“It is far too much trouble to deny anything, my dear child.  But all that may be quite true, and yet he may love you as sincerely as he can love any one.  I do not suppose you expect a man of his sense and education to roll himself at your feet and tear his hair and his clothes as they do on the stage.”

“A man need not do that to show that he is in earnest, and besides he—­”

“That is not the question,” interrupted the Marchesa.  “The real question concerns you much more than it affects him.  If you break your promise—­”

“There was no promise.”

“You told him that you loved him, and you admit it.  Under the circumstances that meant that you were willing to marry him.  It meant nothing else, as you know very well.”

“I never thought of it.”

“You must think of it now.  You know perfectly well that he wished to marry you and had my consent.  I have spoken to you several times about it and you refused to have him, saying that you meant to exercise your own free will.  You had an opportunity of exercising it last night.  You told him clearly that you loved him, and that could only mean that your opposition was gone and that you would marry him.  You know what you will be called now, if you refuse to keep your engagement.”

Beatrice grew slowly pale.  Her mother had, for once, a remarkably direct and clear way of putting the matter, and the young girl began to waver.  If her mother succeeded in proving to her that she had really bound herself, she would submit.  It is not easy to convey to the foreign mind generally the enormous importance which is attached in Italy to a distinct promise of marriage.  It indeed almost amounts, morally speaking, to marriage itself, and the breaking of it is looked upon socially almost as an act of infidelity to the marriage bond.  A young girl who refuses to keep her engagement is called a civetta—­an owlet—­probably because owlets are used as a decoy all over the country in snaring and shooting all small birds.  Be that as it may, the term is a bitter reproach, it sticks to her who has earned it and often ruins her whole life.  That is what the Marchesa meant when she told Beatrice that she knew what the world would call her, and the threat had weight.

The young girl rose from her seat and began to walk to and fro on the terrace, her head bent, her hands clasped together.  The Marchesa slowly puffed at her cigarette and watched her daughter with half-closed eyes.

“I never meant it so!” Beatrice exclaimed in low tones, and she repeated the words again and again, pausing now and then and looking fixedly at her mother.

“Dear child,” said the Marchesa, “what does it matter?  If it were not such an exertion to talk, I am sure I could make you see what a good match it is, and how glad you ought to be.”

“Glad!  Oh, mamma, you do not understand!  The degradation of it!”

“The degradation?  Where is there anything degrading in it?”