"So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of kin."
"Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!"
"I didn't say anything against the Baron, did I?"
"You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I'm tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own right."
"Only for this exile I shouldn't have been here at all, auntie, and somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me."
The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and said:
"What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten the baker's shop in London—or was it a pastry cook's, or what?—where they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given you away?"
"Don't speak so loud, Aunt Betsy."
"Then don't worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches! Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!"
"I'm not defending my father, but still...."