And so on we went, deliciously talking and ranging through portfolios of engravings that took us through past days; rambling through all our sunny Italian life, up the Campanile, through the old Duomo; sauntering through the ilexes of the Boboli Garden; comparing notes on the pictures in the Pitti and the Belle Arte—in short, we had one of that blessed kind of times which come when two enthusiasts go back together over the brightest and sunniest passages of their experience.
My head swam; a golden haze was around me, and I was not quite certain whether I was in the body or not. It seemed to me that we two must always have known each other, so very simple and natural did it seem for us to talk together, and to understand one another. "But," she said, suddenly checking herself, "if we get to going on all these things there is no end to it, and I promised sister Ida that I would present you in her study to-night."
"Seems to me it is so very delightful here!" said I, deprecatingly, not well pleased to come out of my dream.
"Ah, but you don't know, Mr. Henderson, this proposed presentation is a special honor. I assure you that this is a distinction that is almost never accorded to any of our callers; you must know sister Ida has retired from the world, and given herself up to the pursuit of wisdom, and it is the rarest thing on earth that she vouchsafes to care for seeing any one."
"I should be only too much flattered," said I, as I followed my guide across a hall, and into a little plainly furnished study, whose air of rigid simplicity contrasted with the luxury of all the other parts of the house.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE YOUNG LADY PHILOSOPHER.