You told him clearly that you loved him, and that could only mean that your opposition was gone and that you would marry him.

You know what you will be called now, if you refuse to keep your engagement." Beatrice grew slowly pale.

Her mother had, for once, a remarkably direct and clear way of putting the matter, and the young girl began to waver.
If her mother succeeded in proving to her that she had really bound herself, she would submit.

It is not easy to convey to the foreign mind generally the enormous importance which is attached in Italy to a distinct promise of marriage.

It indeed almost amounts, morally speaking, to marriage itself, and the breaking of it is looked upon socially almost as an act of infidelity to the marriage bond.