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140 I caught her eye as I stood gazing from the window. With a just visible deepening of her color, she slowly ascended the steps. I was suddenly seized with a sense of being dingy, travel-stained, unpresentable to a woman so charming. I hastily retreated to my room, and, surveying myself in my dressing-glass, objurgated fortune that I lacked the wherewithal to amend my attire. But I could at least change my cravat. I had no sooner replaced my black neck-tie by a blue one than it occurred to me that the Signora would observe the difference; but what then? It would hardly offend her. With a timid hope that it might faintly gratify her as my only feasible tribute to the honor of her presence, I returned to the dining-room. She was seated and had languidly addressed herself to the contents of her soup-plate. The worthy Bonifazio had adorned our little table with four lighted candles and a centre-piece of Alpine flowers. As I installed myself opposite my companion, after having greeted her and received a murmured response, it seemed to me that I was sitting down to one of those factitious repasts which are served upon the French stage, when the table has been moved close to the footlights, and the ravishing young widow and the romantic young artist begin to manipulate the very nodus of the comedy. Was the Signora a widow? Our attendant, with his crimson cap, his well-salted discourse, his light-handed gestures, and his smile from behind the scenes, might have passed for a classic valet de théâtre. I had the appetite of a man who had been walking since sunrise, but I found ample occasion, while I plied my knife and fork, to inspect the Signora. She merely pretended to eat; and to appeal, perhaps, from the overflattering intentness of my vision, she opened an idle conversation with Bonifazio. I listened admiringly, while the glancing shuttle of Italian speech passed rapidly from lip to lip. It was evident, frequently, that she remained quite heedless of what he said, losing herself forever in a kind of fretful intensity of thought. The repast was long and multifarious, and as he time and again removed her plate with its contents untouched, mine host would catch my eye and roll up his own with an air of mock