“Give me the chance!”
He was guilty of this ardent piece of innocence though Violetta had pitched her voice in the key significant of a secret thing belonging to two memories that had not always flowed dividedly.
“Like a common coin?” she resumed.
“A heart with a king's head stamped on it like a common coin.”
He recollected the sentence. He had once, during the heat of his grief for Giacomo Piaveni, cast it in her teeth.
Violetta repeated it, as to herself, tonelessly; a method of making an old unkindness strike back on its author with effect.
“Did we part good friends? I forget,” she broke the silence.
“We meet, and we will be the best of friends,” said Ammiani.
“Tell your mother I am not three years older than her son,—I am thirty. Who will make me young again? Tell her, my Carlo, that the genius for intrigue, of which she accuses me, develops at a surprising rate. As regards my beauty,” the countess put a tooth of pearl on her soft under lip.
Ammiani assured her that he would find words of his own for her beauty.