“I will tell you.... Let us rather speak of yourself. Signor Cosimo was telling me just now——”
“I must run out for a moment to the net. I say, Cosimo, what time is dinner?”
“Tell the women to get it at any hour that suits you.”
“Ah! here’s one of them,” said Don Paolo, who was just in the doorway. “What o’clock do we dine, Flavia?—at twelve?”
Signora Flavia, the wife of my host, bowed her head in assent as she entered the room, while the chaplain, an unsaluted guest, went off to his nets. She came to meet me, asked me how I was, said that she was pleased to hear it before I had time to answer “Well,” and planted herself in a chair to look at me. Sor Cosimo, upon Whom all the conversation seemed to devolve, remarked—
“See, Flavia, this is the gentleman who, as I was telling you the other evening——” Whereupon Sora Flavia began again, da capo.
“How are you?—Well?”
“Yes, madam.”
“And your wife?”
“Very well, thank you.”