Countess of Albany. 119 



bad education, for Miss Clephane Maclane there 

 [who was close by] speaks both French and Italian 

 perfectly." So saying, she turned away, and never 

 addressed another word to me. That evening I 

 recognised in Countess Moretti my old friend 

 Agnes Bonar. Moretti was of good family ; but, 

 having been banished from home for political 

 opinions, he taught the guitar in London for bread, 

 and an attachment was formed between him and 

 his pupil. After the murder of her parents, they 

 were both persecuted with the most unrelenting 

 cruelty by her brother. They escaped to Milan 

 where they were married. 



I was still a young woman ; but I thought myself 

 too old to learn to speak a foreign language, conse- 

 quently I did not try. I spoke French badly ; and 

 now, after several years' residence in Italy, although 

 I can carry on a conversation fluently in Italian, I 

 do not speak it well. 



[When my mother first went abroad, she had no 

 fluency in talking French, although she was well ac- 

 quainted with the literature. To show how, at every 

 period of her life, she missed no opportunity of acquiring 

 information or improvement, I may mention that many 

 years after, when we were spending a summer in 

 Siena, where the language is spoken with great purity 

 and elegance, she engaged a lady to converse in Italian 

 with her for a couple of hours daily. By this means 



