But I hoped for the opportunity of
having a few words of conversation before the hour named for our
little business with our good Signor Ercole. Permit me to assure
you, Signora, that if your servant had given me the least hint that
you were not yet--ready to see any visitor--"
"If only your Excellency will excuse--the fact is, I have so rarely
any visitors that the poor woman does not understand her duty in
such matters. Really I am so covered with confusion,"--she
continued, putting up her delicate little hand with a feeble sort of
little attempt to draw her dress a little more together across her
throat. "I cannot forgive her! She has exposed me to seem wanting in
respect towards your Excellency; I will dismiss her from my
service!"
"Let me intercede for her, poor woman!" said the Marchese, advancing
into the room; "indeed it was mainly my fault, I ought to have asked
if you were visible."
"One word from la sua Signoria is enough. If you can forgive me, I
must forgive her! But you will own, Signor Marchese, that it is--
what shall I say--?" She hesitated and cast her eyes down with a
bewitching smile and a little movement of her bead to one side,
"that it really is--embarrassing! Such a thing never happened to me
before!"
"But now it has happened, Signora," said the Marchese, emboldened by
the smile, and by a shy sidelong glance, which she shot from under
her eye-lashes with a laugh in her eyes, as she spoke; "now it has
happened that I have been permitted to see you in a toilet all the
more exquisitely charming in that it wants the formality of the
costume in which the world is wont to see you,--may I not say what I
came for the purpose of saying?"
"Will you be very discreet, Signor?" she said, putting a slender
rosy finger up to her smiling lips; "and never, never let it be
known to any human being, that I ever received you save in the
fullest of full dress, as would become me in receiving the honour of
a visit from your Excellency!"
"Not a syllable, not a whisper!" replied the Marchese, taking her
tone, and putting his own finger on his lips.
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