Page 633 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Chapter 44

The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored-bored,
in her own phrase, to extinction. She had not been extin-
guished, however, and she struggled bravely enough with
her destiny, which had been to marry an unaccommodat-
ing Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town,
where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a
gentleman whose talent for losing at cards had not the merit
of being incidental to an obliging disposition. The Count
Gemini was not liked even by those who won from him;
and he bore a name, which, having a measurable value in
Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states,
without currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome
he was simply a very dull Florentine, and it is not remark-
able that he should not have cared to pay frequent visits to
a place where, to carry it off, his dulness needed more ex-
planation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her
eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her
life that she had not an habitation there. She was ashamed
to say how seldom she had been allowed to visit that city; it
scarcely made the matter better that there were other mem-
bers of the Florentine nobility who never had been there at
all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say.
Or rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she
had much more to say about it, and had often set forth the

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