"The Signora Brandi has been absent," said Annunziata. "She has been in her own country—in Austria. But the other day she returned. And with her came a person to visit her. That is the person whose form you have seen in the garden."

"How do you know it wasn't the form of the Signora Brandi herself?" John said.

"Oh, no," said Annunziata. "The Signora Brandi is not young. She is old. She is as old as—"

"Methuselah? Sin? The hills?" suggested John, Annunziata having paused to think.

"No," said Annunziata, repudiating the suggestion with force. "No one is so old as Methuselah. She is as old as—well, my uncle."

"I see," said John. "Yes, it's all highly mysterious."

"Mysterious?" said Annunziata.

"I should think so," asseverated he. "Cryptic, enigmatic, esoteric to the last degree. To begin with, how does the Signora Brandi, being an Austrian, come by so characteristically un-Austrian a name? Is that mysterious? And in the next place, why does an Austrian Signora Brandi so far forget what is due to her nationality as to live, not in Austria, but in Lombardy? And—as if that were not enough—at Castel Sant' Alessina? And—as if that were not more than enough—in the pavilion beyond the clock? Come, come! Mysterious!"

"You are living in Lombardy, you are living at Castel Sant' Alessina, yourself," said Annunziata.

"I hardly think so," said John. "You can scarcely with precision call this living—this is rather what purists call sojourning. But even were it otherwise, there's all the difference in the world between my case and the Signora Brandi's. I am middle-aged and foolish, but she is as old as your uncle. Don't you see the mysterious significance of that coincidence? And I haven't a young woman visiting me. Who is the young woman? Is that a mystery? My sweet child, we tread among mysteries. We are at the centre of a coil of mysteries. Who is the young woman? And how—consider well upon this—how does it happen that the young woman speaks English? Mysterious, indeed!"

He rose, and bowed, with ceremony.

"But we burn daylight. I must not detain you longer. Suffer me to imprint upon your hand of velvet a token of my high regard."

And taking Annunziata's frail little white hand, he bent 

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