"There was no harm," replied Bianca. "I only wished her a good Christmas--"
"No harm--perhaps not!" returned Bettina; "but, signorina, I do not wish to find myself in the street, you understand--and it is I who would be blamed."
Bianca raised her head proudly. "You need not be afraid," she said. "I do not allow others to be blamed for what I do. As to the Signorina Rossano, I have made her acquaintance, and I mean to keep it. For the rest, it is not necessary to say when or how I made it. Come, Bettina, I hear footsteps."
"You will make the acquaintance of the other one, too," Bettina said to herself--"but who knows whether you will keep it? Mali!" and with a sharp shrug of the shoulders she walked by Bianca's side in silence until they reached Palazzo Acorari, where the porter, who was waiting for them at the entrance, let them through the gateway and lighted them up the dark staircase to the doors of the _piano nobile_.
"I tell you that it is a _pazzia_--a madness," said Giacinta Rossano. "The girl is a good girl, and I am sorry for her--shut up in this dreary house with a step-mother and a priest. But we are not of their world, and they are not of ours. The princess has made that very clear from the first."
"And what does it matter?" Silvio Rossano exclaimed, impetuously. "We are not princes, but neither are we beggars. Does not everybody know who my father is, Giacinta? And some day, perhaps, I shall make a name for myself, too--"
"Yes," she said, "I believe you will--I am sure you will, if--" And then she hesitated.
"If you do not make an imbecile of yourself first," his sister replied, dryly.
Silvio Rossano flung the newspaper he had been reading on to the floor, and his eyes flashed with anger. In a moment, however, the anger passed, and he laughed.
"All men are imbeciles once in their lives," he said, "and most men are imbeciles much more frequently--"
"Oh, with these last it does not matter," observed Giacinta, sapiently; "they do themselves no harm. But you--you are not of that sort, Silvio _mio_. So before making an imbecile of yourself, it will be better to be sure that it is worth the trouble. Besides, the thing is ridiculous. People do not fall in love at first sight, except in novels--and if they do, they can easily fall out of it again."