"How you talk, my dear! How rashly you talk! As though choosing a husband were like buying a new hat! And you, too, whom I always believed to be the most dutiful, the most obedient of my children! But your mother and I will reason with you, we will endeavour to put better thoughts into your heart."
Faustina glanced scornfully at her father and turned away, walking slowly in the direction of the window.
"It is of no use to waste your breath on me," she said presently. "I will marry Gouache or nobody."
"You—marry Gouache?" cried the princess, who entered at that moment, and heard the last words. Her voice expressed an amazement and horror fully equal to her husband's.
"Have you come to join the fray, mamma?" inquired Faustina, in English.
"Pray speak in a language I can understand," said Montevarchi who, in a whole lifetime, had never mastered a word of his wife's native tongue.
"Oh, Lotario!" exclaimed the princess. "What has the child been telling you?"
"Things that would make you tremble, my dear! She refuses to marry
Frangipani—"
"Refuses! But, Faustina, you do not know what you are doing! You are out of your mind!"
"And she talks wildly of marrying a certain Frenchman, a Monsieur
Gouache, I believe—is there such a man, my dear?"