“It may be but a mere idler. Is this all?”
“No; the old woman who serves us said that she was asked at a shop ‘if we were not Italians’?”
“And she answered?”
“‘No;’ but owned that ‘we had a foreign servant, Giacomo.’”
“I will see to this. Rely on it that if Peschiera has discovered you, I will learn it. Nay, I will hasten from you in order to commence inquiry.”
“I cannot detain you. May I think that we have now an interest in common?”
“Oh, indeed yes; but—but—your daughter! How can I dream that one so beautiful, so peerless, will confirm the hope you have extended to me?”
“The daughter of an Italian is brought up to consider that it is a father’s right to dispose of her hand.”
“But the heart?”
“Cospetto!” said the Italian, true to his infamous notions as to the sex, “the heart of a girl is like a convent,—the holier the cloister, the more charitable the door.”