"Yes," said Veronica, smiling. "Does it seem so very terrible to you? I
live alone--and I am waited on only by women. I daresay that surprises
you, too."
"Alone?" The Duca had got his breath, and sat open-mouthed, holding his
tea-cup low between his knees, in both hands. "Alone! At your age! A
young girl! But the world--society? What will it think?"
"Unless it thinks as I do, I do not care to know," answered Veronica,
indifferently. "Let me give you some bread and butter, Duca."
"Bread and butter? No--no thank you--no--I--I am very much astonished! I
am stupefied! It is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of!"
"Of course everybody thinks that you have an elderly companion--" chimed
in the Duchessa.
"One of your Spanish relations," said the Duca, with anxious eyes.
"Surely, she was here--"
"And is away just now," suggested his wife. "That accounts for--"
"Not at all," said Veronica, almost laughing. "She never existed. I came
here alone, I live here alone, and I mean to live here alone as long as
I please. The world may say what it pleases. I shall be three-and-twenty
years of age on my next birthday. Ask Don Teodoro whether I am not able
to take care of myself--and of Muro, too, for that matter!"
"Who is Don Teodoro?" asked the Duchessa, nervously, and still
altogether horrified.
"The parish priest," said Veronica. "A very learned and charitable old
man. He dines with me every evening."
"Then," replied the Duchessa, with a beginning of relief, "then you, and
your good priest, and your woman, make a sort of--of what shall I say--a
sort of little religious community here? Is that it?"
"We are not irreligious," Veronica replied, still at the point of
laughter.
Pages:
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396