“I have heard some such talk,” I answered, rousing myself at last; “and they say that it is the Lord Giovanni who would prove worthy of your hand.”
“They say rightly, then,” she acknowledged. “The Lord Giovanni it is.”
Again there was a silence, and again it was she who broke it.
“Well, Lazzaro?” she asked. “Have you naught to say?”
“What would you have me say, Madonna? If this wedding accords with your own wishes, then am I glad.”
“Lazzaro, Lazzaro! you know that it does not.”
“How should I know it, Madonna?”
“Because your wits are shrewd, and because you know me. Think you this petty tyrant is such a man as I should find it in my heart to conceive affection for? Grateful to him am I for the shelter he has afforded us here; but my love—that is a thing I keep, or fain would keep, for some very different man. When I love, I think it will be a valorous knight, a gentleman of lofty mind, of noble virtues and ready address.”
“An excellent principle on which to go in quest of a husband, Madonna mia. But where in this degenerate world do you look to find him?”
“Are there, then, no such men?”