“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.