"Santo e santissimo! Si, si, the signorina is like Francesca, as two peaches side by side on the wall yonder; and she is like my daughter, my Tonia, my beloved, who died more than twenty years ago. But she is not dead to me—no, not to me. I see her face in my dreams. I hear her voice sometimes as I wake out of sleep, and then I look round, and call her, and she is not there; and I remember that I am an old man, and that she left me many, many years ago."
"You had a daughter called Antonia?"
"Si, signorina. It was her mother's name also. I called her Tonia. She was the handsomest girl between the two lakes. Everybody praised her, a good girl, as industrious as she was virtuous. A good and dutiful daughter till the Englishman stole her from us."
"Your Antonia married an Englishman?"
"Si, signorina! 'Twas thought a fine marriage for her. He wore a velvet coat, and he called himself a gentleman; but he was only a schoolmaster, and he came to Varenna in a coach and six with a young English milord."
"What was the tutor's name?"
"Non posso pronunziar' il suo nome. Tonton, Tonton, Guilliamo."
"Thornton! William Thornton?"
"Ecco!" cried the old man, nodding assent. "We had a dairy then, my wife and I," he continued, "and the young lord and his governor used to leave their boat and walk up the hill to get a drink of milk. They paid us handsomely, and we got to look for them every day, and they would stop and talk and laugh with my two girls. The governor could speak Italian almost like one of us; and the young milord was trying to learn; and they used all of them to laugh at his mistakes, and make a fool of him. Well, well, 'twas a merry time for us all."
"Did you consent to your daughter's marriage?"