The rest of them, when I began to
play my cards a little too openly, behaved with brutal rudeness
to me. Father Rocco, from first to last, treated me like a lady.
Sincere or not, I don't care--he treated me like a lady when the
others treated me like--"
"There! there! don't get hot about it now. Tell me instead how
you made your first approaches to the young gentleman whom you
talk of so contemptuously as Fabio."
"As it turned out, in the worst possible way. First, of course, I
made sure of interesting him in me by telling him that I had
known Nanina. So far it was all well enough. My next object was
to persuade him that she could never have gone away if she had
truly loved him alone; and that he must have had some fortunate
rival in her own rank of life, to whom she had sacrificed him,
after gratifying her vanity for a time by bringing a young
nobleman to her feet. I had, as you will easily imagine,
difficulty enough in making him take this view of Nanina's
flight. His pride and his love for the girl were both concerned
in refusing to admit the truth of my suggestion. At last I
succeeded. I brought him to that state of ruffled vanity and
fretful self-assertion in which it is easiest to work on a man's
feelings--in which a man's own wounded pride makes the best
pitfall to catch him in. I brought him, I say, to that state, and
then _she_ stepped in and profited by what I had done.
Pages:
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441