“Nay, that will not be quite fair, Signor Marchese,” interrupted Violante, speaking very quietly.  “Can you honestly tell your uncle that you have made any very strenuous efforts in that direction?”

“But I thought, Signorina,” said Ludovico, hastily; I surely had reason to suppose that I should be speaking in support of your sentiments—­quite as much as—­

“Stay, Signor Marchese; excuse my interrupting you, but it is exactly on this point that I wished to talk with you.  Let us clearly understand each other.  It is, no doubt, quite true that if you and I had been left to ourselves, if no family-considerations had intervened to suggest other views, neither of us would have been led by our own inclinations,—­it is best to speak openly and frankly,—­ neither of us, I say, would have been led by our own inclinations to think more of the other than as an old and valued acquaintance.  This is the truth, is it not?”

“Nay, Signorina, can I say—­”

“It is not fair, you would say,” interrupted Violante again, “that I should force your gallantry to make so painful an avowal.  Nonsense!  Let us put aside all such trash:  the question is, not—­how we shall mutually make what the circumstances require us to say to each other agreeable to the self-love of either of us, and to silly rules of conventional gallantry, but there is a real question of fairness between us; and it is this:  how much should each of us expect that the other will contribute towards the difficult task of liberating both of us from engagements we neither of us wish to undertake.  You see, Signor Marchese, I have made up my mind to speak clearly; more clearly than I could, I think, have ventured to do, had I not the advantage of having had those conversations with my friend Paolina in the Cardinal’s chapel.”

“In what respect did it seem to you, that what I proposed saying to my uncle in the first instance, was unfair, Signorina?”

“In this it would be unfair.  To talk of your want of success in obtaining what you never sought to obtain, is simply to throw on me the burden and the blame of disappointing the wishes and plans of both our families.  I am ready to do my part; but it would be unreasonable to expect that it can be so active or so large a part as your own.  It will not be for you to let it be supposed that you are ready and willing to offer your hand to the Contessa Violante Marliani, trusting to my refusal to accept it in the teeth of the wishes of my family.  It is your duty to say openly and plainly that you cannot make the marriage proposed to you.  If I were in your place—­if I might venture to suggest, what I would myself counsel—­I should add, as a reason—­an additional reason—­that I had given my heart elsewhere.”

“But, Signora, you forget that the marriage between us was proposed before I ever saw or heard of Paolina,” said Ludovico, with a naivete that should certainly have satisfied his companion that he was no longer attempting to shape his discourse according to the rules of conventional gallantry.