"So you thought me cowardly and vain; you thought me capable of giving my love to a man and accepting his, without giving him at the same time my whole life. You thought that I would stay with you so long as the wind held fair, and that I would go away as soon as it became adverse. How can you have thought so? For you are a steadfast, loyal man, and I am sure that you would not start upon any serious course of action until you had determined to go on with it to the end. Why, then, do you insist that I cannot do what you do, and why have you not the same good opinion of me that I have of you? Either you must have great contempt for women, or you have allowed yourself to be sadly misled by my levity. I am often foolish; I know that; but perhaps that may be to some extent the fault of my age, and it does not prevent my being steadfast and loyal. On the day that I realized that I loved you, Lelio, I determined to marry you. That surprises you. You remember not only the thoughts that I must have had in my position, but also my past words and acts. You think of all the patricians I have refused to marry because they were not noble enough. Alas! my dear friend, I am the slave of my public, just as you sometimes complain of being of yours, and I am obliged to play my rôle before it until I find an opportunity to escape from the stage. But I have kept my heart free under my mask, and, since I have been able to reason, I have determined that I would not marry except in accordance with the dictates of my heart. But I had to have some excuse for dismissing all those insipid and impertinent patricians to whom you refer. I found it in the prejudices common to my suitors and my family, and, wounding the pride of the former and flattering the pride of the latter at the same time, I took advantage of the antiquity of my blood to refuse the hand of men who, noble as they were, were still, I said, not noble enough for me. In this way I succeeded in getting rid of all my troublesome suitors without displeasing my family; for although they called my refusals childish whims, and offered my rejected followers apologies for my exaggerated pride of birth, they were none the less enchanted with it in the depths of their hearts. For some little time I enjoyed greater freedom by virtue of this conduct. But at last my stepfather, Prince Grimani, told me that it was time to make up my mind, and presented his nephew, Count Ettore, as the husband he had in mind for me. This new pretender was as unattractive to me as his predecessor--even more so perhaps; for his excessive imbecility soon led me to despise him altogether. The prince, seeing this, and thinking that my mother, who is a dear soul and loves me with all her heart, might aid and abet me in my resistance to his will, determined to part me from her in order to force me more easily to obey him. He sent me here to live with no one but his sister and nephew. He hopes that, being compelled to