“No.”
“If you repeat that ‘no,’ I shall have to call you a liar.”
“I shall know how to avenge that insult.”
“How?”
“With a kiss.”
“You know the portrait of Maria Theresa?”
“Certainly, but what of that?”
“That, having recognized this portrait, you must have had some suspicion of the person to whom it belonged.”
“And why?”
“Because it was natural to think that the portrait of a mother would only be in the hands of her daughter.”