“Then I am not completely forgiven?”
“Oh yes, you are, Signor W-Will. You are already almost my best friend.”
“Who is the fortunate person?”
“You forget that I have a brother and an uncle,” she said, with a touch of dignity.
Will was relieved a little, and his relief was completed when she broke into a sweet soft smile, which he poetically compared to me (after his second glass of Madeira) to the moon on the Bay of Naples.
“Tell me, Donna Rusidda, what are to be the privileges of friendship?”
She looked at him with a concern which was to me more engaging than her archness. “Oh, Signor W-Will, you are not speaking as an Italian would speak, are you?”
“I would rather die,” he replied, with a respectfulness which must have gone straight to her heart, for she was so grateful, so frank.
“I mean the right of coming to me and speaking to me as you would to an English girl; of staying by me if we are left, instead of instantly quitting; of walking with me as you would with an English girl.”
“But your brother?”