"And this is your maiden voyage of discovery!" He was looking down at her as he swept her about a corner. "Rash young person! Don't you know what happened to your kinsman, Our First Discoverer?"
"But what?"
"He was loaded with fetters," said Barry solemnly.
"Fetters? But what fetters could I fear?"
"Have you never heard," he demanded of her upraised eyes, "of the fetters of matrimony?"
"Oh, Signor!" Actually the color swept into her cheeks and her eyes fled from his, though she laughed lightly. "That is a golden fetter."
"Sometimes," said he, dryly, "or gilded."
But Maria Angelina was pursuing his jest. "It was not until Columbus returned to his Europe that he was fettered. It was not from the—the natives that he had such ill-treatment to fear."
"Now, do you think the—the natives"—gayly Barry mimicked her quaint inflection—"will let you get away with that? Or let you return? . . . You have a great many discoveries before you, Signorina Santonini!"
Deftly he circled, smiling down into her upturned face.