"Ha!" he scoffed, twisting his immense iron-grey moustaches with complacency. "I can't guess what prank you may be up to, but you are never starting for Venice in a ball-dress. You 're capable of a good deal, my dear, but you 're not capable of that."
"Oh, I 'm capable of anything and everything," Susanna answered, cheerfully ominous. "Besides," she plausibly admonished him, "you might do me the justice of supposing that I have changes aboard the _Fiorimondo_. My maid awaits me there with quite a dozen boxes. So--you see. Oh, and by the bye," she interjected, "Serafino also is coming with me. He'll act as courier--buy my tickets, register my luggage; and then, when we reach our ultimate destination, resume his white cap and apron. My ultimate destination, you must know," she said, with a lightness which, I think, on the face of it was spurious, "is a little village in England--a little village called Craford; and"--she smiled convincingly--"I hear that the cuisine is not to be depended upon in little English villages."
All the Commendatore's anxieties had revived. This time he frowned in grim earnest.
The word fell like an explosion; and there was the climax of horrified astonishment in those reverberating r's.
"I think you are mad," he said. "Or, if you are not mad, you are the slyest young miss in Christendom."
Susanna's eyes darkened, pathetic, wistful.
"Ah, don't be cross," she pleaded. "I 'm not mad, and I 'm not sly. But I 'm free and independent. What's the good of being free and independent," she largely argued, "if you can't do the things you want to? I 'm going to Craford to realise the aspiration of a lifetime. I 'm going to find out my cousin, and make his acquaintance, and see what he 's like. And then--well, if he 's nice, who knows what may happen? I planned it ever so long ago," she proclaimed, with an ingenuousness that was almost brazen, "and made all my preparations. Then I sat down and waited for the day when I should be free and independent."
Her eyes melted again, deprecating his censure, beseeching his indulgence, yet still, with a little glint of raillery, defying him to do his worst.
His hand sawed the air, his foot tapped the ground.
"Free and independent, free and independent," he fumed, in derision. "Fine words, fine words. And you made all your preparations beforehand, in secrecy; and you 're not sly? Misericordia di Dio!"