Meanwhile she sat there neither moving nor speaking. She was
very small and shrunken, bent forward, with her hands in her lap.
She was dressed in black, and her head was wrapped in a piece
of old black lace which showed no hair.
My emotion keeping me silent she spoke first, and the remark
she made was exactly the most unexpected.
III
"Our house is very far from the center, but the little canal
is very comme il faut."
"It's the sweetest corner of Venice and I can imagine nothing more charming,"
I hastened to reply. The old lady's voice was very thin and weak, but it
had an agreeable, cultivated murmur, and there was wonder in the thought
that that individual note had been in Jeffrey Aspern's ear.
"Please to sit down there. I hear very well,"
she said quietly, as if perhaps I had been shouting at her;
and the chair she pointed to was at a certain distance.
I took possession of it, telling her that I was perfectly
aware that I had intruded, that I had not been properly
introduced and could only throw myself upon her indulgence.
Perhaps the other lady, the one I had had the honor of seeing
the day before, would have explained to her about the garden.
That was literally what had given me courage to take a step
so unconventional. I had fallen in love at sight with the whole place
(she herself probably was so used to it that she did not know
the impression it was capable of making on a stranger), and I
had felt it was really a case to risk something.
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