"I am a little nervous, I fancy.

What is it that has happened ?" Marcello glanced at her doubtfully before he answered.

Her quick interest in whatever chanced to him took him back to the old times in an instant.

The place was familiar and quiet; her voice was like forgotten music, once delightful, and now suddenly recalled; her face had only changed to grow more womanly.
"You never thought of marrying Folco, did you ?" he asked, all at once, and a little surprised at the sound of his own words.
"I ?" Aurora started again, but not with anxiety.

"How can you think such a thing ?" "I don't think it; but an hour ago, at the villa, he told me in almost so many words that you loved him and meant to accept him." A blush of honest anger rose in the girl's fair face, and subsided instantly.
"And what did you say ?" she asked, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in her tone.
"I turned him out of the house," Marcello answered quietly.
"Turned him out ?" Aurora seemed amazed.