“Where would you go, Signora Lamporani?” he asked.

“Towards Lucerne,” replied Francesca in French.

“Good!” said Rodolphe to himself, “she is not startled by hearing me speak her name; she had, no doubt, foreseen that I should ask Gina —­she is so cunning.—­What is your quarrel with me?” he went on, going at last to sit down by her side, and asking her by a gesture to give him her hand, which she withdrew.  “You are cold and ceremonious; what, in colloquial language, we should call short.”

“It is true,” she replied with a smile.  “I am wrong.  It is not good manners; it is vulgar.  In French you would call it inartistic.  It is better to be frank than to harbor cold or hostile feelings towards a friend, and you have already proved yourself my friend.  Perhaps I have gone too far with you.  You must take me to be a very ordinary woman.”  —­Rodolphe made many signs of denial.—­“Yes,” said the bookseller’s wife, going on without noticing this pantomime, which, however, she plainly saw.  “I have detected that, and naturally I have reconsidered my conduct.  Well!  I will put an end to everything by a few words of deep truth.  Understand this, Rodolphe:  I feel in myself the strength to stifle a feeling if it were not in harmony with my ideas or anticipation of what true love is.  I could love—­as we can love in Italy, but I know my duty.  No intoxication can make me forget it.  Married without my consent to that poor old man, I might take advantage of the liberty he so generously gives me; but three years of married life imply acceptance of its laws.  Hence the most vehement passion would never make me utter, even involuntarily, a wish to find myself free.

“Emilio knows my character.  He knows that without my heart, which is my own, and which I might give away, I should never allow anyone to take my hand.  That is why I have just refused it to you.  I desire to be loved and waited for with fidelity, nobleness, ardor, while all I can give is infinite tenderness of which the expression may not overstep the boundary of the heart, the permitted neutral ground.  All this being thoroughly understood—­Oh!” she went on with a girlish gesture, “I will be as coquettish, as gay, as glad, as a child which knows nothing of the dangers of familiarity.”

This plain and frank declaration was made in a tone, an accent, and supported by a look which gave it the deepest stamp of truth.

“A Princess Colonna could not have spoken better,” said Rodolphe, smiling.

“Is that,” she answered with some haughtiness, “a reflection on the humbleness of my birth?  Must your love flaunt a coat-of-arms?  At Milan the noblest names are written over shop-doors:  Sforza, Canova, Visconti, Trivulzio, Ursini; there are Archintos apothecaries; but, believe me, though I keep a shop, I have the feelings of a duchess.”

“A reflection?  Nay, madame, I meant it for praise.”

“By a comparison?” she said archly.