"I cannot guess, Signor Carella. I am here on business."
"But try."
"I cannot; I hardly know you."
"But we are old friends," he said, "and your approval will be grateful to me. You gave it me once before. Will you give it now?"
"I have not come as a friend this time," she answered stiffly. "I am not likely, Signor Carella, to approve of anything you do."
"Oh, Signorina!" He laughed, as if he found her piquant and amusing. "Surely you approve of marriage?"
"Where there is love," said Miss Abbott, looking at him hard. His face had altered in the last year, but not for the worse, which was baffling.
"Where there is love," said he, politely echoing the English view. Then he smiled on her, expecting congratulations.
"Do I understand that you are proposing to marry again?"
He nodded.
"I forbid you, then!"
He looked puzzled, but took it for some foreign banter, and laughed.
"I forbid you!" repeated Miss Abbott, and all the indignation of her sex and her nationality went thrilling through the words.
"But why?" He jumped up, frowning. His voice was squeaky and petulant, like that of a child who is suddenly forbidden a toy.
"You have ruined one woman; I forbid you to ruin another. It is not a year since Lilia died. You pretended to me the other day that you loved her. It is a lie. You wanted her money. Has this woman money too?"
"Why, yes!" he said irritably. "A little."
"And I suppose you will say that you love her."
"I shall not say it. It will be untrue. Now my poor wife—" He stopped, seeing that the comparison would involve him in difficulties. And indeed he had often found Lilia as agreeable as any one else.
Miss Abbott was furious at this final insult to her dead acquaintance. She was glad that after all she could be so angry with the boy. She glowed and throbbed; her tongue moved nimbly. At the finish, if the real business of the day had been completed, she could have swept majestically from the house. But the baby still remained, asleep on a dirty rug.
Gino was thoughtful, and stood scratching his head. He respected Miss Abbott. He wished that she would respect him. "So you do not advise me?" he said dolefully. "But why should it be a failure?"
Miss Abbott tried to remember that he was really a child still—a child with the strength and the passions of a disreputable man. "How can it succeed," she said solemnly, "where there is no love?"
"But she does love me! I forgot to tell you that."
"Indeed."
"Passionately." He laid his hand upon his own heart.
"Then God help her!"
He stamped impatiently. "Whatever I say displeases you, Signorina. God help you, for you are most unfair. You say that I ill–treated my dear wife. It is not so. I have never ill–treated any one. You complain that there is no love in this marriage. I prove that there is, and you become still more angry. What do you want? Do you suppose she will not be contented? Glad enough she is to get me, and she will do her duty well."
"Her duty!" cried Miss Abbott, with all the bitterness of which she was capable.
"Why, of course. She knows why I am marrying her."
"To succeed where Lilia failed! To be your housekeeper, your slave, you—" The words she would like to have said were too violent for her.
"To look after the baby, certainly," said he.
"The baby—?" She had forgotten it.
"It is an English marriage," he said proudly. "I do not care about the money. I am having her for my son. Did you not understand that?"
"No," said Miss Abbott, utterly bewildered. Then, for a moment, she saw light. "It is not necessary, Signor Carella. Since you are tired of the baby—"
Ever after she remembered it to her credit that she saw her mistake at once. "I don’t mean that," she added quickly.
"I know," was his courteous response. "Ah, in a foreign language (and how perfectly you speak Italian) one is certain to make slips."
She looked at his face. It was apparently innocent of satire.
