She said the words tenderly, banter as they were, in their own native dialect: and Beppo saw at once that she was really in earnest.
'But next Sunday,' he exclaimed. 'Next Sunday, my little one! And the preparations?'
'I am rich!' Cecca answered calmly. 'I bring you a dower. I am the most favourite model in all Rome this very moment.'
'And the Englishman—the Englishman? What are you going to do with the Englishman?'
'The Englishman may marry his sweetheart if he will,' the girl replied with dogged carelessness.
'Cecca! you did not give the.... medicine to the Englishman?'
Cecca drew the half-empty bottle from her pocket and dashed it savagely against the small paving-stones in the alley underfoot. 'There,' she cried, eagerly, as she watched it shiver into little fragments. 'See the medicine! That is the end of it.'
'And the cat, Cecca?'
Cecca drew a long breath. 'How much of it would hurt a human being—a woman?' she asked anxiously. 'Somebody has drunk a little by mistake—just so much!' And she measured the quantity approximately with the tip of her nail upon her little finger.
Giuseppe shook his head re-assuringly, shrugged his shoulders, and opened his hands, palms outward, as if to show he was evidently making no mental reservation. 'Harmless!' he said. Quite harmless. It would take a quarter of a phial at least to produce any effect worth speaking of.'