Valeria's face paled; then it flushed rose-pink, and she laughed. "Thirty-eight! Nearly forty? I don't believe it!" All her pretty teeth shone, and the dimple dipped in her cheek.
"I hardly believe it myself," said Nino, laughing.
"Perhaps it is not true, after all."
Did Zio Giacomo in the library hear with his astral ear his son's gratifying assertion? Fräulein certainly thought that she saw him smile in his sleep, while through her careful lips "Conte Ukolino," in the thirty-third canto of the "Inferno," gnawed noisomely at the Archbishop's ravaged skull.
"Are you sure that she is not seventeen?" asked Valeria, biting a blade of grass, and glancing up sideways at her cousin's face.
Nino stopped. "'She?' Who? Why? Who is seventeen?" he asked.
"Edith," breathed Valeria.
Nino shook his head. "No, not Edith, poor little thing!" Then he bent forward and kissed Valeria decisively and authoritatively long before she expected it.
"Why did you call Edith a poor little thing?" asked Valeria, when she had forgiven him, and been kissed again.
Nino looked grave, and tapped his chest with his finger. "È tisica!" he said.