"She's not like one, and yet she is. She has grown up in this country and breathed in its ideas and feelings till she even looks Italian. Her parents are the sort of Americans that fifty years of foreign countries wouldn't budge; but they began later. Still, it is because Brenda is American, after all, that cruelties are being committed. Her family have taken it for granted that one of them couldn't really be in love with an Italian, least of all that joke, a dapper and decorative Italian officer that a girl buys at a fixed price for her husband. And Brenda can't say to them: 'But I am. I am in love with just such a man. The happiness of my life depends upon your finding the vulgar sum of money with which to buy him for me.' Because of the American-ness all round, Brenda can't say that to them, and because she doesn't say it, they are in doubt, they only half apprehend, they don't understand. The one thing they are sure of is that to marry a foreigner is a mistake. And the one safe thing they see to do, when Brenda's face, combined with her entire reserve toward them, has begun to torment them seriously, is to send her away where, if the truth be that she mysteriously is 'interested in' an Italian, the change of scene may help to put him out of her head." "So that's why they're sending her home!" "There are no better or dearer people in the world, kind, true, just; but"--Gerald held in, and showed how much he hated to make any sort of reservation--"in this they have been to blame. They bring growing girls to Italy, where, such is their confidence in I don't know what quality supposed to be inherent and to produce immunity from love of Italian men, they never dream that there might happen to them an Italian son-in-law." He gave her a moment to realize how rash this was; then hurried, as if wishing to get through as quickly as possible with the disagreeable, if not disgraceful, task of criticizing his friends and of gossiping: