I do not mean now that everything is settled I would wish it undone.

Heaven forbid! But I would have stopped it then, for it is a most incongruous thing, a peasant boy making love to a countess.
Nino, however, has one great fault, and that is his reticence.

It is true, he never does anything he would not like me, or all the world, to know.

But I would like to know, all the same.

It is a habit I have fallen into, from having to watch that old woman, for fear she should be too extravagant.