By this time the Count of San Miniato would be cold, and he, Ruggiero, would be handcuffed and locked up in the little barrack of the gendarmes at Sorrento, and Beatrice with her mother would be recovering from their fright as best they could in the rooms at the hotel, and Teresina would be crying, and Bastianello would be sitting at the door of his brother's prison waiting to see what happened and ready to do what he could.

Truly all this would have been much better! But the moment had passed and he must lie on his rock in silence, bound hand and foot by the necessity of hiding himself, and giving his heart to be torn to pieces by San Miniato's aristocratic fine gentleman's hands, and burned through and through by Beatrice's gentle words.
"And so you really love me ?" said San Miniato, sure at last of his victory.
"Do you doubt it, after what I have done ?" asked Beatrice in a very soft voice.

"Did I not leave my hand in yours when you took it so roughly and--you know---" "When I kissed it--but I want the words, too--only once, from your beautiful lips---" "The words---" Beatrice hesitated.

They were too new to her lips, and a soft blush rose in her cheeks, visible even in the moonlight.
Ruggiero's heart stood still--not for the first time that day.

Would she speak the three syllables or not?
As for San Miniato, his excitement had cooled, and he threw all the tenderness he could muster into, his last request, with instinctive tact returning to the more quiet tone he had used at the beginning of the conversation.
"I ask you, Beatrice mia, to say--" he paused, to give the proper effect in the right place--"I love you," he said, completing the sentence very musically and looking up most tenderly into her eyes.
She sighed, blushed again, and turned her head away.