"Why need you be ashamed?" asked Florida. "You said no harm of him. Did you of us?"
"Not exactly; but I don't think it was quite my business to discuss you at all. I think you can't let people alone too much. For my part, if I try to characterize my friends, I fail to do them perfect justice, of course; and yet the imperfect result remains representative of them in my mind; it limits them and fixes them; and I can't get them back again into the undefined and the ideal where they really belong. One ought never to speak of the faults of one's friends: it mutilates them; they can never be the same afterwards."
"So you have been talking of my faults," said Florida, breathing quickly. "Perhaps you could tell me of them to my face."
"I should have to say that unfairness was one of them. But that is common to the whole sex. I never said I was talking of your faults. I declared against doing so, and you immediately infer that my motive is remorse. I don't know that you have any faults. They may be virtues in disguise. There is a charm even in unfairness. Well, I did say that I thought you had a quick temper,"--
--"but now I see that I was mistaken," said Ferris with a laugh.
"May I ask what else you said?" demanded the young girl haughtily.
"Oh, that would be a betrayal of confidence," said Ferris, unaffected by her hauteur.
"Then why have you mentioned the matter to me at all?"
"I wanted to clear my conscience, I suppose, and sin again. I wanted to talk with you about Don Ippolito."
Florida looked with perplexity at Ferris's face, while her own slowly cooled and paled.
"What did you want to say of him?" she asked calmly.
"I hardly know how to put it: that he puzzles me, to begin with. You know I feel somewhat responsible for him."
"Of course, I never should have thought of him, if it hadn't been for your mother's talk that morning coming back from San Lazzaro."
"I know," said Florida, with a faint blush.
"And yet, don't you see, it was as much a fancy of mine, a weakness for the man himself, as the desire to serve your mother, that prompted me to bring him to you."
"I acted in the teeth of a bitter Venetian prejudice against priests. All my friends here--they're mostly young men with the modern Italian ideas, or old liberals--hate and despise the priests. They believe that priests are full of guile and deceit, that they are spies for the Austrians, and altogether evil."