forced to be content with having impressed upon her father's mind both
her love for Luigi and the idea of an approaching marriage.

The next day she said no more about her love; she was more caressing
to her father than she had ever been, and testified the utmost
gratitude, as if to thank him for the consent he seemed to have given
by his silence. That evening she sang and played to him for a long
time, exclaiming now and then: "We want a man's voice for this
nocturne." Ginevra was an Italian, and that says all.

At the end of a week her mother signed to her. She went; and Elisa
Piombo whispered in her ear:--

"I have persuaded your father to receive him."

"Oh! mother, how happy you have made me!"

That day Ginevra had the joy of coming home on the arm of her Luigi.
The officer came out of his hiding-place for the second time only. The
earnest appeals which Ginevra made to the Duc de Feltre, then minister
of war, had been crowned with complete success. Luigi's name was
replaced upon the roll of officers awaiting orders. This was the first
great step toward better things. Warned by Ginevra of the difficulties
he would encounter with her father, the young man dared not express
his fear of finding it impossible to please the old man. Courageous
under adversity, brave on a battlefield, he trembled at the thought of
entering Piombo's salon. Ginevra felt him tremble, and this emotion,
the source of which lay in her, was, to her eyes, another proof of
love.