"What thoughts, pray?"
"I was thinking that perhaps it would have been better for me to die the other day."
"Die! How old are you, pray, that you should talk thus of dying?"
"Nineteen: but the age of unhappiness is a fit age for death."
"And what of your kindred, who would weep for you?" said Colombe, unconsciously eager for a glimpse into the past of this life, of which she had a confused feeling that the future would be involved with her own.
"I have no father or mother, and there is no one to weep for me save my master, Benvenuto."
"Poor orphan!"
"Yes, an orphan indeed! My father never loved me, and I lost my mother at ten years, just when I was beginning to understand her love and return it. My father—But what am I saying, and what are my father and my mother to you?"
"Oh, yes! Go on, Ascanio."
"Saints in heaven! you remember my name!"