There could be no
doubt that the two faces thus confronting one another belonged to
brother and sister, yet of the two his was the more effeminate, and
its very beauty (he was an excessively handsome lad, albeit
diminutively built) seemed to oppose itself to hers and caricature
it, being so like yet so infinitely less noble.
"We have fared ill," he answered, turning his head aside, and added
with sudden petulance, "God's curse upon Pasquale Paoli, and all his
house!"
"He would not receive you?"
"On the contrary, he made us welcome and listened to all we had to
say. When I had done, Father Domenico took up the tale."
"But surely, brother, when you had given him the proofs--when he
heard all--"
"The mischief, sister," he interrupted, stabbing at the ground with
his heel and stealing a sidelong glance at the priest, "the mischief
was, he had already heard too much."
She drew back, white in the face. She, too, flung a look at the
priest, but a more honest one, although in flinging it she shrank
away from him. The priest, a sensual, loose-lipped man, whose mere
aspect invited one to kick him, smiled sideways and downwards with a
deprecating air, and spread out his hands as who should say that here
was no place for a domestic discussion.
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