What more would you have ?" "It is monstrous!" cried the Prince, advancing again.

"It is the most abominable lie ever concocted! My son married without my knowledge, and to a peasant! Absurd!" But Giovanni waved his father back, and kept his place before Donna Tullia.
"I give you the alternative of producing instantly those proofs you refer to," he said, "and which you certainly cannot produce, or of waiting in this house until a competent physician has decided whether you are sufficiently sane to be allowed to go home alone." Donna Tullia hesitated.

She was in a terrible position, for Del Ferice had left Rome suddenly, and though the papers were somewhere in his house, she knew not where, nor how to get at them.

It was impossible to imagine a situation more desperate, and she felt it as she looked round and saw the pale dark faces of the three resolute persons whose anger she had thus roused.

She believed that Giovanni was capable of anything, but she was astonished at his extraordinary calmness.