owned to eighty years, yet presented an amazing vitality and a keen
interest in life and its fulness. The old man had played the looker-on
at human existence, and seemed to know as much, if not more, of the game
than the players. He confessed to this attitude and blamed himself for
it.

"I have never done a stroke of honest work in my life," he said. "I
was born with the silver spoon in my mouth. Alas, I have been amazingly
lazy; it was my metier to look on. I ought, at least, to have written a
book; but then all the things I wanted to say have been so exquisitely
said by Count Gobineau in his immortal volumes, that I should only have
been an echo. The world is too full of echoes as it is. Believe me, if
I had been called to work for my living, I should have cut a respectable
figure, for I have an excellent brain."

"You know England, signor?"

"When I tell you that I married an English-woman, and that both my sons
have English blood in their veins, you will realize the sincerity of my
devotion. My dear wife was a Somerset."

Mary May always declared that the old Italian won her heart and even
awakened something akin to affection before she had known him half an
hour. There was a fascination in his admixture of childish simplicity
and varied knowledge. None, indeed, could resist his gracious humor and
old-world courtesies. The old man could be simple and ingenuous,
too; but only when it pleased him so to be; and it was not the second
childishness of age, for his intellect remained keen and moved far more
swiftly than any at Chadlands. But he was modest and loved a jest. The
hand of time had indeed touched him, and sometimes his memory broke
down and he faltered with a verbal difficulty; but this only appeared to
happen when he was weary.

"The morning is my good time," he told them. "You will, I fear, find me
a stupid old fellow after dinner."

Signor Mannetti proved a tremendous talker, and implicitly revealed
that he belonged to the nobility of his country, and that he enjoyed
the friendship of many notable men. The subject of his visit was not
mentioned on the day of his arrival. He spoke only of Italy, laughed to
think he had passed through Florence to seek Sir Walter in England,
and then, finding his hostess a neophyte at the shrines of art, attuned
himself to the subject for her benefit.

"If you found pictures answer to an unknown need within yourself, that
is very well," he declared. "About music I know