"Then would you prefer me to be silent? Is that it? Don't torment me like this, Regina! In my opinion it would have been better to have this scene at home. Well, your jealousy is the last straw——"
Regina laughed. Her laugh was genuine but strident, hoarse, as if proceeding out of rusty iron.
"My dear, you are raving! Jealousy! Come, not that!"
"Why did you say you believed it?"
"Did I say so? Surely not."
"I tell you, you did say it."
"I said I believed people believed it."
"I don't think so," he protested. "Well, 'people' are always malicious."
"That, at any rate, is true. People are malicious. You see, our position has changed; we are living comfortably in spite of our slender income, so at once people hatch a scandal. The very excuse you make that you have become a speculator just now, when you might have been one all along——"
"That is absurd!" interrupted Antonio. "I was a bachelor before, and had more money than I knew what to do with. Besides, you are supposed to have money of your own. No one knows that I began speculating by a mere chance——"