“No,” said she.
“Yes,” said he. “I refer you to my sponsors in baptism. A regular, true blue moderate High Churchman and Tory, British and Protestant to the backbone, with 'Frustrate their Popish tricks' writ large all over me. You have never by any chance married a Protestant yourself?” he asked.
“No, Signorino. I have never married any one. But it was not for the lack of occasions. Twenty, thirty young men courted me when I was a girl. But—mica!—I would not look at them. When men are young they are too unsteady for husbands; when they are old they have the rheumatism.”
“Admirably philosophised,” he approved. “But it sometimes happens that men are neither young nor old. There are men of thirty-five—I have even heard that there are men of forty. What of them?”
“There is a proverb, Signorino, which says, Sposi di quarant' anni son mai sempre tiranni,” she informed him.
“For the matter of that,” he retorted, “there is a proverb which says, Love laughs at locksmiths.”
“Non capisco,” said Marietta.
“That's merely because it's English,” said he. “You'd understand fast enough if I should put it in Italian. But I only quoted it to show the futility of proverbs. Laugh at locksmiths, indeed! Why, it can't even laugh at such an insignificant detail as a Papist's prejudices. But I wish I were a duke and a millionaire. Do you know any one who could create me a duke and endow me with a million?”
“No, Signorino,” she answered, shaking her head.
“Fragrant Cytherea, foam-born Venus, deathless Aphrodite, cannot, goddess though she is,” he complained. “The fact is, I 'm feeling rather undone. I think I will ask you to bring me a bottle of Asti-spumante—some of the dry kind, with the white seal. I 'll try to pretend that it's champagne. To tell or not to tell—that is the question.