li is dead," he said, very gravely.

I looked at him a moment; he was a pleasing young fellow. "And his widow
lives," I observed, "in Via Ghibellina?"

"I daresay that is the name of the street." He was a handsome young
Englishman, but he was also an awkward one; he wondered who I was and
what I wanted, and he did me the honour to perceive that, as regards
these points, my appearance was reassuring. But he hesitated, very
properly, to talk with a perfect stranger about a lady whom he knew, and
he had not the art to conceal his hesitation. I instantly felt it to be
singular that though he regarded me as a perfect stranger, I had not the
same feeling about him. Whether it was that I had seen him before, or
simply that I was struck with his agreeable young face--at any rate, I
felt myself, as they say here, in sympathy with him. If I have seen him
before I don't remember the occasion, and neither, apparently, does he; I
suppose it's only a part of the feeling I have had the last three days
about everything. It was this feeling that made me suddenly act as if I
had known him a long time.

"Do you know the Countess Salvi?" I asked.

He looked at me a little, and then, without resenting the freedom of my
question--"The Countess Scarabelli, you mean," he said.

"Yes," I answered; "she's the daughter."

"The daughter is a little girl."

"She must be grown up now. She must be--let me see--close upon thirty."

My young Englishman began to smile. "Of whom are you speaking?"

"I was speaking of the daughter," I said, understanding his smile. "But
I was thinking of the mother."

"Of the mother?"

"Of a person I knew twenty-seven years ago--the most charming woman I
have ever known. She was the Countess Salvi--she lived in a wonderful
old house in Via Ghibellina."

"A wonderful old house!" my young Englishman repeated.

"She had a little girl," I went on; "and the little girl was very fair,
like her mother; and the mother and daughter had the same name--Bianca."
I stopped and looked at my companion, and he blushed a little. "And
Bianca Salvi," I continued, "was the most charming woman in the world."
He blushed a little more, and I laid my hand on his shoulder. "Do you
know why I tell you this? Because you remind me of what I was when I
knew her--when I loved her." My poor young Englishman gazed at me with a
sort of embarrassed and fascinated stare, and still I went on. "I say
that's the reason I told yo