on. "Why didn't
_she_ contradict it?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I am bound to believe it was for the same
reason. I was horrified, at any rate, by the whole story. I was
extremely shocked at the Countess's want of dignity in continuing to see
the man by whose hand her husband had fallen."

"The husband had been a great brute, and it was not known," said Stanmer.

"Its not being known made no difference. And as for Salvi having been a
brute, that is but a way of saying that his wife, and the man whom his
wife subsequently married, didn't like him."

Stanmer hooked extremely meditative; his eyes were fixed on mine. "Yes,
that marriage is hard to get over. It was not becoming."

"Ah," said I, "what a long breath I drew when I heard of it! I remember
the place and the hour. It was at a hill-station in India, seven years
after I had left Florence. The post brought me some English papers, and
in one of them was a letter from Italy, with a lot of so-called
'fashionable intelligence.' There, among various scandals in high life,
and other delectable items, I read that the Countess Bianca Salvi, famous
for some years as the presiding genius of the most agreeable seen in
Florence, was about to bestow her hand upon Count Camerino, a
distinguished Bolognese. Ah, my dear boy, it was a tremendous escape! I
had been ready to marry the woman who was capable of that! But my
instinct had warned me, and I had trusted my instinct."

"'Instinct's everything,' as Falstaff says!" And Stanmer began to laugh.
"Did you tell Madame de Salvi that your instinct was against her?"

"No; I told her that she frightened me, shocked me, horrified me."

"That's about the same thing. And what did she say?"

"She asked me what I would have? I called her friendship with Camerino a
scandal, and she answered that her husband had been a brute. Besides, no
one knew it; therefore it was no scandal. Just _your_ argument! I
retorted that this was odious reasoning, and that she had no moral sense.
We had a passionate argument, and I declared I would never see her again.
In the heat of my displeasure I left Florence, and I kept my vow. I
never saw her again."

"You couldn't have been much in love with her," said Stanmer.

"I was not--three months after."

"If you had been you would have come back--three days after."

"So doubtless it seems to you. All I can say is that it was the great
effort of my life. Being a military man, I ha