"My dear Ferrari, I am surely not alone in my admiration for your high qualities! Does not every one like you?
Are you not a universal favorite?
Do you not tell me that your late friend the Count Romani held you as the dearest to him in the world after his wife?
Ebbene! Why underrate yourself ?" He let his hands fall slowly from my shoulders and a look of pain contracted his features.

After a little silence he said: "Fabio again! How his name and memory haunt me! I told you he was a fool--it was part of his folly that he loved me too well--perhaps.

Do you know I have thought of him very much lately ?" "Indeed ?" and I feigned to be absorbed in fixing a star-like japonica in my button-hole.

"How is that ?" A grave and meditative look softened the usually defiant brilliancy of his eyes.
"I saw my uncle die," he continued, speaking in a low tone.

"He was an old man and had very little strength left,--yet his battle with death was horrible--horrible! I see him yet--his yellow convulsed face--his twisted limbs--his claw-like hands tearing at the empty air--then the ghastly grim and dropped jaw--the wide-open glazed eyes--pshaw! it sickened me!" "Well, well!" I said in a soothing way, still busying myself with the arrangement of my button-hole, and secretly wondering what new emotion was at work in the volatile mind of my victim.