"Dear me! How simple you make it seem!" acclaimed the Signora Pandolfi, reviving at his first words, like a tired horse when he sees the top of the hill.
"But if papa should try and force me to it—what then?" asked Lucia, who was not so easily satisfied.
"He cannot force you to it, my child—the law will not allow him to do so. I told you so last night"
"But the law is so far off—and he is so violent" answered the young girl.
"Never fear," said Don Paolo, reassuring her. "I will manage it all. These will be a struggle, perhaps; but I will make him see reason. He had been with his friends last night, and his mind was excited; he was not himself. He will have thought differently of it this morning;"
"On the contrary," put in the Signora Pandolfi, "he waked me up at daylight and gave me a quantity of money to go and buy Lucia's outfit. And he will come home at midday and ask to see the things I have brought, and so I thought perhaps we had better buy something just to show him—half a dozen handkerchiefs—something to make a figure, you understand?"
Don Paolo smiled, and Lucia looked sympathetically from him to her mother.
"I am afraid that half a dozen handkerchiefs would have a bad effect," said the priest. "Either he would see that you are not in earnest, and then he would be very angry, or else he would be deceived and would think that you were really buying the outfit. In that case you would have done harm. This thing must not go any further. The idea must be got out of his head as soon as possible."
"But if I do nothing at all before dinner he will be furious—he will cry out that we are all banded together against him—"
"So we are," said Don Paolo simply.