Ginevretta! mia bella Ginevra!"

And the father played with his daughter as though she were a child of
six. He amused himself by releasing the waving volume of her hair,
by dandling her on his knee; there was something of madness in these
expressions of his love. Presently his daughter scolded while kissing
him, and tried, by jesting, to obtain admission for Luigi; but her
father, also jesting, refused. She sulked, then returned to coax once
more, and sulked again, until, by the end of the evening, she was forced
to be content with having impressed upon her father's mind both her love
for Luigi and the idea of an approaching marriage.

The next day she said no more about her love; she was more caressing to
her father than she had ever been, and testified the utmost gratitude,
as if to thank him for the consent he seemed to have given by his
silence. That evening she sang and played to him for a long time,
exclaiming now and then: "We want a man's voice for this nocturne."
Ginevra was an Italian, and that says all.

At the end of a week her mother signed to her. She went; and Elisa
Piombo whispered in her ear:--

"I have persuaded your father to receive him."

"Oh! mother, how happy you have made me!"

That day Ginevra had the joy of coming home on the arm of her Luigi.
The officer came out of his hiding-place for the second time only. The
earnest appeals which Ginevra made to the Duc de Feltre, then minister
of war, had been crowned with complete success. Luigi's name was
replaced upon the roll of officers awaiting orders. This was the first
great step toward better things. Warned by Ginevra of the difficulties
he would encounter with her father, the young man dared not express his
fear of finding it impossible to please the old man. Courageous under
adversity, brave on a battlefield, he trembled at the thought of
entering Piombo's salon. Ginevra felt him tremble, and this emotion, the
source of which lay in her, was, to her eyes, another proof of love.

"How pale you are!" she said to him when they reached the door of the
house.

"Oh! Ginevra, if it concerned my life only!--"

Though Bartolomeo had been notified by his wife of the formal
presentation Ginevra was to make of her lover, he would not advance to
meet him, but remained seated in his usual arm-chair, and the sternness
of his brow was awful.

"Father," said Ginevra, "I bring you a person you will no doubt
be pleased to see,--a soldier who fought be