“You don’t consider yourself hard enough?”
“No.”
“Well, I think you are. You are like those rough, pointed rocks on the shore, and I am like the sea.... They throw me off and I come back.” “That is because, perhaps, when you get down to it, nothing makes any real difference to you.”
“Oh, bambino!” exclaimed Laura, taking Cæsar’s hand with affectionate irony. “You always have to be so cruel to your mamma.”
Cæsar burst into laughter, and kept Laura’s hand between both of his.
“The Englishman feels sad looking at us,” he said. “He doesn’t dream that I am your brother.”
“Open the door, I will tell him to come in.”
Cæsar did so, and Laura invited the young Englishman to enter.
“My brother Cæsar,” she said, introducing them, “Archibaldo Marchmont.”
They both bowed, and Marchmont said to Laura in French: