"Mrs. Hawthorne, what a frivolous question! But he is. He is one of the
most completely handsome men I know. Rather short, that's all."

"Oh, what a pity!"

"But, if you must insist on that sort of symmetry, Brenda is not tall.
He is a kind of Italian, more common than one thinks, that doesn't get
into literature, having nothing exciting, mysterious, wicked, or even
conspicuously picturesque about him. After being a good son,--they are
very often good sons,--he will be a good husband and a good father, like
his own father before him. He is without vanity, while looking like a
square-built, stocky, responsible Romeo. Devoted to duty, passionate for
order, absolutely punctilious in matters of honor and courtesy, he is a
good citizen, a good soldier. He belongs to excellent people, I
gathered, whose fortune, once larger, is very small. They live in the
Abruzzi, I think he said. He is the eldest son and hope of the house.
His gratitude to them comes first of all, he made me understand. He
would be an _indegno_, unworthy of esteem and love, if that were
not so. He had never cared for pleasures, he told me; even in the time
not demanded by the service he studied. He wished to be useful to his
country; he looked for the advancement to be gained by solid capacity in
military things. He felt older than his years, he said, from being the
eldest of the family and always carrying responsibilities. He committed
no follies of youth, had no quarrels, made no debts. His companions
sometimes laughed at him for this prosaic seriousness. But he had
friends, for he is of a manly, modest sort. One evening during Carnival
last year certain of these friends dropped in on their way to a dance, a
costume party at the house of Americans, and seeing him so absorbed by
duties and studies, thought it a lark to tempt him from these and take
him along. And he, to astonish them for once, he says, let it happen,
they assuring him that he would be well received if presented as their
friend. One of them had on two costumes, one on top of the other, of
which he lent him one, a monk's frock and cowl. So they went. At the
ball was Brenda as the Snow-queen. And the fatal thing happened at very
first sight of her. It is a repetition of _Romeo and Juliet_, as
you see. He had shunned women as the rivals of duty and work. He
believes his instantaneous adoration owing to the fact that Brenda so
far surpassed all he had ever known,--a being entirely formed of l