether, as things had turned out, I myself had been so especially happy. PARIS, December 17th.--A note from young Stanmer, whom I saw in Florence--a remarkable little note, dated Rome, and worth transcribing. "My dear General--I have it at heart to tell you that I was married a week ago to the Countess Salvi-Scarabelli. You talked me into a great muddle; but a month after that it was all very clear. Things that involve a risk are like the Christian faith; they must be seen from the inside.--Yours ever, E. S. "P. S.--A fig for analogies unless you can find an analogy for my happiness!" His happiness makes him very clever. I hope it will last--I mean his cleverness, not his happiness. LONDON, April 19th, 1877.--Last night, at Lady H-`s, I met Edmund Stanmer, who married Bianca Salvi`s daughter. I heard the other day that they had come to England. A handsome young fellow, with a fresh contented face. He reminded me of Florence, which I didn`t pretend to forget; but it was rather awkward, for I remember I used to disparage that woman to him. I had a complete theory about her. But he didn`t seem at all stiff; on the contrary, he appeared to enjoy our encounter. I asked him if his wife were there. I had to do that. "Oh yes, she`s in one of the other rooms. Come and make her acquaintance; I want you to know her." "You forget that I do know her." "Oh no, you don`t; you never did." And he gave a little significant laugh. I didn`t feel like facing the ci-devant Scarabelli at that moment; so I said that I was leaving the house, but that I would do myself the honour of calling upon his wife. We talked for a minute of something else, and then, suddenly breaking off and looking at me, he laid his hand on my arm. I must do him the justice to say that he looks felicitous. "Depend upon it you were wrong!" he said. "My dear young friend," I answered, "imagine the alacrity with which I concede it." Something else again was spoken of, but in an instant he repeated his movement. "Depend upon it you were wrong." "I am sure the Countess has forgiven me," I said, "and in that case you ought to bear no grudge. As I have had the honour to say, I will call upon her immediately." "I was not alluding to my wife," he answered. "I was thinking of your own story." "My own story?" "So many years ago. Was it not rather a mistake?" I looked at him a moment; he`s positively rosy. "That`s not a question to solve in a London crush." And I turned away. 22d.--I haven`t yet called on the ci-devant; I am afraid of finding her at home. And that boy`s words have been thrumming in my ears-"Depend upon it you were wrong. Wasn`t it rather a mistake?" WAS I wrong--WAS it a mistake? Was I too cautions--too suspicious--too logical? Was it really a protector she needed--a man who might have helped her? Would it have been for his benefit to believe in her, and was her fault only that I had forsaken her? Was the poor woman very unhappy? God forgive me, how the questions come crowding in! If I marred her happiness, I certainly didn`t make my own. And I might have made it--eh? That`s a charming discovery for a man of my age!
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