Signor Di Bello grasped the other end of the straw. “Ah, yes; prove it,” he roared, while Carolina smiled snugly, for she had looked to it that the properties for this scene were not lacking. “You want proof?” asked Bertino. “Well, it is here.” He drew a marriage certificate from his pocket. Signor Di Bello seized the document and cast his eye over it. The disorder below had redoubled, and with the noisy demands for the bride and groom were mingled derisive shouts of “Long live the Genovese bachelor!” and “Another fiasco!” “Soul of the moon! It is true!” breathed Di Bello, crunching the paper in style theatrical. “Bah!” returned Juno, moving near to him and putting her hand on his arm. “You believe that?” “Believe me, then, signori,” spoke up a strange voice, in grammatical but English-bred Italian. It was the priest from over the border of Mulberry, who had come upstairs to learn the reason of the delay and heard the last few lines of the dialogue--the priest whom Signor Di Bello had engaged because he would not meddle. Turning to Juno he continued: “I had the honour, signora, of marrying you to this man.” “_Padre!_” exclaimed Bertino, who knew him at once for the clergyman he had sought out so hurriedly at the rectory in Second Avenue that day when, to outwit his uncle--black the hour!--he had taken Juno to wife. “I know him not,” said Juno, turning to Signor Di Bello, who had dropped into a chair. But her game of bluff was lost. “Go!” the grocer said to her, pointing to the door. She moved to the threshold, turned about, spat into the room, and said, “May you all die cross-eyed!”--a Neapolitan figure that means “Be hanged to you!” since the gallows bird squints when the noose tightens. Then she rustled downstairs, mindful of her purple skirts. Bertino would have been at her heels but for Carolina, who caught his arm. “Wait,” she whispered. “This is not the time or place.” “No matter!” he cried, shaking off her hold. “She shall pay, she shall pay!” The sight of Juno’s yellow boots on the staircase served to quiet the troubled parlour for a brief moment, the people thinking that the bride and groom were coming at last. But she had seen the stiletto in her husband’s eye, and was out of the door, into the waiting coupé, and driving off at high speed before the first families had wholly grasped the scandalous fact. Next moment there was another flying exit, and Bertino went tearing after the carriage. This was the signal for unheard-of insults to Casa Di Bello. The men set up a sirocco of hisses, and the women shouted mock bravoes for the twice-brideless groom. During the uproar Alessandro the Macaroni Presser led a push-and-grab attack on a side table heaped with the kaleidoscopic dainties with which Mulberry loves to tickle its eye as well as its gullet. “_Dio tremendo!_” whimpered Signor Di Bello, the tumult downstairs assailing his ears. “What a disgrace! what a disgrace!”