Most women reverse the case entirely.' He looked again at Emily, who blushed deeper than before for her aunt, and turned from him with displeasure.
'Well, signor!' said Madame Cheron, 'I protest you are a Frenchman; I never heard a foreigner say any thing half so gallant as that!' 'True, madam,' said the Count, who had been some time silent, and with a low bow, 'but the gallantry of the compliment had been utterly lost, but for the ingenuity that discovered the application.' Madame Cheron did not perceive the meaning of this too satirical sentence, and she, therefore, escaped the pain, which Emily felt on her account.

'O! here comes Signor Montoni himself,' said her aunt, 'I protest I will tell him all the fine things you have been saying to me.' The Signor, however, passed at this moment into another walk.

'Pray, who is it, that has so much engaged your friend this evening ?' asked Madame Cheron, with an air of chagrin, 'I have not seen him once.' 'He had a very particular engagement with the Marquis La Riviere,' replied Cavigni, 'which has detained him, I perceive, till this moment, or he would have done himself the honour of paying his respects to you, madam, sooner, as he commissioned me to say.

But, I know not how it is--your conversation is so fascinating--that it can charm even memory, I think, or I should certainly have delivered my friend's apology before.' 'The apology, sir, would have been more satisfactory from himself,' said Madame Cheron, whose vanity was more mortified by Montoni's neglect, than flattered by Cavigni's compliment.

Her manner, at this moment, and Cavigni's late conversation, now awakened a suspicion in Emily's mind, which, notwithstanding that some recollections served to confirm it, appeared preposterous.