"Pardon me," replied the youth. "Mondolfo is in no danger; you, my lord, are fully able to support and even to augment its present dignity."
"You do not understand. Mondolfo has no support but you. I am old, I feel my age, and these gray hairs announce it to me too glaringly. There is no collateral branch, and my hope must rest in your children—"
"My children, my lord!" replied Ludovico. "I have only one; and if the poor little boy—"
"What folly is this?" cried Fernando, impatiently. "I speak of your marriage and not—"
"My lord, my wife is ever ready to pay her duteous respects to you—"
"Your wife, Ludovico! But you speak without thought. How? Who?"
"The violet-girl, my lord."
A tempest had crossed the countenance of Fernando. That his son, unknown to him, should have made an unworthy alliance, convulsed every fiber of his frame, and the lowering of his brows and his impatient gesture told the intolerable anguish of such a thought. The last words of Ludovico restored him. It was not his wife that he thus named—he felt assured that it was not. He smiled somewhat gloomily, still it was a smile of satisfaction.
"Yes," he replied, "I understand; but you task my patience—you should not trifle with such a subject or with me. I talk of your marriage. Now that Olympio is dead, and you are, in his place, heir of Mondolfo, you may, in his stead, conclude the advantageous, nay, even princely, alliance I was forming for him."
Ludovico replied with earnestness: