But Guidobaldo scoffed at his qualms.
"Do you account my niece a peasant girl ?" he asked.

"Would you have her smirk and squirm at every piece of flattery you utter?
So that she weds your Highness what shall the rest signify ?" "I would she loved me a little," complained Gian Maria foolishly.
Guidobaldo looked him over with an eye that smiled inscrutably, and it may have crossed his mind that this coarse, white-faced Duke was too ambitious.
"I doubt not that she will," he answered, in tones as inscrutable as his glance.

"So that you woo with grace and ardour, what woman could withstand your Highness?
Be not put off by such modesty as becomes a maid." Those words of Guidobaldo's breathed new courage into him.

Nor ever after could he think that her coldness was other than a cloak, a sort of maidenly garment behind which modesty bade her conceal the inclinations of her heart.

Reasoning thus, and having in support of it his wondrous fatuity, it so befell that the more she shunned and avoided him, the more did he gather conviction of the intensity of her affection; the more loathing she betrayed, the more proof did it afford him of the consuming quality of her passion.