"Yes," said Veronica, smiling. "Does it seem so very terrible to you? I live alone—and I am waited on only by women. I daresay that surprises you, too."
"Alone?" The Duca had got his breath, and sat open-mouthed, holding his tea-cup low between his knees, in both hands. "Alone! At your age! A young girl! But the world—society? What will it think?"
"Unless it thinks as I do, I do not care to know," answered Veronica, indifferently. "Let me give you some bread and butter, Duca."
"Bread and butter? No—no thank you—no—I—I am very much astonished! I am stupefied! It is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of!"
"Of course everybody thinks that you have an elderly companion—" chimed in the Duchessa.
"One of your Spanish relations," said the Duca, with anxious eyes.
"Surely, she was here—"
"And is away just now," suggested his wife. "That accounts for—"
"Not at all," said Veronica, almost laughing. "She never existed. I came here alone, I live here alone, and I mean to live here alone as long as I please. The world may say what it pleases. I shall be three-and-twenty years of age on my next birthday. Ask Don Teodoro whether I am not able to take care of myself—and of Muro, too, for that matter!"
"Who is Don Teodoro?" asked the Duchessa, nervously, and still altogether horrified.
"The parish priest," said Veronica. "A very learned and charitable old man. He dines with me every evening."