Maybe too, that the little germ of sympathy sown in his heart by her kindly championship at the dinner in the Doria palace was now bearing fruit.

Who can say by what mysterious process some contact--whether spiritual or material--- between a man and a woman may generate and nourish in them a sentiment which, latent and unsuspected for long, may suddenly wake to life through unforeseen circumstances?
It is the same phenomenon so often encountered in our mental world, when the germ of an idea or a shadowy fancy suddenly reappears before us after a long interval of unconscious development as a finished picture, a complex thought.

The same law governs all the varying activities of our being; and the activities of which we are conscious form but a small part of the whole.
Donna Bianca Dolcebuono was the ideal type of Florentine beauty, such as Ghirlandajo has given us in the portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni at Santa Maria Novella.

Her face was fair and oval, with a broad white brow, a sweet and expressive mouth, a nose a trifle _retrousse_ and eyes of that deep hazel so dear to Firenzuola.

She was fond of wearing her hair parted and arranged in full puffs half way over her cheeks in the quaint old style.