“Continue, caro mio, continue!” I said with some impatience. “If I can do anything in your absence, you have only to command me.”
He rose from his chair, and approaching the window where I sat in a half-reclining position, he drew a small chair opposite mine, and sitting down, laid one hand confidingly on my wrist.
“You can do much!” he replied, earnestly, “and I feel that I can thoroughly depend upon you. Watch over her! She will have no other protector, and she is so beautiful and careless! You can guard her—your age, your rank and position, the fact of your being an old friend of the family—all these things warrant your censorship and vigilance over her, and you can prevent any other man from intruding himself upon her notice—”
“If he does,” I exclaimed, starting up from my seat with a mock tragic air, “I will not rest till his body serves my sword as a sheath!”
And I laughed loudly, clapping him on the shoulder as I spoke. The words were the very same he had himself uttered when I had witnessed his interview with my wife in the avenue. He seemed to find something familiar in the phrase, for he looked confused and puzzled. Seeing this, I hastened to turn the current of his reflections. Stopping abruptly in my mirth, I assumed a serious gravity of demeanor, and said:
“Nay, nay! I see the subject is too sacred to be jested with—pardon my levity! I assure you, my good Ferrari, I will watch over the lady with the jealous scrutiny of a brother—an elderly brother too, and therefore one more likely to be a model of propriety. Though I frankly admit it is a task I am not specially fitted for, and one that is rather distasteful to me, still, I would do much to please you, and enable you to leave Naples with an easy mind. I promise you”—here I took his hand and shook it warmly—“that I will be worthy of your trust and true to it, with exactly the same fine loyalty and fidelity you yourself so nobly showed to your dead friend Fabio! History cannot furnish me with a better example!”
He started as if he had been stung, and every drop of blood receded from his face, leaving it almost livid. He turned his eyes in a kind of wondering doubt upon me, but I counterfeited an air of such good faith and frankness, that he checked some hasty utterance that rose to his lips, and mastering himself by a strong effort, said, briefly:
“I thank you! I know I can rely upon your honor.”
“You can!” I answered, decisively—“as positively as you rely upon your own!” Again he winced, as though whipped smartly by an invisible lash. Releasing his hand, I asked, in a tone of affected regret,
“And when must you leave us, carino?”