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.

“You meant that we could not always be together yet, he and I. You are right.  What is to be done?  I cannot afford a nurse, and Perfetta is too rough.  When he was ill I dare not let her touch him.  When he has to be washed, which happens now and then, who does it?  I. I feed him, or settle what he shall have.  I sleep with him and comfort him when he is unhappy in the night.  No one talks, no one may sing to him but I. Do not be unfair this time; I like to do these things.  But nevertheless (his voice became pathetic) they take up a great deal of time, and are not all suitable for a young man.”