"Is that your daughter, signore?"

Perez de Lagounia (such was the merchant's name) had large commercial
relations with Genoa, Florence, and Livorno; he knew Italian, and
replied in the same language:--

"No; if she were my daughter I should take less precautions. The child
is confided to our care, and I would rather die than see any evil
happen to her. But how is it possible to put sense into a girl of
eighteen?"

"She is very handsome," said Montefiore, coldly, not looking at her
face again.

"Her mother's beauty is celebrated," replied the merchant, briefly.

They continued to smoke, watching each other. Though Montefiore
compelled himself not to give the slightest look which might
contradict his apparent coldness, he could not refrain, at a moment
when Perez turned his head to expectorate, from casting a rapid glance
at the young girl, whose sparkling eyes met his. Then, with that
science of vision which gives to a libertine, as it does to a
sculptor, the fatal power of disrobing, if we may so express it, a
woman, and divining her shape by inductions both rapid and sagacious,
he beheld one of those masterpieces of Nature whose creation appears
to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here was a fair
young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre
which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate pride,
like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,