Now here in Luisina I had imagined at first that I had discovered a phase of womanhood unsuspected and exceptional.

She was driving me to conclude, however, that I had been mistaken, and that here was just a pretty husk containing a very trivial spirit, whose companionship must prove a dull affair when custom should have staled the first impression of her fresh young beauty.
It is plain now that I did her an injustice, for there was about her words none of the inconsequence I imagined.

The fault was in myself and in the profound ignorance of the ways of men and women which went hand in hand with my deep but ineffectual learning in the ways of saints.
Our entertainment, however, was not destined to go further.

For at the moment in which I puzzled over her words and sought to attach to them some intelligent meaning, there broke from behind us a scream that flung us apart, as startled as if we had been conscious indeed of guilt.
We looked round to find that it had been uttered by my mother.

Not ten yards away she stood, a tall black figure against the grey background of the lichened wall, with Giojoso in attendance and Rinolfo slinking behind his father, leering..