sometimes, but they shall not come here to beg.
That would be too much. I had enough of those I knew. I am willing to
feed anything that needs food except vultures. I have chosen to live
alone, and alone I will live. The world may scream itself mad and crack
with horror at my doings, if it is so sensitive. It cannot hurt me, and
if I choose to shut my gates, it cannot get in. Besides, they are
coming, the Duca, the Duchessa, and Don Gianluca, and that ends the
matter."

"Nevertheless--" began Don Teodoro, still obstinately unwilling to
retract his word.

"Dear friend," interrupted Veronica, with sudden gentleness, for she was
fond of him, "I like you very much. I respect you immensely. I could not
do half I am doing without you. But you do not quite understand me. I am
sorry that you should think me rash, if the idea of rashness is
unpleasant to you--I will make any other concession in reason rather
than quarrel with you. But please do not argue with me when I have made
up my mind. I am quite sure that I shall have my own way in the end,
and when the end comes, you will be very glad that you could not hinder
me, because I am altogether right. Now we understand each other, do we
not?"

Don Teodoro could not help smiling in a hopeless sort of way, and he
lifted his hands a moment, spreading out the palms as though to express
that he cleared his conscience of all possible responsibility. So they
parted good friends, without further words.

But when Veronica was alone, she began to realize that Don Teodoro was
not so altogether in the wrong as she believed herself to be in the
right. People might certainly be found whom she could not class with the
world she so frankly despised, and who would say that if Gianluca
recovered she should marry him, after extending such an invitation to
him and his people, and that, if she did not, she would deserve to be
called a heartless flirt--from their point of view. Gianluca's father
and mother might say so.

He himself, at least, must know her better than that, she thought. And
then, there was the terrible earnestness of Taquisara's letter, the
sober statement of his best friend, next to herself, and a statement
which it must have cost the man something to make, since it was
necessarily accompanied by an apology. After all, though he had
insulted her, she liked Taquisara for the whole-hearted way in which he
took Gianluca's part in everything. There was that statement, and she
fe