If I have seen him
before I don't remember the occasion, and neither, apparently, does he; I
suppose it's only a part of the feeling I have had the last three days
about everything. It was this feeling that made me suddenly act as if I
had known him a long time.
"Do you know the Countess Salvi?" I asked.
He looked at me a little, and then, without resenting the freedom of my
question--"The Countess Scarabelli, you mean," he said.
"Yes," I answered; "she's the daughter."
"The daughter is a little girl."
"She must be grown up now. She must be--let me see--close upon thirty."
My young Englishman began to smile. "Of whom are you speaking?"
"I was speaking of the daughter," I said, understanding his smile. "But
I was thinking of the mother."
"Of the mother?"
"Of a person I knew twenty-seven years ago--the most charming woman I
have ever known. She was the Countess Salvi--she lived in a wonderful
old house in Via Ghibellina."
"A wonderful old house!" my young Englishman repeated.
"She had a little girl," I went on; "and the little girl was very fair,
like her mother; and the mother and daughter had the same name--Bianca."
I stopped and looked at my companion, and he blushed a little. "And
Bianca Salvi," I continued, "was the most charming woman in the world.
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