“Yes,” the girl answered, nestling closer to Armando, “but—but not yours.”
The priest, looking out of the window, shook his sides.
“You must be his!” said Carolina, catching hold of her arm and striving to drag her away from Armando.
“She shall not!” cried the sculptor, placing an arm about Marianna, authority in his eye and voice. “Take off your hand. No one else shall have her.”
“Bravo!” exclaimed Signor Di Bello. “Let the pigs squeal. I am not a man to marry a girl against her will.”
Carolina’s colour ran the scale of red and white, her fingers writhed, and her eyes set upon Armando’s curling hair. She saw the curtain ringing down on her self-serving drama, and the cherished dénouement left out. In her fury she would have tested the roots of the sculptor’s locks, but the priest stepped between them, and raised his hand.
“Signorina,” he said, his voice a distinct note of calm above the storm below, “if you sincerely desire to save your brother from the contempt of his neighbours it may be done better by the union of these young hearts than by tearing them asunder. Let us consider. You speak of the merry jest.” Here the good man’s eyes twinkled his zest in the wholesome trick to be played. “Would it not be a greater joke if the people found that they had betrothed not alone the wrong bride, but the wrong groom as well; in fact, had come to the marriage of one couple only to find another walk into the parlour with the priest?”
For a moment no one caught his meaning. Then he went on, with equal countenance: “What I mean is that you silence the tongue of scandal by having a wedding at once, with this pair of turtle-doves as the bride and groom.”
“Bravo!” Signor Di Bello whooped, grasping the priest’s hand. “Indeed a famous joke. I will tell them that it was all fun about my getting married; that it was to be my foster niece and her sweetheart all the time. Ah, the side-splitting joke!”
“Come, then,” said the priest, without waiting for Carolina’s approval; and the joyous Armando and Marianna, with Signor Di Bello last in the procession, followed him to the parlour.