“Caleb.”
“Caleb? Gemini! Caleb? Marry Caleb? But he’s so ugly! And he don’t wash himself too often, what’s more.”
“Bello non é ... ma che importa? La bellezza passa via.”
“Yes, I daresay beauty does pass away,” said Letizia indignantly. “But it had passed away from Caleb before ever he was born.”
“Che importa?”
“I daresay it don’t matter to you. But you aren’t being expected to marry him. Besides, you’ve had all the beaux you wanted. But I haven’t, and I won’t be fobbed off with Caleb. I just won’t be, and you may do what you will about it.”
“Basta!” Madame Oriano exclaimed. “Dissa talk is enough.”
“Basta yourself and be damned, mamma,” Letizia retorted. “I won’t marry Caleb. I’d sooner be kept by a handsome gentleman in a big clean cravat. I’d sooner live in a pretty house he’d give me and drive a crimson curricle on the Brighton Road like Cora Delaney.”
“It does not import two pennies what you wish, figlia mia. You willa marry Caleb.”
“But I’m not in love with him, the ugly clown!”