think I will go and offer it to him now. Do you think I should be
justified, Master Censor?"

"No," said I, coming forward and facing him. "But if you like you can
fight me. I am your own age, and a better match." I would have fought
him then and there, with the chairs, if he had liked.

"Why should I fight you?" he inquired, in some astonishment. "You
strike me as a very peaceable person indeed."

"Diavolo! do you expect me to stand quietly and hear you call my boy a
scoundrel? What do you take me for, signore? Do you know that I am the
last of the Conti Grandi, and as noble as any of you, and as fit to
fight, though my hair is gray?"

"I knew, indeed, that one member of that illustrious family survived
in Rome," he answered, gravely, "but I was not aware that you were he.
I am glad to make your acquaintance, and I sincerely wish that you
were the father of the young man who has married my daughter. If you
were, I would be ready to arrange matters." He looked at me
searchingly.

"Unfortunately, I am not any relation of his," I answered. "His father
and mother were peasants on my estate of Serveti, when it still was
mine. They died when he was a baby, and I took care of him and
educated him."

"Yes, he is well educated," reflected the count, "for I examined him
myself. Let us talk no more about fighting. You are quite sure that
the marriage is legal?"

"Quite certain. You can do nothing, and any attempt would be a useless
scandal. Besides, they are so happy, you do not know."

"So happy, are they? Do you think I am happy too?

"A man has every reason to be so, when his daughter marries an honest
man. It is a piece of good luck that does not happen often."

"Probably from the scarcity of daughters who are willing to drive
their fathers to distraction by their disobedience and contempt of
authority,'" he said, savagely.

"No,--from the scarcity of honest men," I said. "Nino is a very honest
man. You may go from one end of Italy to the other and not meet one
like him."

"I sincerely hope so," growled Lira. "Otherwise Italy would be as
wholly unredeemed and unredeemable as you pretend that some parts of
it are now. But I will tell you, Conte Grandi, you cannot walk across
the street, in my country, without meeting a dozen men who would
tremble at the idea of such depravity as an elopement."

"Our ideas of honesty differ, sir," I replied. "When a man loves a
woman, I consider it honest in him to act as thou