'You waste it among the people who were the cause of his ruin!' her father retorted.
'You presume me to have returned it to the Government, possibly?'
'I charge you with tossing it to your so-called patriots.'
'Sir, if I have done that, I have done well.'
'Hear her!' cried the count to the attentive ceiling; and addressing her with an ironical 'madame,' he begged permission to inquire of her whether haply she might be the person in the pay of Revolutionists who was about to appear at La Scala, under the name of the Signorina Vittoria. 'For you are getting dramatic in your pose, my Laura,' he added, familiarizing the colder tone of his irony. 'You are beginning to stand easily in attitudes of defiance to your own father.'
'That I may practise how to provoke a paternal Government, you mean,' she rejoined, and was quite a match for him in dialectics.
The count chanced to allude further to the Signorina Vittoria.
'Do you know much of that lady?' she asked.
'As much as is known,' said he.
They looked at one another; the count thinking, 'I gave to this girl an excess of brains, in my folly!'