"Dear me! How simple you make it seem!" acclaimed the Signora Pandolfi,
reviving at his first words, like a tired horse when he sees the top of
the hill.

"But if papa should try and force me to it--what then?" asked Lucia, who
was not so easily satisfied.

"He cannot force you to it, my child--the law will not allow him to do
so. I told you so last night"

"But the law is so far off--and he is so violent" answered the young
girl.

"Never fear," said Don Paolo, reassuring her. "I will manage it all.
These will be a struggle, perhaps; but I will make him see reason. He
had been with his friends last night, and his mind was excited; he was
not himself. He will have thought differently of it this morning;"

"On the contrary," put in the Signora Pandolfi, "he waked me up at
daylight and gave me a quantity of money to go and buy Lucia's outfit.
And he will come home at midday and ask to see the things I have
brought, and so I thought perhaps we had better buy something just to
show him--half a dozen handkerchiefs--something to make a figure, you
understand?"

Don Paolo smiled, and Lucia looked sympathetically from him to her
mother.

"I am afraid that half a dozen handkerchiefs would have a bad effect,"
said the priest. "Either he would see that you are not in earnest, and