Torrebianca, I need n't remind those who are familiar with Sampaolo, is the name of a mountain, a bare, white, tower-like peak of rock, that rises in the middle of the island, the apex of the ridge separating the coast of Vallanza from the coast of Orca.
"Madame Torrebianca? La Nobil Donna Susanna Torrebianca?" She tried the name on her tongue. "Yes, for an impromptu, Torrebianca is n't bad. It's picturesque, and high-sounding, and yet not--not _invraisemblable_. You don't think it _invraisemblable_? So here 's luck to that bold adventuress, that knightess-errant, the widow Torrebianca."
She raised her fluffy white fan, as if it were a goblet from which to quaff the toast, and flourished it aloft.
The poor old Commendatore was mumbling helpless imprecations in his moustache. One caught the word "atrocious" several times repeated.
"And now," said Susanna brightly, "kiss me on both cheeks, and give me your benediction."
She moved towards him, and held up her face.
"My child," he began, impressively, "I have no means to constrain you, and I know by experience that when you have made up that perverse little mind of yours, one might as well attempt to reason with a Hebrew Jew. Therefore I can only beg, I can only implore. I implore you not to do this fantastic, this incredible, this unheard-of thing. I will go on my knees to you. I will entreat you, not for my sake, but for your own sake, for the sake of your dead father and mother, to put this ruinous vagary from you, to abandon this preposterous journey, and to stay quietly here in Sampaolo. Then, if you must open up the past, if you must get into communication with your distant cousin, I 'll help you to find some other, some sane and decorous method of doing so."
Still once again Susanna's eyes melted, but there was no mockery in them now.
"You are kind and patient," she said, with feeling; "and I hate to be a brute. Yet what is there to do? I can't alter my resolution. And I can't bear to refuse you when you talk to me like that. So--you must forgive me if I take a brusque way of escaping the dilemma."
She ran to the edge of the quay, and sprang lightly into her boat.
"Avanti--avanti," she cried to the rowers, who instantly pushed the boat free, and bent upon their oars.