“A good one, I hope.”
She looked at me, laughing, and not answering this: it was just her mother’s trick.
“‘My Englishman,’ she used to call you—‘il mio Inglese.’”
“I hope she spoke of me kindly,” I insisted.
The Countess, still laughing, gave a little shrug balancing her hand to and fro. “So-so; I always supposed you had had a quarrel. You don’t mind my being frank like this—eh?”
“I delight in it; it reminds me of your mother.”
“Every one tells me that. But I am not clever like her. You will see for yourself.”
“That speech,” I said, “completes the resemblance. She was always pretending she was not clever, and in reality—”
“In reality she was an angel, eh? To escape from dangerous comparisons I will admit, then, that I am clever. That will make a difference. But let us talk of you. You are very—how shall I say it?—very eccentric.”
“Is that what your mother told you?”