"Tell her that you can't go now, but that she may expect you in the spring."
"With you, papa?"
"With me, yes," Signor Odoardo answers mechanically.
Yet if, in the meantime, he engages himself to Signora Evelina, this visit to his mother-in-law will become rather an awkward business.
"There—I've finished!" Doretta cries with an air of triumph.
But the cry is succeeded by another, half of anguish, half of rage.
"What's the matter now?"
"A blot!"
"Let me see?…You little goose, what HAVE you done?…You've ruined the letter now!"
Doretta, having endeavored to remove the ink-spot by licking it, has torn the paper.