"Oh, any number. Once there was a small house in the valley—a lodge it would be called now. A very pretty girl lived there. This time it was the son of our house, a young, hot-headed fellow like all of us." Giovanni let just enough fire gleam in his eyes to give Nina a glimpse of another phase of him. "Well, this son—whose name was the same as mine, Giovanni, a Prince Sansevero—he was mad about this girl. He would marry her or he would take his life. She was the star of his destiny, the crown of his life, and all the rest of it. They were going to send her away—she was to go into a cloister; he was locked up in the castle. But the old custodian, who adored the boy, let him escape by the underground passage. He came out in the church. She had gone there to pray, knowing nothing of the underground way—it was kept a profound secret in those days. As the girl knelt, Giovanni appeared suddenly beside the altar. Her duenna thought him an apparition, and the two fled up to the monastery—that one you see from here."

"And then——?" said Nina breathlessly.

"The Father Abbot relented and married them."

Nina tried to discern the path to the monastery; in her imagination she saw them hurrying along on the night of their escape.

"And then? In the end what became of them?"

"She bore him fifteen children; thirteen of them were girls."

Giovanni's manner was so casual as he said this that Nina laughed long and deliciously. He swung himself lightly over the balustrade and gathered her a long-stemmed rose from the bush whose early branches were supposed to have known the touch of Beatrice. Perhaps the legend was untrue, but his action, like the afternoon, held much that was alluring. Something of this allure lay in Giovanni's having the same name as the people he told about. Something, too, in the carelessness, and yet the pride, of his telling, made his tales enchanting, and seemed in some way to include his own personality in the chain of romance as its final link. The garden was spread before her. The underground passage she knew, and it wound directly beneath her feet. The chapel, the statue, the ruins of the little temple, the monastery encircling like a low crown the summit of the distant mountain, all were before her; and beside her was a son of the same race, of the same blood. She wondered vaguely why it was so much more apparent in Don Giovanni than in her uncle the prince. Prince Sansevero seemed quite modern; the Marchese di Valdo, though more modern actually than his brother, still seemed to keep his touch on the age that was past.

"Do these old legends please you, Mademoiselle? Or are you too restless? Too progressive? Americans, like the horse Pegasus, leap into the air without any need of foundation to stand on. We, over here, build, like the coral reefs, slowly perhaps, but always from the foundation up."

"I think," said Nina slowly; "it is the mystery of the past that makes it so wonderful. We never can know quite enough about it. All legends are like pictures seen through a fog; it lifts and shows a glimpse, then as quickly closes in again. I always want to know what happened next."

As she said this, she realized that she was more or less making an allegorical description of Giovanni himself. He was like his country and its traditions, revealing himself only in glimpses. He attracted her immensely through his subtle impersonality underlying all that was seemingly personal. She could not fathom his depth, nor determine his shallowness—she did not even guess which it might be. She was irresistibly drawn to him; yet she was on her guard, as one who, looking down from a great height, in fear of vertigo clings to the parapet over which he leans. The parapet she clung to was her own good American common sense. Yet she feared she did not know what. A little gleam in Giovanni's dark eyes, a curious, deliberate, intentionally produced expression of his smiling lips, swept over her sensibilities with a feeling that was as terrifying as it was delicious—and both perhaps because it was strange.

A little look—like triumph—flickered in his face; he laughed joyously. "Mademoiselle, you are—adorable!" he said.



CHAPTER VII

ROME

Christmas and New Year's passed, and the Sansevero household moved to Rome. The princess was impatient to have Nina meet people, but from the first glimpse of the domed City its immortal charm claimed the American girl, and for a little while she had neither time nor inclination for anything but sight-seeing. She fairly hungered for history and tradition, and she soon made the discovery that if Don Giovanni did nothing, he at least knew a great deal.

She marveled at his memory. He seemed to have every name and date in the history of Rome and Italian art at the tip of his tongue. One afternoon they were going through the apartments of the Borgias; the princess, tired out with sight-seeing, was sitting at the edge of the room, and Giovanni was following Nina and pointing out the story illustrated in the frescoes.

"I have found at least one thing you could do!" she laughed. "You'd make a wonderful guide for Cook's."

But he was not at all amused by this sally; in fact, he let her see that he was annoyed. This same sort of unexpected response had baffled her several times before. Any American youth would have fallen into the manner of a guide at once. She remembered that John Derby on one occasion, at a County fair, had insisted upon climbing on the stand of a barker and was the success of the show. On the other hand, this Italian prince appreciated things which John Derby would have brushed aside. He was a delightful companion, the most delightful she had ever known, but every now and then he became suddenly and inexplicably offended—and always over some stupid trifle, like this suggestion of hers about Cook's.

"I only meant," she ventured appeasingly, "that you hold all of Rome's history in the palm of your hand. Is there anything that you don't know?"

His gesture was expressive. He raised his eyebrows and opened both hands palms upward. "I am Roman—since a thousand years."

Nina changed the subject. "I wish," she said, "that they had wheeling chairs with head rests. I have a crick in my neck and my eyes are going crossed from looking so much at ceilings."

Giovanni's ill temper had been for a moment only. He smiled now and whimsically suggested that they write to the director of the Vatican asking that litters be provided. Why not? He grew quite enthusiastic over his description of how charming she would look between tall negro bearers, with a little black boy trotting beside her, carrying a long fan—no, in place of the fan he should carry a little stove.

"My idea was not half so picturesque," she laughed in answer. "I think I had a dentist's chair in mind—a red fuzzy plush one on wheels."

"And with me to push it?" He said it eagerly enough. Here was a contradiction of his late irritation! She did not dare, as a matter of fact, to answer; his melodies and his discords were too easily transposed.

She turned her attention to the fresco before her; it was one with the portrait of the kneeling Borgia.

"He looks like a burglar!" she exclaimed with a shudder. Then she hesitated, but Giovanni's mood being too uncertain to take into consideration she finished her sentence, "Do you know who he looks like—? The Duke Scorpa."

Again he was angry. "Please, Miss Randolph, do not say anything of that sort."

"But why shouldn't I?" She colored under his reproof, but held to her point.

"Because you are of the household of the Sansevero. A little remark—even so little as a tenth of that, might be imprudent. Rome is to-day almost what it was. There still is a very frail bridge uniting the Scorpas and the Sanseveros; the ravine is always there; a torrent from the glacier may descend at any time."

"Then I shall say it in a whisper! He looks like a burglar, and like a cut-throat and—like Scorpa!"

Giovanni scowled. "I warn you, Mademoiselle, be prudent!" A note of tension in his voice brought Nina to a sudden halt.

"There is no one here but Aunt Eleanor—I doubt if even she can hear."

"In Rome it would not be the first time if walls had ears."

"I am sorry," she said so simply, so candidly, that Giovanni was charmed. He became light and amusing. He elaborated the legends of the frescoes with the lives of the painters' until she felt as though they were yet living. Finally they reached the side of the room where the princess was waiting. There was no impatience in her voice, but she looked tired, and Nina cried penitently:

"Ah, Aunt Eleanor! Why did you not call me sooner? I get so carried away by all the things I see, and the tales Don Giovanni tells me, that I have no sense of time."

They descended the stairs to the inner court of the Vatican, where they found their carriage, an old-fashioned C-spring landeau, all very dignified and perfectly appointed, and in striking contrast to the pony-cart in which the princess was trundled about at Torre Sansevero.

By the time they crossed the Ponte S. Angelo the color had come back a little into the princess's face. Nina, with no sign of fatigue, sat brightly alert, while Giovanni opposite, prattled ceaselessly, except for the interruption necessitated by his constantly taking off his hat as his sister-in-law bowed to passing acquaintances.

They had not far to go along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele before they came to the dingy pile of yellow stone that for centuries had borne the name of Palazzo Sansevero. The landeau turned under one of its three broad archways, and entered the courtyard. A plain stone stairway, worn and dingy like the rest of the facade, led into a vestibule of unpromising darkness. The portiere, however, was very gorgeous and imposing in his knee breeches, white silk stockings, gold-trimmed coat, and his three-cornered hat with the prince's cockade at the side. He moved majestically down the steps, carrying a silver-headed mace, like a drum-major's, and saluted as the "nobilities" entered the palace. They ascended to a vast stone hall with a grand stairway at its further end, that quickly effaced the impression of the entrance. From an antechamber, they passed through five or six rooms hung with tapestries and paintings, and adorned with sculptures, until they arrived at the one where the princess really lived. This last was a huge, dignified, mellow, and splendid apartment, in every way worthy of the palace in which it stood, and of the great lady who occupied it now, no less than of all the great ladies who had occupied it in the past. In its present furnishings there were deep sofas with light and table arrangement, so that one might lounge and read and at the same time be near the great open fire. Many bibelots of silver and porcelain made a contrast to the other rooms, that were more like museum galleries; and everywhere—here as in the country—were flowers and the army of autographed photographs marching across tables and banked high against the walls.

As soon as the family had entered, the tea-tray was brought in and placed near the fire. Following the Roman custom, according to which the daughter of the house pours the tea, the princess motioned Nina to fill the office, and she herself sat at her desk and began rapidly writing on a pad of paper. Giovanni carried tea and muffins to her, while Nina poured out her own cup and helped herself to a third cake.

"Are these really so good?" she asked half wistfully. "Or are even these little cakes seemingly delicious only because they are in Rome? I am sure the cook at home made plenty that were every bit as good!" She said this last as though to convince herself.

"They are wonderful little cakes—they are very celebrated!" Giovanni said it with an aggrieved air that made Nina laugh. As though wilfully misunderstanding her, he turned to his sister-in-law.

"Such curious ideas Miss Randolph has about Rome! One would suppose, to hear her, that it was a land of witchcraft—even our food is to be taken with suspicion."

"Not at all," retorted Nina, with a turn of manner that would have done credit to an Italian, "a land of enchantment, which makes ordinary cakes—very ordinary little cakes, I tell you!—seem small squares and rounds of ambrosia. And, furthermore—I can assure you it is much more comfortable here than in the country."

If Giovanni thought she was going to stay sentimental very long, he did not know the American temperament. For she now went into a long dissertation upon the discomfort of Torre Sansevero, where she nearly froze to death. Candle light she had not minded, though she much preferred electricity.

"Have you entirely obliterated the gardens from your memory, Mademoiselle?" Giovanni asked in an undertone, and with a romantic inflection. But Nina's mood was not, at that moment, attuned to gardens.

"Ah, I love Rome—just Rome itself! There is no other such place in all the world! I thought I loved Paris. Paris is gay and beautiful. But Rome is glorious—splendid!"

Giovanni's chagrin at her apparent indifference to the gardens was changed to enthusiasm at her appreciation of his beloved city, for to have her love Rome was like having her love the greater portion of himself—who was but part of Rome.

"The only detriment is," continued Nina, "that at night I dream of marble statues parading against backgrounds of cobalt blue under groined arches of gold—like the ceilings in the rooms of the Borgias and—this one! Why this is exactly like them! There is the same face as the St. Catherine——" then suddenly she sat up, leaning eagerly forward—"Auntie Princess, I don't want to have a party at all! I don't want to meet people! I like to think of Rome as inhabited with those of long ago." Then with one of her sudden checks upon a tendency to become over sentimental, she added gaily, "The little cakes of to-day, are good at all events! Give me another, please!"

Giovanni slid out of the corner of the sofa like smooth steel springs unfolding; neither hastily, nor with effort. She watched him; fascinated by his grace and litheness. Suddenly, though, she felt uncomfortably certain that he knew what was passing in her mind, and this conviction immediately put her out of humor. For the space of a few minutes she disliked him. He seemed to know that too, for his next sentence was:

"Are all young girls in America so unreasonably capricious, so whimsically balanced mentally as—a young girl I once met?"

"How was she?" Nina's curiosity was aroused in spite of her.

"Very inexperienced, and therefore uncertain. Like the person who in dancing counts one, two, three—one, two, three, for fear of losing time—or like the inexperienced swimmer who measures constantly the distance to shore."

"Children, you are chattering nonsense," the princess interfered. "Here, you lazy ones, help me to write the invitations!"

Nina arose and went to look over her aunt's shoulder. "Oh, but it is for day after to-morrow!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean to say that any one will come at such short notice?" That the invitations were merely visiting cards with "Informal Dance" written in the corner, and a date not forty-eight hours ahead, astonished her. She asked about the details. How could they arrange for the decorations, favors, supper? But the princess smiled complacently. Candles were all the decoration necessary! the favors would be trifles that could be bought in half an hour; and as for supper—what could young people want more than lemonade or tea, sandwiches, and cakes? The only question was where they should dance.

The princess turned to Giovanni. "I think it is best in the picture gallery, don't you?"

"The floor is not so smooth as in the Room of the Aenead, but come, let us go and decide." He led the way, and they followed. The Room of the Aenead was next that in which they were sitting. The portrait gallery, filled with treasures from the days of Italy's grandeur, was still beyond. It was this apartment of all others that most appealed to Nina. For a moment she forgot why they had come into the gallery, and her attention remained fixed upon the canvases. With the ever-vigilant Giovanni at her side, she seemed to be walking in a day that was past, to be enveloped in a fairy mantle! She put her hand on a group said to be the work of Michelangelo, running her fingers over the face of one of the figures with awe in her touch.

"To think," she said very softly, the wonder breaking through the low tone of her voice, "to think that Michelangelo's own living hand has been where mine is now—still more, he has been in this very room! Not alone he, but Raphael, Correggio, and Pinturicchio! And all this is called home by my own aunt. Mine!" A little quiver had come into her throat. "It is too wonderful! Yet it gives me the strangest sensation—I can't exactly explain it, but it is as though I were not born at all. Do you know," she had turned to Giovanni wistfully, "I think I can understand just a little of the way you feel—it is as though you were securely planted like a tree. In the beginning, long ago, you were put into the earth with the first things sown. I am merely a leaf, blown from what branch I do not even know—belonging nowhere, coming from nothing. I think I see for the first time what you mean, over here, but just being and not caring to do more than survive from the gloriousness of all this." She spread her arms out as though bewildered.

"Now you see," Giovanni answered her, as though there were a new and strong bond of sympathy between them, "why decorations are unnecessary. Can you imagine these walls, which for centuries have looked down upon every great personage of Rome, being decked up like a Christmas tree because a number of people whose achievements are in no way illustrious are coming for an hour or two?"

"I think," said Nina, "that I shall dance like a wraith. It seems almost a sacrilege to bob around and prattle in such surroundings. How silly their sainted ghosts might think us!"

"I never thought of the old masters as saints exactly. But come, Mademoiselle—let us pretend—in each of those chandeliers are burning a hundred wax candles. It is the night of the ball—we open it so—will you dance?"

Again there appeared a Giovanni that she had never seen before, his lazy arrogance vanished, as, whisking a handkerchief out of his pocket to wave in his hand, he became a sprite—a dancing faun, a reincarnation of the spirit of Donatello.

Twice he traversed the length of the gallery, and then, with a vigor added to his grace, he caught Nina and swung her with him into his whirling dance. It had been perfectly done; even in his abandon there was no lack of ceremony. There was none of the "come along" spirit of youth in America. He was in this, just as he was in everything else, a remnant of a past age; he had merely been transformed into a Bacchant! He was in no way a mere young man who had grabbed a young girl around the waist and made her dance.

But as the princess watched them, her feelings were strongly at variance. Admiration played the greater part. Even a much less biased mind than hers could not have failed to appreciate the wonderful grace of the man and the girl, for Nina was as graceful as he. Yet the princess looked vaguely troubled, too, at the thought that Giovanni was perhaps overstepping his privilege.

"Giovanni! Nina!" she called, but she might as well have appealed to the wind that blew through the courtyard below, and instead of their heeding she felt her own waist encircled as Sansevero, who had entered by the door behind her, swept her into the dance with him. "But, Sandro!" she exclaimed, resisting, "it is . . . not seemly! What if . . . the servants . . . should . . . see us?" But, joining Giovanni in the tune he was whistling, Sansevero seemed to have caught some of his brother's humor. If Giovanni had become the spirit of grace, Alessandro had become the spirit of recklessness, and Eleanor was whirled, breathless, not as one dances usually, but madly, so that her feet barely touched the floor. To add to the revelry of the scene, the Great Dane, who was never far from Giovanni's side, now joined the general whirl and leaped round and round as though he had but newly come from a bath, his deep bark punctuating the valse the two men were whistling. The princess felt an apprehensive dread of a servant's intrusion, and again a breathless "Sandro, stop!" escaped her lips just as——

The portiere was lifted and the footman announced, "Suo Eccellenza il Duca di Scorpa!"

"Ah, I hope I do not intrude upon the family gaiety!" The duke's face was insinuatingly bland and his manner smooth as an eel.

The dancers stopped instantly. The princess flushed, but otherwise only one who knew her intimately might have guessed that she was conscious of having been put in the position of a careless and undignified chaperon. But she winced inwardly, and felt no reassurance in the knowledge that the duke's tongue was known to be more skillful in the art of embroidering than the fingers of the most expert needlewoman. Sansevero followed his wife's cue, but without feeling her dismay, for he, it must be remembered, liked Scorpa. He had the naive manner of a child caught doing something foolish, but that was all. Giovanni welcomed the duke suavely, yet, as the princess led Scorpa into the living rooms, Nina had an exhibition of a real side of Giovanni that she was destined to remember ever after.

She never in her life had imagined that such fury could be depicted in the human countenance. His nostrils dilated, and his jaw was squared.

"I'll kill that viper yet!" he muttered between his teeth, and, reaching out for the first thing to hand, his long smooth fingers locked around the neck of the Great Dane—so tight that the dog, half strangled and snarling, lunged at his tormenter. Nina cried out in horror, but instantly Giovanni's temper vanished as it had come. He relaxed his fingers with a caress; and the animal fawned on him.

"Forgive me, Mademoiselle." He said it as lightly as though there had been only some trivial inattention to overlook.

The whole scene had taken place in a moment—so quickly, in fact, that as Nina and he followed the princess through the adjoining rooms, she half wondered if her senses had deceived her. What manner of man was this indolent, graceful descendant of a feudal race? As he approached the duke, Nina unconsciously held her breath. Half expecting to see them draw daggers then and there, she glanced fearfully from one to the other; but Giovanni, smiling his sleepy-eyed smile, talked as though he thought the duke the most charming man in the world.



CHAPTER VIII

OPENING DAY AT THE TITLE MARKET

On the evening of the dance the Princess Malio, stiff, thin, and sour, and the old Duchess Scorpa, stolid, ugly, and squat, sat together in a corner of the ballroom—that is to say, the picture gallery—of the Palazzo Sansevero.

"So that is the new American heiress!" said the duchess. "Very presentable, I call her. My Todo might do worse than marry her—but of course"—her face drew itself into the grimace that did duty for a smile—"my Todo would have little chance for her favor in competition with your nephew."

The princess bowed in acknowledgment and strongly protested against the idea of any one's being able to compete with a Duke Scorpa.

The conversation between these two old women was always forced into just such channels of conscious politeness. It was rarely that they disclosed the antagonism that formed the chief spice of their lives. But the princess could not control an impulse to destroy, if possible, the satisfaction of her rival.

"My dear Duchess," she insinuated dulcetly, "do you really credit her fabulous fortune?" Her manner expressed her pity for the other's credulity. "Such a sum as five hundred thousand lire a year too much oversteps the mark of probability."

But the complacency of the duchess was not so easily disturbed. "Oh, no, that is not right!" she broke in. "I have been assured that she has five hundred thousand dollars a year. Dollars! And there are five lire in every dollar, remember."

"Dollars!" echoed the princess—and her voice rose several notes above normal pitch; in fact, she nearly screamed. "I am very certain you are misinformed." But her skepticism barely covered her real chagrin because her nephew was a cadaverous nonentity, with little to recommend him to a title hunter. As she looked at the girl in question, however, there was a decided relish in her next remark:

"I think Giovanni Sansevero will carry off that prize! See the way she is smiling up at him. Ah! and now they are dancing together. Certainly they make a suitable looking couple."

The duchess straightened her dumpy figure to its greatest possible height. For once she forgot herself. "Would any one marry a Sansevero when there is a Scorpa to choose!"

"It has happened," chuckled the princess.

The threatening break in their habitual politeness was averted by the arrival of a third old lady, the Marchesa Valdeste. As her husband was the receiver of the "Gran Collare de l'Anunziata," a distinction that gave him the rank of cousin to the king, the duchess and the princess both rose for a moment in deference. The "collaress" seated herself with them. In contrast to theirs, her face was sweet and fresh, with an expression almost like that of a young girl. Her whole personality was gentle, and she punctuated what she said by a curious little swaying motion, a bending of the body from the waist, very suggestive of the way a flower bends on its stalk to the breeze.

The marchesa was also much interested in the new heiress, and although a certain finish of demeanor now modified their remarks, none of them attempted to conceal her ambition to secure Nina's money for her own family.

The Princess Malio was more eager than skeptical as she asked the marchesa, "Have you heard the story of her half a million dollar income? Do you believe it possible!"

The marchesa turned her little hands over, palms up. "She has something incredible, but I cannot say how much. Maria Potensi asked the American ambassador if the celebrated James Randolph was as rich as reputed, and he said——"

The duchess became almost apoplectic in her eagerness. "He said——"

The marchesa looked for all the world like a young girl telling a fairy tale. "He said"—she breathed it in wonder—"that Mr. Randolph's wealth was so fabulous that it was beyond computing! And this is his only child!"

An awed stillness fell upon the group, each old lady looking and longing according to her own nature. It was the marchesa who at last broke the silence. "I cannot deny that I should like my Cesare to be so fortunate as to win her, but I must confess she and Giovanni Sansevero make a charming couple!"

"Dancing, yes," snapped the duchess, "but for my taste they dance too fast!"

"She is doubtless thinking of her tub of a son, who moves with about the grace of an elephant," whispered the Princess Malio behind her fan.

"I can imagine nothing more graceful than the picture they make at this moment," the marchesa answered, wistfully regarding the two slim figures whirling down the length of the room, dancing, dancing on! as though it were the first, and not the tenth, time they had traversed the great gallery; the elastic poise of each the same, the gold-colored gauze of Nina's dress exactly matching the rippling waves of glorious hair only a shade below the sleek black head of her partner.

Yet the marchesa was perhaps no more anxious than either of the others to have Giovanni bear off the American prize. "My Cesare does not return from England for another month," she added only half audibly, and then she sighed.

Suddenly the old princess pounced like a lean cat upon a new thought. "Ah, ha! There is some trouble brewing! Maria Potensi has found your picture of dancing grace a bit too charming. Di Valdo is biting his mustache, and she is giving herself away! I always thought the wind sat in that quarter. Now—she is losing her temper—and with it her discretion!"

"Maria Potensi is above suspicion," interrupted the marchesa. "I do not believe there is a word of truth in what you imply."

"But how do you account for her jewels? I am interested to hear. There were none in the Potensi family, nor in her own!"

"She says quite frankly that they were given her by an old Russian who is her god-father."

"Every one knows," rejoined the princess, "that di Valdo has made heavy debts, yet he is not a gambler like his brother Sansevero, and he has no personal extravagances that account for the sums borrowed."

The "collaress" answered nothing, and the fat duchess, who had so far been only a listener, drew her head in like a snapping turtle as she made the satisfactory observation that her "Todo" was now the partner of the heiress.

The Duke Scorpa and Nina, standing for the commencement of a quadrille, suggested rather a brigand and a princess than a duke and a titleless daughter of the democracy. Nina was holding her head very high, yet easily and unconsciously, because it was her natural way of standing. The dancing had brought color to her cheeks, and her eyes were sparkling; but it was at the evening in general, not at the man who at that moment was trying to please her. She could not bear the duke's sharp little black eyes, his brutal square jaw, his unctuous manners; and as he took her hand to lead her down a figure of the quadrille, its thickness felt to her imagination like a paw.

Dancing vis-a-vis were Giovanni and the Contessa Potensi. Nina did not know her name or anything about her, but she felt at first sight a subtle antagonism, and, following an instinct that she would have found difficult to account for, she turned her attention away toward a second personality, which fascinated her in as great a degree as that of the Potensi had repelled.

"Who is that over there?" she asked of the duke. "I mean the slender girl in black."

"The Contessa Olisco. She was a Russian princess. Her name was Zoya Kromitskoff. I thought the name of Zoya pretty once—that is, until I heard the name of N-i-n-a!"

As he said her name they were just turning around the last figure, and she might not, without attracting attention, snatch her hand from his; but his familiarity in using her Christian name made her cheeks burn. In the final courtesy she barely inclined her head, and at the close of the dance went in quest of her aunt without noticing his proffered arm. At this unheard-of behavior, the duke hurried after her, biting his mustache.

"Ah, ha!" ejaculated the old princess in the ear of the Marchesa Valdeste, "that cuttlefish of a Scorpa has thrown his tentacles out too far, and the goldfish is scurrying away in alarm." She fanned herself in agitated satisfaction at her triumph over the duchess—who was pretending that she had noticed no coolness in the American's treatment of her son.

The next moment the Princess Sansevero brought Nina to present her to the marchesa. Nina had been dancing at the time of the arrival of the "collaress" and must therefore be presented at the first opportunity. The marchesa, with a few kindly remarks about her dancing, would have let her return to her partners, but the duchess moved ponderously aside on the sofa, making a place for Nina. Without prelude she began, "Is it true that you have five hundred thousand dollars a year? Or is rumor mistaken—is it only five hundred thousand lire?"

The baldness of the question left Nina for the moment speechless; then presently, "I have what father gives me," she answered evasively.

"But you are the only child of the American multimillionaire, 'Jemmes Ronadolf,' yes?"

Nina nodded in affirmative.

"The Duke Scorpa, with whom you danced just now, is my son!" Her manner clearly demanded that the American girl recognize the great favor that she had received. "He is my only son," she reiterated, "and the head of the family of the Scorpa. You must come to tea to-morrow. I especially invite you, though we are regularly at home."

The condescension of her demeanor can hardly be described. Nina turned helplessly toward the Princess Malio, but found in her a new inquisitor: "American fathers are proverbially generous"—her ingratiating smile so ill suited her features that it seemed almost not to belong to her—"of course your dot will be colossal?"

Again Nina gasped, but before she was obliged to answer the Marchesa Valdeste laid her hand upon her arm. "Come, my dear," she said, with her soft Sicilian accent, "it is a pity to miss so much dancing. It is not right for a young girl to sit with old ladies at a ball," and, holding Nina's hand in hers, she led her away. They had taken only half a dozen steps when she tapped a young officer lightly with her fan.

He wheeled quickly. "Ah, Marchesa!" He bowed ceremoniously.

"Count Tornik," said the marchesa, "will you take Miss Randolph to the Princess Sansevero, or where her numerous partners may find her?"

Count Tornik bowed again, this time to Nina. "Will you dance? I don't dance as well as di Valdo." Nina looked up at him, suspicious and displeased, but there was no conscious deprecation in his manner, which indeed proclaimed that whether he danced well or badly was a matter unlike unimportant to him.

"Yes, let us dance," she said.

As he put his arm around her it seemed to her that "an animated tin soldier" expressed him perfectly. He held her stiffly, and so closely that her nose was crushed against the gold braiding of his uniform. He was so tall, and his shoulders were so square, that she could not see over them, and to add to her discomfort, he danced, not as did the Italians, but round and round like a whirling dervish. Before they had gone ten yards she was so dizzy and uncomfortable that she stopped.

Again Tornik bowed, offered his arm, and without addressing a further remark to her, led her to the Princess Sansevero. As he took leave of her his expression showed a glimpse of understanding, a momentary illumination. She felt for an instant a possibility of his attractiveness, but just as she became curious he was gone.

The men she met after this were a mere succession of dancing figures, and at the end of the evening, when her aunt came into her room to kiss her good night, she could sleepily distinguish only one or two people out of the kaleidoscope of confused impressions. And even these few melted off into shadows as she danced on and on through dreamland with Giovanni, amid gardens and marble statues, to the magic rhythm of wonder-world music.

But while Nina slept with a happy little smile still lying in the corners of her mouth, the princess in her own room was having an animated conversation with her husband.

"Leonora, my treasure!" he exclaimed joyously, "things go well for Giovanni with la bella Nina? Hein? With her fortune! And to have such an air and grace, too—it is really Giovanni that is a lucky one!" Before his wife could interrupt he went on, "Five hundred thousand dollars income—that is to be her dot, isn't it? Why, we can have all the rooms at Torre Sansevero opened, and you, my beautiful one, shall have again the comfort that your wretch of a husband has deprived you of!"

His excited appropriation of Nina's fortune for the general family coffers jarred; and the princess at once checked his rapidly soaring imaginings.

"Not so fast! Not so fast! Remember the American girl is used to arranging her own marriage, and besides . . . for nothing in the world would I try to influence her. Should it turn out unhappily I could never forgive myself . . . never!"

Sansevero looked at his wife in open-eyed amazement. "What has come over you, my dear! I am not proposing to sell your Miss Millions to a rag gatherer. She has no amount of beauty—yes (as he followed Eleanor's expression), she has a charming countenance—molto simpatica—also a distinction that is really rarer in your country of beautiful women. Giovanni, on his side, certainly has all that one could ask in the way of good looks and intelligence. He is young, and he is the sole heir to my titles and estates—She would be getting a very good exchange for her dollars, I am thinking. There is no use to make a face like that; I am not trying to sell her to an ogre. Why, he does not even gamble——"

"No—but do you think Giovanni can be true to a woman?"

Sansevero laughed. "What would you have? Are you becoming a Puritan miss, Leonora mia?" He shrugged his shoulders. "He is young and he has heart! Would you have for a nephew-in-law a St. Anthony?"

As the princess still looked worried, he seemed afraid that he had hurt his project. "Giovanni is of a type that women like," he said reassuringly, "and probably he has had his successes—that is all I meant. Don't be so suspicious! I want merely to further the interests of two young people who are in every way suited to each other. Giovanni may be an anchorite, for all I know."

Eleanor stood turning her wedding ring round and round on her finger. Then she looked anxiously into her husband's face. He was puffing at a cigarette that he had lighted, and his eyes looked back into hers with the perfectly innocent expression of a child's.



CHAPTER IX

A DOOR IS OPENED THAT GIOVANNI PREFERS TO KEEP CLOSED

The eyes of La Favorita boded good to no one! As a hostess her deportment left much to be desired, but since her visitors were limited to her very intimate friends it mattered, perhaps, little. At all events, as guest after guest arrived in her over-decorated salon, she looked up expectantly, and then resumed her expression of ugly indifference.

"Per Bacco!" she muttered quite audibly enough for one to overhear, "this crowd seems to think I have asked all Rome to supper!"

She attacked two young men of fashion as they entered. Fortunately, her manner somewhat modified the rudeness of her words—and the ill humor of her tone carried no conviction. "You cannot come in. I did not invite you! I have no room!"

Instead of being angry, one, the Count Rosso, answered her in a voice that was half jesting, half conciliatory, in the familiar second person singular: "But thou art quite mad, my dear! We were all asked at Zizi's supper. I, for one, call it very ungracious of you to try to dispense with our agreeable society."

La Favorita lapsed once more into indifference. "Oh well, I don't care"—she shrugged her shoulders—"I don't care whether you all go or stay!"

A moment later a group that had formed at the end of the room made a great noise, and the hostess, suddenly rousing again, swept toward them with the floating motion of the professional dancer. "I wish you to understand," she said in a fury, "that you are to comport yourselves in my house as you would in the palaces of the nobility!"

The group fell into a half-sympathetic hush as she moved back again to the door of the entrance. A little woman—a cafe singer—broke into a snatch of song:

"The moon has two sides, a black and a white, When the heart is dark there can be no light."

Laughing, she snapped her fingers. "Fava has been in a bad temper ever since that American heiress came to Rome. She fears that Miss America will cut the leading strings of Giovanni."

"Why pout at that? Giovanni will then be rich—a rich lover is better than a poor one any day!" laughed another soubrette.

"What is the matter with Fava, anyway?" put in a third. "She was quite delighted with the American's arrival at first. Now she might draw a stiletto at any time."

"The matter is that she has heard the millionairess is pretty, and she fears she will take Giovanni's heart as well as his name!"

"Fava jealous! A delicious thought that! Yet I am not sure that I should care to be in Giovanni's shoes if he wants to get away from her," observed Rigolo, the actor.

Favorita again swept toward the group, her voice strident: "Per Dio! Do you suppose I can't imagine what you are all talking about, with your long ears together like so many donkeys chewing in a cabbage patch? You need not imagine to yourselves that I am jealous. No novice could hold Giovanni long. It is I who can tell you that, for I know such men and their ways fairly well—I have had experience! Me!"

The others took it up in chorus: "Favorita has had some experience, hein! A race between the countries! Italy and America at the barrier. Holla, zip! they are off! La Favorita in the lead—America second, coming strong." And so it went on. Favorita had returned to her position by the door. She was more quiet, and in repose it might be seen that her face looked drawn—her eyes, if one observed closely, beneath the black penciling showed traces of recent weeping. "Tell me something," she said to Count Rosso. "What is she like, this Miss Randolph? Is it true"—her breath came short—"that Giovanni is trailing after her?"

"Say after her millions, rather! I hope he gets them for your sake, Fava. Then you can have the house in the country that you have always wanted."

"I'd rather he got his money some other way. It does not please me that he should marry!"

"Aren't you unreasonable? Can't you give him up for a few weeks?"

"If you call marriage a few weeks."

Rosso, laughing, threw his hand up. "How long does a honeymoon last? A few weeks and he will be back."

But the dancer's eyes filled, and she set her sharp little teeth together. "I cannot bear it! Ah Dio! I cannot! She is young—and surely she loves him."

"Every woman thinks the man she prefers is alike beloved by every other woman he meets! I have not heard that she loves him!"

"Be quiet about what you have heard—what I want to know is, does he return it? I am told she is attractive; if she is—I shall——"

Count Rosso chanced upon the right remark in answering, "Could a man, do you, think, who has had your favor, be satisfied with a cold American girl? Do not be stupid!"

Favorita was slightly pacified. "Is she at all like me? Paint me her portrait!"

"Her eyes are—m—m—rather nice; her skin—yes, good; her features—imperfect; she holds herself haughtily—chin out, and her back very straight, and"—as a last assurance, he added, "she speaks broken Italian."

La Favorita's coal-black eyes lit with a new light, and her whole body seemed to flutter. Her carmine lips parted as, with an expression of quick joy, she clapped her hands together and exclaimed, "American accent! Per Dio! She has an American accent!"

In her delight she threw her arms about the count's neck and kissed him on the lips. With perfect impartiality she turned to two other men standing near and kissed them also, repeating to herself the while, "An American accent!"

The next arrivals she received as though they were both expected and welcome; greeting them with the unintelligible exclamation, "Imagine speaking the only language in the world worth speaking with an American accent!"

"But why do we not go into the dining-room?" asked her stage manager, a heavy puff of a man. "I have a void within."

"May the void always stay, great beef!" she laughed. Then, with a shrug and a wave of her arms, as though to sweep every one out of the room, she cried petulantly, "Go! and eat, all of you. I am glad, if only you go!"

The company, for the most part, laughed and went into the dining-room, whence the sound of revelry gradually grew louder. The Count Rosso alone remained with the hostess. "Come, Fava, don't be so headstrong—you're spoiling the party."

"Spoiling the party! Do you hear the noise they are making? Is that the way to conduct one's self in a lady's house—I said a lady's house! Why do you look at me like that? Am I not a lady just as much as that daughter of an Indian squaw from over the Atlantic? Those in there"—she pointed with her thumb toward the dining-room—"they would not behave so in the Palazzo Sansevero!" Then, without another word, she followed where she had pointed, so fast that her thin draperies fluttered behind the lithe lines of her figure like butterfly wings. On the threshold of the dining-room she paused, like the bad fairy at the christening.

"Why should you think you can behave in my house as you would not behave in the house of a princess?"

The count, who had followed her, seemed relieved that she mentioned no specific name. Her remark seemed to touch a chord of sympathy in the company, for the women, especially, became very quiet. Favorita sat down at the end of the table between the manager and an empty place.

"Eat something, my girl!" he said to her. "It will be the best thing you can do!"

"My need is not the same as yours—I have emptiness of heart."

Her alert hearing caught a footfall, and she was looking eagerly at the door when Giovanni Sansevero entered. At once her face became transfigured. "Ah, there thou art, my mouse!" she said, pulling out the chair beside her for him.

He smiled and nodded familiarly to all at the table.

"At least it is good for the rest of us that you come, Prince!" said the manager. "Fava is in a frightful mood." But there was that in Giovanni's expression that made the manager's speech turn quickly from any too personal allusion, and a qualifying clause was trailed at the end of his sentence, "She may show you more politeness."

Giovanni looked annoyed. The dancer, to appease him, said gently: "You know I am nervous from overwork. The rehearsals have been doubled lately. If you don't come when I expect you, I imagine horrors!" The manager was about to put his fork into a grilled quail, when she whisked it away and put it on Giovanni's plate. The former was obliged to vent his indignation against her obstinately turned back and deaf ears. She was conscious of nothing and of no one but Giovanni, whom she was feeding with her own fork. His appetite, however, paying small compliment to her attention, she arose, and he followed her into the other room. Whereupon her guests, less constrained without her, drank and were merry.

In the salon Giovanni's musical, caressing voice was saying, "You look bewitching to-night, Fava mia!" He covered her with his glance, so that she preened herself. He laughed lightly at her vanity, and, leaning over, kissed her lovely shoulder. Quickly, with both hands she held him close, her cheek against his.

"Carissimo," she said tensely, "if you ever love any other woman——"

"I love you," he said, against her lips; "let there be no doubt of that." And there was a long silence between them.

Giovanni was not one of those who can withstand a woman of beauty. He loved La Favorita passionately; she perhaps more than any one else could hold him—a Griselda one day, a fury the next, but always alive and always beautiful.

Yet he might have indulged his curiosity as to what she would do if seriously aroused to jealousy, had it not been for his innate hatred of all exhibitions of feeling, which seemed to him bourgeois. He knew that if the dancer had an idea that he might be falling in love with Nina, she would be capable of any scandal. On the other hand, he could not imagine Favorita's being jealous of the American girl. He had often congratulated himself that she was not jealous of her only real rival, the Contessa Potensi, his devotion to whom, however, he had managed to keep so quiet that very few persons in Rome had a suspicion of it.

The contessa, on the other hand, looked upon Giovanni's attention to the dancer as an artifice practised solely on her account, so that the world would the less suspect his attachment to herself. Neither woman had until now felt any jealousy of Nina. To their Italian temperament she had seemed too cold a type, too antipathetic, to be a danger. The contessa was quite willing to have Giovanni marry the heiress, for she never doubted that the end of the honeymoon would find him tied more securely than ever to her own footstool.

Giovanni, at present, with his arms about the dancer, was raining a succession of kisses upon her lips, her eyes, her hair. He could feel that she was all on edge about something, but, man-like, he preferred to keep things on the surface and not stir depths that might be turbulent. His efforts, however, were of small avail.

"Swear to me by the Madonna, and by your ancestors, that you will not marry!"

With sudden coldness Giovanni drew away from her. He let both arms hang limp at his sides. "Why let this thought come always between us!" Then, exasperated into taking up the discussion, he crossed his arms and faced her: "We might as well have this out. I am not engaged—I swear that; but whether I ever shall be or not, you have no cause for jealousy. Marriage in my world, you know very well, is not a matter of inclination, but of advantageous arrangement. There is every reason why I ought to marry, and if that is the case why not one as well as another? My brother has no children; I am the last of my name."

With a cry she flung her arms around his neck and broke into a storm of weeping. "You shan't marry her! You shan't. She shall not have your children for you!"

But Giovanni grew impatient. He unclasped her hands and pushed her away. "If you make these scenes all the time, I won't come near you! Please, once for all, let us have this ended. If there is one thing I can't endure, it is a woman who cries. Here, take my handkerchief. Come now—that is right, be reasonable." His tone modified, and he lightly and more affectionately laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come here a minute, I want to show you a picture." He led her, as he spoke, before a long mirror.

"Now, cara mia, tell me, do you think that a man who possessed the love of such a woman as that would be apt to run seeking elsewhere?"

La Favorita looked at her own reflection, at the slender yet full perfection of southern beauty, and she saw also the returning ardor in the face of her lover as he, too, looked at her image. Her black eyes grew soft, her lips parted slightly—with a sudden exuberance he caught her to him, and this time he held her so tensely that, although her plaint was the same, her tone was altogether different. "But I don't want you to marry—even without love, I don't want you to," she pouted softly.

"You are an idiot, Fava!" But the words were whispered caressingly. "It would be much better for you if I did."



CHAPTER X

MR. RANDOLPH SENDS FOR JOHN DERBY

Meanwhile, one morning in New York, the express elevator of the American Trust Building shot skyward without stop to the twentieth story, at which John Derby alighted. He emerged upon a broad space of marble corridor, leading to the offices of J. B. Randolph & Co. Derby, being known—and, moreover, on the list of those expected—escaped the catechism to which visitors usually were subjected, and was shown into the waiting room without question. When, some minutes later, he was admitted to Mr. Randolph's private office, he caught the sign of battle in the ruffled effect of the great financier's hair, for he had a habit, when excited, of running his fingers up over his right temple until his iron gray locks bristled. But, whatever the cause of his annoyance, it was put aside as he held out his hand in unmistakable welcome to Derby. "Hello, John, good work! You have got here nearly a day ahead of the time I expected you. What is the latest news? Did you have any trouble in the swamp district?"

"None at all. We find the quick sands average only about thirty feet, and the tubes go easily below. Everything is going along splendidly. Better than I had ever dared to hope."

Mr. Randolph nodded his satisfaction. "And now," he said, "I'll tell you why I wired for you. The Volcano Sulphur Company is buying every available mine, and it is time for us to look into the Sicilian possibility. How soon can you leave for Italy?"

"As soon as you say, sir."

"Have you secured your assistant engineers?"

"Jenkins came on with me, for one, and I am pretty sure I can get a man named Tiggs—a good mechanic, who was with me at Copper Rock."

"And how soon can you get your machinery? You'll have to take everything in that line with you. Otherwise, you might get off by—to-morrow? The Lusitania sails in the afternoon." He added this last with impatient regret.

Derby pondered a moment, and then answered briskly: "I can make it. Jenkins can follow with the machinery on a Mediterranean boat. There will be no delay over there, as I'll have time to make my arrangements."

"Good!" Mr. Randolph seemed pleased, then asked abruptly, "How well do you speak Italian?"

"Fluently, very; grammatically, not at all."

Mr. Randolph smiled. "Fluently will be good enough. Especially if you pick up an assortment of expletives in the Sicilian vernacular. Go to Rome first. Look about and get information on the Sicilian mines, especially those that are unproductive by the present mining system. Lease one and try your process. If it works—we have the biggest thing in the way of a sulphur control imaginable. You'd better get an option on every sulphur mine you can, to lease on a royalty basis. Our Italian correspondent will be notified to honor your drafts. You will have to use your own discretion as to necessary expenses—of course, you are to send a weekly statement to the office. The royalty to you on your inventions will be ten per cent. on the net, not the gross, earnings. Still, if it all turns out well, you ought to make a nice thing out of it."

A swift gleam of eagerness leaped into the young man's face. Mr. Randolph looked at him sharply. "I did not know that you were so mercenary, John."

"In my place any man would want millions, or else that——" He broke off abruptly, leaving his meaning unexpressed. But his eyes had something wistful in their direct appeal, which perhaps the older man understood, for his expression was unusually kind as he asked with apparent irrelevancy, "Have you heard from Nina?"

Derby flushed even under his tan, but he answered frankly: "Yes, I have had letters regularly—bully ones—full of Italy and the high nobility. Isn't it just like her to remember her friends at home!" Then he added ardently, "There was never any one like Nina—never! Of course, every man in Italy is in love with her by now."

"Humph!" was Mr. Randolph's answer, as his hand went up through his hair until it stood straight on end. "Had she the disposition of Xantippe and the ugliness of Medusa she would be called a goddess divine by the titled sellers. But what can I do? I can't keep her locked up at home—for the matter of that, she is run after about as badly over here——" and he added gently in an altered tone, "My poor little girl! Sometimes I think how much better off she would have been as the daughter of a man without money. At present, of course, she is beset with every possible danger. I don't think Nina will lose her heart easily, mind you, but there is an underlying excitement in her letters that gives me some uneasiness as to the state of her emotions. I do not relish the possibility of her marrying one of those ingratiating, cold-hearted, and seemingly ardent noblemen." Then, as though to qualify his general statement, he continued, "My sister-in-law married a decent sort of a man, and I imagine they are happy—but she'd have done much better if she had married your uncle. He never cared for any one else, and I hoped it would be a match. But Alessandro Sansevero came along and swept her off her feet. She was a great beauty, and I believe he married her for love—which is more than I can hope in Nina's case."

Into Derby's face there came a look like that of the small boy who gazes hungrily into a bakery shop window as he protested. "No one could know Nina well and not love her. She is the squarest, the truest, just as she is the most beautiful, girl in the world."

"No,"—Mr. Randolph spoke quite slowly, for him—"Nina is not beautiful—sweet, and unspoiled, and lovable, yes; but she is not a beauty."

Derby's face kindled with indignation, and he retorted unguardedly, "I grant you she hasn't one of those pleased-with-itself, don't-disturb-the-placidity-of-my-peerless-perfection sort of faces; the valentine sort that strikes a man at first sight, but that at the end of a week he would do anything for the sake of varying its monotony. But Nina—the more you look at her the more lovely she becomes, unless she gets the notion that some man wants to marry her money—and then it is time for me to take to the prairies! Her eyes get hard, her mouth goes up on one side and her features seem to set and freeze. She has only one hard side, but that is adamant! Poor girl, I can hardly blame her. As she says herself, there are proposals on her breakfast tray every morning—with all the other advertisements."

Mr. Randolph looked directly into the blue eyes before him, as though to probe their depths. "I want my girl to marry a man whom she can look up to because he is trying to accomplish something himself," he said emphatically, "and not one who will lay his hat down in the front hall of my house instead of at his own office. And," he added grimly, "a coronet in place of the hat is still less to my liking."

A curiously restrained, almost diffident, expression, which in no way suited his personality, came into Derby's face, and he abruptly rose to take leave.

Mr. Randolph rose also, but, instead of terminating the interview, crossed the room, saying, "Before you go, John, I want to show you a prize I have found." He turned a canvas that stood face to the wall, and lifted it to a sofa for a better view.

It was a marvelous picture: a Madonna and child; and on the shoulder of the Madonna was a dove.

"It is supposed to be a Raphael," said Randolph, "and I am convinced that it is. The story is rather interesting. Raphael painted two pictures that were almost identical. One is in the Sansevero family. Their collection in Rome I have seen, but this picture has always hung at Torre Sansevero, their country estate, and I have never been there. However, as I said, Raphael painted two. The second belonged to the Belluno family and was sold long ago into France. There it became the property of a Duc du Richeur, and during the Revolution it was supposedly destroyed. Some time ago Christopher Shayne, the dealer, bought among other things at an auction a nearly black canvas. On having it cleaned, this was the result—without doubt the lost Raphael!"

"Jove, that's interesting!" exclaimed Derby. "I'd like to see the other. Perhaps I'll have the chance, although Nina wrote that they were leaving for Rome, and that was several weeks ago. But now good-by, sir. Tiggs and Jenkins are to meet me at the Engineers' Club at noon. I am sure I can get off to-morrow."

Mr. Randolph held the younger man's hand in a long clasp as he said, "Good-by, my boy, and—luck to you!"

* * * * *

As Derby left the office, the sudden prospect of seeing Nina so soon set his thoughts in a turmoil unusual to the condition in which he managed pretty steadily to keep them. Of all the things that this young man had accomplished, none had been more difficult than preserving the attitude toward Nina that he had after careful deliberation determined upon. To his chagrin the task became more, instead of less, difficult, as time went on. In the long ago, it had been she who adored and he who accepted the adoration—in the way common with the big boy and the little girl. He had taught her to swim, and to ride, and to shoot. And—though he did not realize it—from his own precepts she had acquired a directness of outlook and a sense of truth that embodied justice as well as candor, and that was in quality much more like that of a boy than a girl.

Then came the time when he was no longer a boy. He went out West, and work made him serious, and absence made him realize that he loved her as that rare type of man loves who loves but one woman in his life. But she, never dreaming of any change in his feelings, went on thinking of him always as of a brother. Often, when he returned from a long absence, and she ran to meet him with both hands outstretched, he looked for some sign from her—some fleeting gleam such as he had caught in other women's eyes. But always Nina's glance had met his own affectionately, but squarely and tranquilly. His coming, or his going, brought smiles or gravity to her lips, but her eyes showed no sudden veiling of feeling, no new consciousness of meaning unexpressed. When she laughed, they danced as though the sunlight were caught under their hazel surface. When she was serious, they were velvety soft. To John hers was the sweetest, brightest, and assuredly the most expressive face in the world. But he knew the distrust and coldness that would undoubtedly be his portion should he ever forget the role that up to the present he had played to perfection—that of her brotherly, affectionate friend. Her very expression, "Dear old John"—generally she said "Jack"—her entire lack of reserve or self-consciousness in his presence, put him where he belonged.

And the other women—undoubtedly there were lots of the every-day kind, waiting all along the stream, just as there always are when a man is young and fairly good to look upon. And there were the different, and far more dangerous, "other women," who wait at the whirlpools for a man who has that elusive but distinctly felt magnetism which some personalities exert, seemingly with indifference, and quite apart from any effort or intent. But John Derby lashed his heart to the mast of hard work and resolutely turned his eyes and ears from the sirens. And so he saw the years stretching on, always crammed with tasks that he was to accomplish, but without hope of ever winning the girl he loved, because of the barrier of her money.

Only a short time before, when a letter from her had come to Breakstone—a long letter full of the beauty and charm of Italy and the Italians—Derby had gone to the edge of the forest and—for no reason that any one could see, save the apparent joy of swinging an axe—chopped a tree into fire-wood.

"D—n it all," he muttered as the chips flew, "I could support a wife—if she wasn't so all-fired rich." Later he carried a load of his wood across the clearing to the camp and slammed it down. "Oh, h——, I hate money!" he exclaimed vehemently to Jenkins.

Jenkins, a Southerner, took the statement placidly. "Looks like you're workin' powerful hard to get what you don't care for. Some of that kindlin' 'd go good under this soup pot."

Derby laughed and fed the fire. But "Shut up, Jenkins, you ass!" was all the latter got for a retort courteous.



CHAPTER XI

ROME GOES TO THE OPERA

On the evening of the first court ball, the Sanseveros gave a small dinner, after which they went to the opera. The guests were the Count and Countess Olisco, Count Tornik, Don Cesare Carpazzi, and Prince Minotti. Don Cesare Carpazzi, a thin swarthy youth, sat just across the corner of the table from Nina. Although his appearance was one of great neatness, it was all too evident, if one observed with good eyes, that the edges of his shirt had been trimmed with the scissors until the hem narrowed close to the line of stitching; and his evening clothes in a strong light would have revealed not only the fatal gloss of long use, but also careful darning. The old saying that "Clothes make the man" was refuted in his case, however, as his arrogance was proclaimed in every gesture.

Sitting next to him was the Countess Olisco, the Russian whom Nina had noted and admired at her aunt's ball. As there were but nine at dinner, and the conversation was general, Nina had time to observe closely her appearance. She had the broad Russian brow, the Egyptian eyes and unbroken bridge of the nose. She was the most slender woman imaginable, and her slenderness was exaggerated by the fashion of wearing her hair piled up so high and so far forward that at a distance it might be taken for a small black fur toque tipped over her nose. She rarely wore colors, but to-night, because of the etiquette against wearing black at court, her long-trained dress was of sapphire blue velvet, as severe and as clinging as possible.

Nina divined better than she knew, when she put the little Russian and Carpazzi in the same category. Fundamentally they were much the same, but whereas he was always bursting into flame, the contessa suggested a well banked fire that burned continually, but within destroyed itself rather than others. Thin, white, and self-consuming, she was like the small Russian cigarettes that were never out of her lips. Fragile as she looked, she had a will that brooked no obstacle, an energy that knew no fatigue.

Aside from her appearance, the story that Giovanni had related of the contessa's marriage was in itself enough to arouse the interest of any girl alive to romance. According to him, she was the daughter of a Russian nobleman of great family and wealth. The Count Olisco (a mild-eyed Italian boy, he looked) had been attached to the legation at St. Petersburg. Zoya was only sixteen years old when she announced her intention of marrying him. Her father, furious that the Italian had dared approach his daughter, demanded his recall, whereupon she told him the astonishing news that Olisco had never, to her knowledge, even seen her. But she declared that if her father did not marry her to him, she would kill herself.

She did take poison but, being saved by the doctors, who discovered it through her maid, she sent the same maid to tell the Count Olisco the whole story. The romance of her act, coupled with her beauty and her birth, naturally so flattered the young Italian that he offered himself as a suitor, and, her father relenting, they were married.

Nina was left for some time to her own thoughts, as her Italian (not particularly fluent at best) was altogether lacking in idiom, and she missed the point of most that was said. In the first lull, the Count Olisco asked her the usual question put to every stranger, "How do you like Rome?"

The Countess Olisco, like an echo, caught and repeated her husband's inquiry, "Ah, and do you like Rome?"

And then Carpazzi hoped she liked Rome—and this very harmless subject was tossed gently back and forth, until Prince Minotti gave it an unexpectedly violent fling by remarking, "I suppose Signorina, that you have been impressed"—he held the pause with evident satisfaction—"with the great history of the Carpazzi, without which there would be no Rome!"

All at once the young man in the threadbare coat became like a live wire! His hair, which already was en brosse, seemed to rise still higher on his head, his thin lips quivered, and his hands worked in a complete language of their own. He put up an immediate barrier with his palms held rigidly outward. All the table stopped to look, and to listen.

"Does a Principe Minotti"—he pronounced the word "Principe" with a sneering curl of the lips—"dare to criticize a Carpazzi?" He threw back his head with a jerk.

"What is he?" whispered Nina to Tornik, who was sitting next her. "Is he a duke?"

"A Don, that is all, I believe."

Softly as the question was put and answered, Carpazzi heard. Showing none of the fury of a moment before he spoke suavely, though still with arrogance.

"Signorina is a stranger in Rome; the Count Tornik also is a foreigner, which excuses an ignorance that would be unpardonable in an Italian."

Tornik at that moment pulled his mustache, looking at it down the length of his nose. It was impossible to tell whether the movement hid annoyance or amusement. Nina was keen with curiosity.

"Of course," Nina said sweetly, eager to soothe his over-sensitive pride, "I have heard of the Carpazzi, but I do not know what is the title of your house. I asked Count Tornik whether you were a duke."

"I am Cesare di Carpazzi!" He said it as though he had announced that he was the Emperor of China.

"The Carpazzi are of the oldest nobility," Giovanni interposed. "Such a name is in itself higher than a title."

Don Cesare bowed to Don Giovanni as though to say, "You see! thus it is!"

The subject would have simmered down, had not Tornik at this point set it boiling, by saying in an undertone to Nina, "Why all this fuss? It is stupid, don't you think?"

He spoke in French, carelessly articulated, but the sharp ears of Carpazzi overheard.

"Why all this fuss!" he repeated. "It is insupportable that an upstart of 'nobility' styled p-r-ince"—he snarled the word—"a title that was bought with a tumbledown estate, dares to speak lightly the great name of the Carpazzi, a name that is higher than that of the reigning family."

His flexible fingers flashed and grew stiff by turns. Nina had seen a good deal of gesticulating since she had come to Rome; she had even been told that the different expressions of the hand had meanings quite as distinct as smiles or frowns or spoken words, and Carpazzi's fingers certainly looked insulting, as with each snap he also snapped his lips.

"You know whereof I speak, Alessandro and Giovanni—not even the Sansevero have the lineage of the Carpazzi!"

"Certainly, certainly, my friend," answered Giovanni. "No one is disputing the fact with you."

"But I should think," ventured Nina, her velvety eyes looking wonderingly into his flashing black ones, "that you would accept a title, it would make it so much simpler—especially among strangers who do not know the family history. A duke is a duke and a prince for instance——"

Up went his hand, rigid, palm outward, and at right angles to his wrist, "There you are wrong. A duke or a prince may be a parvenu. For me to accept a title—Non! It would mean that the name of Carpazzi,"—he lingered on the pronunciation—"could be improved! The name of Minotti, for instance, what does it say? Nothing! It is the name of a peasant. It may be dressed up to masquerade as noble, if it has 'Principe' pushed along before it. But it could not deceive a Roman. It is not the 'Principe' before Sansevero that gives it renown. Don Giovanni Sansevero is a greater title than the Marchese Di Valdo, by which Giovanni is generally known. Yet Di Valdo is a good name, too, let me tell you."

The Princess Sansevero kept Minotti's attention as much as possible, so that it might appear that Carpazzi's arraignment had not been heard. All that Carpazzi said was perfectly true. There was little therefore that Minotti could have answered. He was a man of plebeian origin. His father, a rich speculator, had bought a piece of property and assumed the title that went with it. To a Roman the name Carpazzi was a great deal higher than that of any number of dukes and princes.

The question of "Good Taste," however, was another matter and the princess changed the subject by asking:

"Does any one know what the opera is to-night?"

The Contessa Olisco announced: "La Traviata." "They are to have a special scene in the third act," she said, "to introduce a new dance of Favorita's." She did not look at Giovanni, and yet she seemed to be aiming her remarks at him. To Nina it all meant nothing. Once or twice she had heard the name of the celebrated dancer, but it merely brushed through her perceptions like other fleeting suggestions; nothing ever had brought it to a full stop.

The talk turned on other topics, and as the meal was very short, only five courses, the princess, the contessa, and Nina soon withdrew to another room. The conversation there, as it happened, came back to the subject of Carpazzi.

Zoya Olisco lit her cigarette and spoke with it pasted on her lower lip. She smoked like this continually, and never touched the cigarette except to light it and put a new one in its place.

"Though I see what he means," she said, "I should, were I in his place, claim a title! They need not take a new one. My husband told me that the Carpazzi were of the genuine optimates of the Roman Duchy."

"I think Cesare regrets in his heart," said the Princess Sansevero, "that his ancestors did not accept one, but I agree with him now."

She stirred her coffee slowly and then added, "I am fond of the boy, but I do not think I shall have him to dinner soon again. He is too uncontrolled."

The contessa agreed. And then, with her eyes half shut to avoid the smoke of her cigarette, she stared with fixed curiosity at Nina.

"Do you find people here like those in America?" she asked.

"Yes, some are quite like Americans," Nina answered, and added frankly, "but you at least are altogether different from any one I have ever seen!"

"Really, am I?" The contessa raised her eyebrows and laughed. "I know of what you are thinking!" She said it with a deliciously impulsive candor. "You are thinking of my marriage. Yes, it is true! The instant my father said 'no,' I took poison. It was the only way. Had fate willed it, I would have died. But fate willed that I should be—just married." She laughed again.

Nina glanced at her aunt, whose answering smile said clearly, "I told you she was like this."

The contessa lit another cigarette—everything she said and did seemed incongruous with her appearance, she was so fragile and so young. Nina became more and more fascinated as she watched her.

"But supposing that, after meeting him, you had not liked him?" she asked.

"That is impossible. I know always if I like people. I like people at sight—or I detest them! For instance, I detest Donna Francesca Dobini. She is a beauty, I know. She has charming manners; so has a cat. She is all soft sweetness. Ugh! I hate her!—But I like you."

Nina was delighted, but she could not help being amused. "You don't know me in the least," she laughed. "I may be a perfectly horrid person."

The contessa shrugged her shoulders. "That is nothing to me. No doubt I adore some very horrid persons!" Then impetuously she ran her arm through Nina's as they walked through the long row of rooms to the one where their wraps were. "I like you!" she repeated; "that is all there is to it!"

In the hall they were joined by the men, and started for the opera.

Here, Nina had an unusual opportunity to see Roman Society, as the house that night was brilliant with the people who were going afterwards to the Court Ball. Donna Francesca Dobini, a celebrated beauty, was rather affectedly draped in a tulle arrangement around her shoulders. The Contessa Olisco, who for the time being was forced to do without her cigarette, said to Nina:

"Look at her, there she is! She is 'going off,' so that she has to wrap tulle about her old neck to hide the wrinkles."

She moved the column of her young throat with conscious triumph as she spoke. A moment later, as though Nina would understand, she whispered: "There is the Potensi! No! In the box opposite. She has on a dress of purple velvet. Sitting very straight, and quantities of diamonds."

Nina put up her opera glass and encountered an insolent stare, as though the Contessa Potensi were purposely disdainful of the American girl.

"She is the same one with whom Don Giovanni danced opposite in the quadrille! Heavens! but she is a disagreeable person!"

"She has reason for looking disagreeable," announced the Contessa Zoya with a meaning laugh; but more she would not say.

Giovanni leaned over Nina's chair. "Do you find the Romans attractive? How does our opera compare with that of New York?"

"The house seems made of cardboard," Nina answered. "I never thought our opera houses especially wonderful——"

"No?" Giovanni rallied her. "Is it possible that you have anything in America that is not the most wonderful in the world! I am sure you will say your opera house is bigger! And richer! and more comfortable! Yes? Of course it is!" He laughed. "My apple is bigger than your apple. My doll is bigger than your doll! What children you are, you Americans!"

"If we are children," retorted Nina, piqued by his laughter, "we must be granted the advantages of youth!"

With a sudden gravity, but none the less mockingly, Giovanni besought her for enlightenment.

"We gain in enthusiasm, energy, and honesty," she announced sententiously. "A country and a people never attain perfection of finish until they have begun to grow decadent. I'd rather have my doll and my big apple than sit, like an old cynic, in the corner, watching the children play!"

She was immensely pleased with this speech,—mentally she quite preened herself. Giovanni looked amused, but the Contessa Potensi caught his glance from across the house, and his smile faded as he bowed. Nina, who had good eyes, saw a complete change in her face as she returned his salutation.

"Do you like that woman?"

"She is one of the beauties of Rome," he said evasively.

"No, but do you like her?" Nina could not herself have told why she was so insistent.

"She is an old friend of mine," he said lightly; then changed the subject. "Do you follow the hounds, Miss Randolph?"

"At home, yes." But she came back to the former topic. "Does she ride very well, the Contessa Potensi?"

"Wonderfully." This time he answered her easily. "But I am sure you ride well, too. Any one who dances as you do, must also be a horsewoman."

There was something in Giovanni's manner that excited suspicion, but she did not know of what. She half wondered if there had been a love affair between him and the Contessa. Maybe he had wanted to marry her and she had accepted Potensi instead. She wondered if Giovanni still cared; and for a while her sympathy was quite aroused.

The curtain went up and every one stopped talking. At the beginning of the entr'acte Giovanni left the box, and Count Tornik took his chair. He was a strange man, but Nina was beginning to like him. Notwithstanding his brusque indifference, he had a charm that he could exert when he chose. Giovanni's speeches were no more flattering than Tornik's lapses from boredom.

As a matter of fact, in spite of his assumed bad manners, the social instinct was so strong in him that, just as a vulgar person shows his origin in every unguarded moment or unexpected situation, Tornik's good breeding was constantly revealed. And in appearance, he was an attractive contrast to the Italians, tall, broad-shouldered, very blond, and high cheekboned; he might have been taken for an Englishman.

Presently her Majesty, the Dowager Queen, appeared in the royal box, and every one in the audience arose.

"Shall we see both queens to-night at the ball?" Nina asked the Princess Sansevero.

"No; only Queen Elena. The Queen Mother has never been present at a ball since King Umberto's tragic death."

"I wish this evening were over," said Nina, with a half-frightened sigh.

The Contessa Olisco, who had caught the remark and the sigh, asked sympathetically, "But why?"

"I was nervous enough over going alone to the presentation the other afternoon, but to go to a ball is much worse."

"But you won't be alone. We shall be there! You may have your endurance put to the test, though. Are you very strong?"

Nina laughed. "You mean, have I the strength to stand indefinitely without dropping to the floor?"

"Ah! you know, then, how it is. Still—if it is hard for us, think what it must be for their Majesties. To-night, for instance, the King does not once sit down!"

Nina opened her eyes wide. "I thought the King and Queen sat on their throne. But then—I had an idea the presentation would be like that, too—and that I should have to courtesy all across a room, and back out again."

The Contessa Zoya seemed to be occupied with a reminiscence that amused her. "If you have a special audience, you do, or if you go to take tea. We had a private audience yesterday with Queen Margherita and—I had on a long train—and clinging. Of course, entering the room is not hard—I made my three reverences very nicely, very gracefully, I thought,—one at the door, one half-way across the room, and one directly before the Queen, as I kissed her hand. But when the audience was over, the distance between where her Majesty sat and the door of exit—my dear, it seemed leagues! One must back all the way and make three deep courtesies! The first was simple, the second, half-way across the room, was difficult. I was already standing on nearly a meter of train, and when I got to the door—well, I just walked all the way up the back of my dress, lost my balance and fell out!"

Nina laughed at the picture, but was glad the presentation had not been like that.

"When you go to take tea with the Queen it is difficult, too," Zoya, having begun to explain, went on with all the details that came to mind. "Since two years Queen Elena has given 'tea parties' of about thirty or forty people. Her Majesty talks to every one separately, or in very small groups, while tea and cake and chocolate and iced drinks are served by the ladies in waiting—there are never any servants present. It is of course charming, and the Queen puts every one at ease, but there is always a feeling that you may do something dreadful—such as drop a spoon or have your mouth full just at the moment when her Majesty addresses a remark to you. At the Queen Mother's Court things are more formal—more ceremonious. I always feel timid before I go. And yet no sovereign could be more gracious, and her memory is extraordinary. She forgets nothing. Yesterday she asked me how the baby was. She knew his age, even his name and all about him. She asked me if he had recovered from the bronchitis he was subject to. Think of it!"

Nina looked long at the royal box, and could well believe the contessa's account. Her Majesty was talking to the Marchesa Valdeste.

Of all the older ladies to whom she had been presented, Nina liked the marchesa best. Her face had the sweet expression that can come only from genuine kindness and innate dignity. At a short distance from the royal box Don Cesare Carpazzi was talking to a young girl. Don Cesare's expression was for the moment transfigured; instead of arrogance, it suggested rather humility; both he and the young girl seemed deeply engrossed.

Tornik told Nina that she was Donna Cecilia Potensi, the little sister-in-law of the contessa in the box opposite. He also added that Carpazzi was supposed to be in love with her, and she with him, but they had not a lira to marry on. There were no poorer families in Italy than the Carpazzis and the Potensis.

Certainly there was nothing in the appearance of the young girl to indicate wealth, but her plain white dress with a bunch of flowers at her belt, and her hair as simply arranged as possible, only increased her Madonna-like beauty.

Nina was enchanted with her, and instinctively compared her appearance with that of the sister-in-law, glittering with diamonds. "The Contessa Potensi was a rich girl in her own right, I suppose," Nina remarked aloud.

With a suspicion of awkwardness Tornik glanced at Giovanni, who had returned to the box. The latter began to screw up his mustache as he replied in Tornik's stead. "The Contessa Potensi inherited some very good jewels from her mother's family, I am told."

"Her mother was an Austrian, a cousin of mine," Tornik drawled. "I never heard of that branch of the family's having anything but stubble lands and debts. However, it is evident she has got the jewels! I felicitate her on her valuable possessions. Elle a de la chance!" He shrugged his shoulders. Tornik's detached and impersonal manner gave no effect of insult, and Giovanni, beyond looking annoyed, made no further remark. But the Princess Sansevero interposed: