She looked at me with a tolerant smile.
"They are poor men," said she.

"Would you have them robed in velvet ?" "My quarrel is with their looks, Madonna, not their garments," I answered patiently.

She laughed lightly, carelessly; even, I thought, a trifle scornfully.
"You are very fanciful," said she, then added--"but if so be that you are afraid to trust yourself in their company, why then, sir, I need bring you no farther out of the road that you were following when first we met." Did the child think that some jealousy actuated me, and prompted me to inspire her with mistrust of my supplanters?
She angered me.

Yet now, more than ever was I resolved to journey with her.

Leave her at the mercy of those ruffians, whom in her ignorance she was mad enough to trust, I could not--not even had she whipped me.