"These cares of rank are new to
me," she had said, with gentle dignity; "but thou wilt best know how to
choose the elegance befitting Marco's home; for my father hath warned me
that in these matters there is a custom which I, more than others, may
not break. Dear Lady Laura, for Marco's sake forget that I am of the
people, yet, remembering it, to choose but so much of splendor as
seemeth needful, lest the palazzo be too costly for a mistress not noble
by birth, and so"--she hesitated--"and so win Marco's friends to love me
less."
"Marina, Marco hath told me, with a very lover's face, that some are
noble by birth who are not so by name."
"Dear Lady," the girl answered, with a charming flush, "had Marco not so
plead with me there could have been no question of this home."
The eyes of the great lady beamed with a new and tender pride; in
nothing that her boy had ever done for her had he offered her so much as
in this love of his which had threatened to part them, but had stirred
instead the mother depths of her soul, which had become clouded by years
of luxury and artificial life and the knowledge of the ceaseless
ambitions and selfish scheming which her husband--for the intellectual
stimulus she gave him--had been accustomed to confide to her.
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