“Listen, dear signora. I came here hoping to gain your consent to address myself to the signorina Beatrice. My father loves me, he is rich, he consents. I find her tied to this man. Imagine, if you can, my despair. But now I shall hope again, with your permission, I shall have every hope.”
“Oh, you have my permission,” said Mrs Masters, slowly. “But if she will not—”
“Do you think she will not? Do not say so, I implore you!”
“She is incomprehensible,” said her mother, with a sigh. “And then, perhaps, I shall have all this scene with the money over again—”
Moroni stared at her, grew pale and drew himself up with a grand air they had never seen in him.
“Signora, I am one of the Moroni,” he said proudly, “and I have asked two favours at your hands.”
She looked at him in wonder. Was this Bice’s boy-admirer, at whom they had sometimes laughed? It touched and shamed her.
“You are very good, my Giovanni; very good,” she said. “I hope poor Bice will have the blessing of so good a husband, if she really has made up her mind not to marry Oliver. Poor Bice! Perhaps she has thought too much of me and of others—and as for this you wish to do, I cannot thank you enough—”
“Say no more,” said the young man, radiant, and seizing her hand again in his fervour. “You have granted me permission, now I shall go to work very carefully. But you will never let her know of the favour you have given me, she would think it too presumptuous. Within an hour the money shall be here. How kind you have been to me, dear signora!”
The secret was one which Mrs Masters determined to keep.