Emily Post

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Nina encouraged. "Can't I help?—Oh, I wish I could!"
"No!" He threw himself into the farthest possible corner of the carriage. "No, no! I could not let you do that!"
Quickly a suspicion of the difficulty crossed her mind. "Uncle Sandro, I want you to tell me! You know that I love Aunt Eleanor better than almost any one in the world. If to help you is to help her—and it is in my power—I really think you ought to tell me."
He weakened, hesitated. "Give me your promise you will not tell Leonora——?"
"You have it!" She put her hand back into his.
"It is this, then: I am the weakest man imaginable. ”

“ One can't have rigidity and flexibility both in the same person. For the pliancy of understanding, the easy sympathy, one has to relinquish a certain moral steadfastness."
Suddenly the princess looked away and spoke very lightly, as though merely brushing over the surface of the thoughts in her mind: "What would you have, dear? Men are men—it is well not to question too far. Even the best of them have to be forgiven sometimes." Under the light tone, there was an unwonted vibration, and though the princess's face was partly averted, Nina caught a shadow of pain in her eyes. ”

“ The duke and his mother appeared to her as cuttlefish in a cave under perpendicular cliffs that ran into the sea. Nina was out in a little boat alone, and the waves dashed the tiny craft nearer and nearer to the cave where the cuttlefish were waiting; finally she came so close that one tentacle seized her. Terrified, she awoke. After hours of half-waking, half-sleeping, formless confusion, she dreamed again. In this dream she and Giovanni were on horseback. She was sitting in a most precarious position on the horse's shoulder, but was held securely by Giovanni's arm around her waist. ”

“ 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." ”

“ In the midst of Eleanor's talk of John Derby, she tried to imagine what John would have done in Giovanni's place. He would have thrashed the man within an inch of his life—that she knew. But, manly as that would have been, it could not compare with Giovanni's course in silently waiting fourteen or fifteen hours and then deliberately going out in the dull gray dawn and standing up at forty paces as a target for Scorpa's bullet. ”

“ 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! ”

“ All that evening Nina was tense and nervous, not only because of her experience at the Palazzo Scorpa, but because of something portentous in Giovanni's unexplained demand for silence. He was not at the same dinner party with her, but she went on to a dance at the Marchese Valdeste's, feeling sure that she would have a chance to speak with him there. He always danced with her several times during a ball, and, as he was not very much taller than she, she could easily talk to him without danger of any one's overhearing. ”

“ Then something in her face held him, and at the same time his impulsive boyishness—a little dramatic, perhaps, but only so much as is consistent with his race—carried him into a new mood.
"Leonora, I suppose I am in the wrong—indeed I am sure I am utterly at fault; but help me. Don't you see, carissima, this time I did not wager—it was a business venture!"
In the midst of her distress she could not help but smile at the absurdity.
"Scorpa is doing it all," he continued—"not I. You know what a clever business man he is! He assured me that it was a rare chance—the opportunity of a lifetime. ”

“ Sansevero followed his wife's cue, but without feeling her dismay, for he, it must be remembered, liked Scorpa. He had the naïve 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. ”

“ In the allée of cypress trees have walked many of the great lovers of Italy's romance. From this terrace end Beatrice herself is said to have thrown a rose of that very bush's parent stem to her immortal lover. Every corner of the garden holds its story of meetings that made of it a paradise, of partings that made of it an inferno. What is paradise, but love? Inferno, but the sorrow of love? ”

“ Nina was deeply hurt. "That is pretty blunt," she said, the pupils of her eyes contracted as though the sun blinded them. "Have you ever seen the man you speak of? No? Well, you would not say such a thing if you had. I hate him!"
Derby seemed fated to blunder. Again he made the wrong remark. "Hate, they say, is next to love."
His lack of insight, so palpable in contrast with Giovanni's keenness of perception, was too much for Nina's new sensitiveness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nina colored with indignation. "Have you known that, too, and never told me? Zoya, you call yourself my friend!"
But Zoya met Nina's glance squarely, as she asked in turn: "What difference does it make? Though, for that matter, I've made it plain all winter; any one but a baby would have understood long ago. But after all, why such an excitement over such a commonplace fact?" Then, with far more interest, she said: "You certainly are funny, you Americans. What in the world do you think men are? And since Giovanni is not even married? ”

“ This visit, therefore, was to be Nina's first glimpse of her aunt's home, and the princess was determined that she should not spend the time desolately in the country! She might come here for a little while—for reasons that the princess would have found hard to explain to herself, she did not want Nina to get a false impression. Yet for nothing would she have exposed her husband's failing—even to her own family. With the weakness of a true wife, she never dreamed that all her world suspected, if it did not actually know, of the great inroads on her fortune that his gambling had made. ”

“ The princess answered thoughtfully: "I am glad you are not to marry Giovanni—yes, I am glad. Yet even so, he might make a good husband."
Instantly the blood rushed to Nina's head, "Don't you love me more than to let me risk a life of wretchedness?" she exclaimed, but the look in her aunt's face brought from the girl an immediate apology, and presently the princess said:
"I don't think I should want you to marry over here at all. At first I hoped it might be possible—but I am afraid you would be unhappy. There are plenty of girls who might be content, but not you!" ”

“ Anthony, the great Dane, who, since Giovanni's illness, had attached himself to Nina, stalked after her. She went through the intervening rooms into the picture gallery, and there dropped down upon a low marble seat and took the big dog's head in her arms.
She believed in Giovanni's disinterestedness; he had given her every reason to think he truly loved her. It seemed to her that she had seen his real feeling grow gradually. If she could believe in any one ever, she must believe in him. ”

“ Her excellency the Princess Sansevero sat up in bed. Reaching quickly across the great width of mattress, she pulled the bell-rope twice, then, shivering, slid back under the warmth of the covers. She drew them close up over her shoulders, so far that only a heavy mass of golden hair remained visible above the old crimson brocade of which the counterpane was made. The room was still darkened so that the objects in it were barely discernible, but presently one of the high, carved doors opened and a maid entered, carrying a breakfast tray. ”

“ With his heart almost frozen, he dashed around the corner in time to see Derby plunging into the underbrush. Like a wild man Porter shouted, "I'm coming, Jack, I'm coming!"—impelling his already spent horse to the spot where Derby had disappeared into the thicket.
Derby, like all men who live much in the woods, had almost an animal's instinct for danger, and his ears, supersensitive to wood sounds, had caught a moving in the bushes. To get his revolver in hand and drop forward behind his horse's shoulders had been the act of a second, and the bullet whistled [Pg 260] over his head. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”