I hope she is not a beauty."
"_Per Bacco_, how you do talk!" interrupted the prince. "I have no
chance to answer. Miss Randolph is not a beauty; but she is
_simpatica_; she has an air, a _chic_."
"So much the better, so long as the _chic_ is one of appearance and not
of personality. I don't want my wife to be a siren." Suddenly he laughed
and hit his brother's knee. "But what nonsense! Imagine a cold American
miss having the power to make a man's pulses leap! Oh, don't make a face
like that--I am not speaking of my honored sister-in-law; she is indeed
of the true type of our mother." Mechanically both men indicated the
sign of the cross at the word "mother."
"But," continued Giovanni, "I am not exactly worthy of a saint--it would
not suit my disposition. It is bad enough associating always with good
Brother Antonio as it is. By the way, where is he?"
He gave a shrill whistle and looked back down the road for the gray
figure of his inseparable friend and companion: not a monk as the name
indicated, but a Great Dane. A distant cloud of dust proclaimed that the
whistle had been heard. "Poor Sant Antonio!" he called as soon as the
dog had caught up, "Where have you been? I suppose you were meditating
along life's highway. No," he continued, "it were best I did not pretend
to be better than I am; my good monk would not absolve me else.
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