The one state already was an intimacy; the other was hardly yet more than a pleasant acquaintance, with the memory of a disagreeable beginning.

Such curiosities of human intercourse are more easily understood by those who have met with them in life than explained to those who have not.

The facts were plain.

When Veronica and Gianluca were together in Bianca's drawing-room, they said nothing which might not have been heard with indifference by all Naples.

When they wrote to each other they spoke of themselves, of their real thoughts about things and people, of their belief, and, to some extent, of their feelings.
Veronica did not perhaps acknowledge that, little by little, Gianluca's letters were beginning to fill the place of poor Bosio's conversation in former times.