tall. But for the manner of his introduction, which could leave no room for doubt, the impression that this could not be the lady he had come to see would have been irresistible. As it was Cosmo felt apologetic, as though he had come to the wrong house. It occurred to him also that the lady had been from the very first aware of his presence. He was struck by the profundity of her eyes, which were fixed on him. The train of her blue robe followed on the floor. Her well-shaped head was a mass of short fair curls, and while she approached him Cosmo saw the colour leave her cheeks, the passing away of an unmistakable blush. She stopped and said in an even voice: 

 "Don't you recognize me?" 

 He recovered his power of speech but not exactly the command of his thoughts, which were overwhelmed by a variety of strong and fugitive impulses. 

 "I have never known you," he said with a tone of the profoundest conviction. 

 She smiled (Cosmo was perfectly sure that he had never seen that sort of smile or the promise even of anything so enchanting), and sank slowly on to a sofa whose brocaded silk, gray like pure ashes, and the carved frame painted with flowers and picked with gold, acquired an extraordinary value from the colour of her dress and the grace of her attitude. She pointed to an armchair, close by. Cosmo sat down. A very small table of ebony inlaid with silver stood between them, her hand rested on it; and Cosmo looked at it with appreciation, as if it had been an object of art, before he raised his eyes to the expectant face. 

 "Frankly," he said, "didn't you think that a complete stranger had been brought into the room?" 

 He said this very seriously, and she answered him in a light tone. "For a moment I was afraid to look round. I sat there with my back to you. It was absurd after having been imprudent enough to let you come in the morning. You kept so still that you might have been already gone. I took fright, I jumped up, but I need not have hesitated. You are still the same boy." 

 Cosmo paid very little attention to what she said. Without restraint and disguise, in open admiration he was observing her with all his might, saying to himself, "Is it possible—this—Adèle!" He recollected himself, however, sufficiently to murmur that men changed more slowly and perhaps less completely than women. The Countess of Montevesso was not of that opinion, or, at any rate, not in this case. 

 "It 

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