Vittoria raised her face.  ‘Do you mean that I am your prisoner?’

‘You did not look braver at La Scala’; the captain bowed to her.

‘Ah, I forgot,’ said she; ’you saw me there.  If, signore, you will do me the favour to conduct me to the nearest inn, I will sing to you.’

’It is precisely my desire, signorina.

You are not married to that man Guidascarpi, I presume?  No, no:  you are merely his . . . friend.  May I have the felicity of hearing you call me your friend?  Why, you tremble! are you afraid of me?’

‘To tell the truth, you talk too much to please me,’ said Vittoria.

The captain praised her frankness, and he liked it.  The trembling of her frame still fascinated his eyes, but her courage and the absence of all womanly play and cowering about her manner impressed him seriously.  He stood looking at her, biting his moustache, and trying to provoke her to smile.

‘Conduct you to the nearest inn; yes,’ he said, as if musing.  ’To the nearest inn, where you will sing to me; sing to me.  It is not an objectionable scheme.  The inns will not be choice:  but the society will be exquisite.  Say first, I am your sworn cavalier?’

‘It does not become me to say that,’ she replied, feigning a demure sincerity, on the verge of her patience.

‘You allow me to say it?’

She gave him a look of fire and passed him; whereat, following her, he clapped hands, and affected to regard the movement as part of an operatic scena.  ‘It is now time to draw your dagger,’ he said.  ’You have one, I’m certain.’

‘Anything but touch me!’ cried Vittoria, turning on him.  ’I know that I am safe.  You shall teaze me, if it amuses you.’

‘Am I not, now, the object of your detestation?’

‘You are near being so.’

‘You see!  You put on no disguise; why should I?’

This remark struck her with force.

‘My temper is foolish,’ she said softly.  ’I have always been used to kindness.’

He vowed that she had no comprehension of kindness; otherwise would she continue defiant of him?  She denied that she was defiant:  upon which he accused the hand in her bosom of clutching a dagger.  She cast the dagger at his feet.  It was nobly done, and he was not insensible to the courage and inspiration of the act; for it checked a little example of a trial of strength that he had thought of exhibiting to an armed damsel.

‘Shall I pick it up for you?’ he said.

‘You will oblige me,’ was her answer; but she could not control a convulsion of her underlip that her defensive instinct told her was best hidden.

‘Of course, you know you are safe,’ he repeated her previous words, while examining the silver handle of the dagger.  ’Safe? certainly!  Here is C. A. to V. . . .  A. neatly engraved:  a gift; so that the young gentleman may be sure the young lady will defend herself from lions and tigers and wild boars, if ever she goes through forests and over mountain passes.  I will not obtrude my curiosity, but who is V . . . .  A. ?’