id Ginevra.

"You shall not marry him," cried the Corsican, his voice shaking the
window-panes.

"I shall marry him," replied Ginevra, tranquilly.

"Oh, God!" cried the mother, "how will this quarrel end? Santa Virgina!
place thyself between them!"

The baron, who had been striding up and down the room, now seated
himself; an icy sternness darkened his face; he looked fixedly at his
daughter, and said to her, in a gentle, weakened voice,--

"Ginevra, no! you will not marry him. Oh! say nothing more to-night--let
me think the contrary. Do you wish to see your father on his knees, his
white hairs prostrate before you? I supplicate you--"

"Ginevra Piombo does not pass her word and break it," she replied. "I am
your daughter."

"She is right," said the baroness. "We are sent into the world to
marry."

"Do you encourage her in disobedience?" said the baron to his wife, who,
terrified by the word, now changed to marble.

"Refusing to obey an unjust order is not disobedience," said Ginevra.

"No order can be unjust from the lips of your father, my daughter. Why
do you judge my action? The repugnance that I feel is counsel from on
high, sent, it may be, to protect you from some great evil."

"The only evil could be that he did not love me."

"Always _he_!"

"Yes, always," she answered. "He is my life, my good, my thought. Even
if I obeyed you he would be ever in my soul. To forbid me to marry him
is to make me hate you."

"You love us not!" cried Piombo.

"Oh!" said Ginevra, shaking her head.

"Well, then, forget him; be faithful to us. After we are gone--you
understand?"

"Father, do you wish me to long for your death?" cried Ginevra.

"I shall outlive you. Children who do not honor their parents die
early," said the father, driven to exasperation.

"All the more reason why I should marry and be happy," she replied.

This coolness and power of argument increased Piombo's trouble; the
blood rushed violently to his head, and his face turned purple. Ginevra
shuddered; she sprang like a bird on her father's knee, threw her arms
around his neck, and caressed his white hair, exclaiming, tenderly:--

"Oh, yes, yes, let me die first! I could never survive you, my father,
my kind father!"

"Oh! my Ginevra, my own Ginevra!" replied Piombo, whose anger melted
under this caress like snow beneath the rays of the sun.

"It was time you ceased," said the baroness, in a trembling voice.

"Poor mother!"

"Ah!