The landlord looked down at his boots, then slowly raised his shoulders, with a melancholy smile.  “I have many regrets, dear sir—­”

“You don’t know the name?”

“I know the name, assuredly.  But I don’t know the gentleman.”

I saw that my question had attracted the attention of the young Englishman, who looked at me with a good deal of earnestness.  He was apparently satisfied with what he saw, for he presently decided to speak.

“The Count Scarabelli is dead,” he said, very gravely.

I looked at him a moment; he was a pleasing young fellow.  “And his widow lives,” I observed, “in Via Ghibellina?”

“I daresay that is the name of the street.”  He was a handsome young Englishman, but he was also an awkward one; he wondered who I was and what I wanted, and he did me the honour to perceive that, as regards these points, my appearance was reassuring.  But he hesitated, very properly, to talk with a perfect stranger about a lady whom he knew, and he had not the art to conceal his hesitation.  I instantly felt it to be singular that though he regarded me as a perfect stranger, I had not the same feeling about him.  Whether it was that I had seen him before, or simply that I was struck with his agreeable young face—­at any rate, I felt myself, as they say here, in sympathy with him.  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.”  He blushed a little more, and I laid my hand on his shoulder.  “Do you know why I tell you this?  Because you remind me of what I was when I knew her—­when I loved her.”  My poor young Englishman gazed at me with a sort of embarrassed and fascinated stare, and still I went on.  “I say that’s the reason I told you this—­but you’ll think it a strange reason.  You remind me of my younger self.  You needn’t resent that—­I was a charming young fellow.  The Countess Salvi thought so.  Her daughter thinks the same of you.”