possessing your native country of the weapon I had designed for it--I
am sure of the principle: some slight improvement, perhaps the use of
some different explosive, would get over that difficulty you
suggested," he said eagerly. "Yes, something can be done. God bless
you, my dear little son--I mean--perdoni!--my dear sir."...

"Wait--not so fast," said Ferris with a laugh, yet a little annoyed
that a question so purely tentative as his should have met at once such
a definite response. "Are you quite sure you can do what they want?" He
unfolded to him, as fully as he understood it, Mrs. Vervain's scheme.

Don Ippolito entered into it with perfect intelligence. He said that he
had already had charge of the education of a young girl of noble
family, and he could therefore the more confidently hope to be useful
to this American lady. A light of joyful hope shone in his dreamy eyes,
the whole man changed, he assumed the hospitable and caressing host. He
conducted Ferris back to his parlor, and making him sit upon the hard
sofa that was his hard bed by night, he summoned his servant, and bade
her serve them coffee. She closed her lips firmly, and waved her finger
before her face, to signify that there was no more coffee. Then he bade
her fetch it from the caffe: and he listened with a sort of rapt
inattention while Ferris again returned to the subject and explained
that he had approached him without first informing the ladies, and that
he must regard nothing as final. It was at this point that Don
Ippolito, who had understood so clearly what Mrs. Vervain wanted,
appeared a little slow to understand; and Ferris had a doubt whether it
was from subtlety or from simplicity that the priest seemed not to
comprehend the impulse on which he had acted. He finished his coffee in
this perplexity, and when he rose to go, Don Ippolito followed him down
to the street-door, and preserved him from a second encounter with the