g, I, who have always lived
according to my pleasure, you ask me to take in five minutes the
resolution to bind myself forever!"

"I ask you to decide what you wish to do," returned the Countess. "It is
very amusing to travel at one's pleasure. But when it is a question of
arranging one's life, this childishness is too absurd. I know of only one
way: to see one's aim and to march directly to it. Yours is very
clear--to get out of this dilemma. The way is not less clear; it is
marriage with a girl who has five millions dowry. Yes or no, will you
have her?.... Ah," said she, suddenly interrupting herself, "I shall not
have a moment to myself this morning, and I have an appointment at eleven
o'clock!".... She looked at the timepiece on her table, which indicated
twenty-five minutes past ten. She had heard the door open. The footman
was already before her and presented to her a card upon a salver. She
took the card, looked at it, frowned, glanced again at the clock, seemed
to hesitate, then: "Let him wait in the small salon, and say that I will
be there immediately," said she, and turning again toward Ardea: "You
think you have escaped. You have not. I do not give you permission to go
before I return. I shall return in fifteen minutes. Would you like some
newspapers? There are some. Books? There are some. Tobacco? This box is
filled with cigars.... In a quarter of an hour I shall be here and I will
have your reply. I wish it, do you hear? I wish it".... And on the
threshold with another smile, using that time a term of patois common in
Northern Italy and which is only a corruption of 'schiavo' or servant:
'Ciao Simpaticone.'

"What a woman!" said Peppino Ardea, when the door was closed upon the
Countess. "Yes, what a pity that five years ago in Venice I was not free!
Who knows? If I had dared, when she took me to my hotel in her gondola.
She was about to leave San Giobbe. She had not yet accepted Boleslas. She
would have advised--have directed me. I should have speculated on the
Bourse, as she did, with Hafner's counsel. But not in the quality of
son-in-law. I should not have been obliged to marry. And she would not
now have such bad tobacco.".... He was on the point of lighting one of
the Virginian cigarettes, a present from Maitland. He threw it away,
making a grimace with his air of a spoiled child, at the risk of
scorching the rug which lay upon the marble floor; and he passed into the
antechamber in order to fetch his