“But,” said the wife, after a grateful kiss,—“but where and how can we find a husband suitable to the rank of your daughter?”
“There! there! there!” cried Riccabocca, pushing back his chair to the farther end of the room, “that comes of unbosoming one’s-self! Out flies one secret; it is opening the lid of Pandora’s box; one is betrayed, ruined, undone!”
“Why, there’s not a soul that can hear us!” said Mrs. Riccabocca, soothingly.
“‘That’s chance, ma’am! If you once contract the habit of blabbing out a secret when nobody’s by, how on earth can you resist it when you have the pleasurable excitement of telling it to all the world? Vanity, vanity,—woman’s vanity! Woman never could withstand rank,—never!” The doctor went on railing for a quarter of an hour, and was very reluctantly appeased by Mrs. Riccabocca’s repeated and tearful assurances that she would never even whisper to herself that her husband had ever held any other rank than that of doctor. Riccabocca, with a dubious shake of the head, renewed,
“I have done with all pomp and pretension. Besides, the young man is a born gentleman: he seems in good circumstances; he has energy and latent ambition; he is akin to L’Estrange’s intimate friend: he seems attached to Violante. I don’t think it probable that we could do better. Nay, if Peschiera fears that I shall be restored to my country, and I learn the wherefore, and the ground to take, through this young man—why, gratitude is the first virtue of the noble!”
“You speak, then, of Mr. Leslie?”
“To be sure—of whom else?”
Mrs. Riccabocca leaned her cheek on her hand thoughtfully. “Now you have told me that, I will observe him with different eyes.”
“Anima mia, I don’t see how the difference of your eyes will alter the object they look upon!” grumbled Riccabocca, shaking the ashes out of his pipe.
“The object alters when we see it in a different point of view!” replied Jemima, modestly. “This thread does very well when I look at it in order to sew on a button, but I should say it would never do to tie up Pompey in his Kennel.”