"I tell you that it is a pazzia—a madness," said Giacinta Rossano. "The girl is a good girl, and I am sorry for her—shut up in this dreary house with a step-mother and a priest. But we are not of their world, and they are not of ours. The princess has made that very clear from the first."
"And what does it matter?" Silvio Rossano exclaimed, impetuously. "We are not princes, but neither are we beggars. Does not everybody know who my father is, Giacinta? And some day, perhaps, I shall make a name for myself, too—"
Giacinta glanced at her brother proudly.
"Yes," she said, "I believe you will—I am sure you will, if—" And then she hesitated.
"If what?" demanded Silvio.
"If you do not make an imbecile of yourself first," his sister replied, dryly.
Silvio Rossano flung the newspaper he had been reading on to the floor, and his eyes flashed with anger. In a moment, however, the anger passed, and he laughed.
"All men are imbeciles once in their lives," he said, "and most men are imbeciles much more frequently—"
"Oh, with these last it does not matter," observed Giacinta, sapiently; "they do themselves no harm. But you—you are not of that sort, Silvio mio. So before making an imbecile of yourself, it will be better to be sure that it is worth the trouble. Besides, the thing is ridiculous. People do not fall in love at first sight, except in novels—and if they do, they can easily fall out of it again."
"Not the other ones," said Silvio, briefly.