Nina

“ I covered it with passionate kisses and tears—the first I had shed since my death—like trance-tears scalding and bitter welled into my eyes. Life was worth living while Nina’s smile lightened the world! I resolved to fight for existence, no matter what dire horrors should be yet in store for me. Nina—my love—my beautiful one! Her face gleamed out upon me in the pestilent gloom of the charnel-house ”

“ There are coarse elements in him, Nina, things that would utterly sicken and frighten you! Your father is right; you would be back with us in a few months or years, perhaps with a child, perhaps shattered in body as well as soul--not free to take up your life again with Ward and Amy, but scarred and embittered and changed--!"
"My God, how that woman loves the child!" Richard said to himself, watching her. To him she seemed inspired. Her eyes were blurred with tears, her voice shaking, and she had leaned over to clasp Nina's hands, and so hold the girl's unwilling attention. ”

“ If Nina were looking forward as you think—if she mistook the intention of those trinkets I gave her—well, you know, there was a young lady and her mother, two friends of mine, who came to the theatre on Saturday night, and I dare say Nina passed while I was talking to the young lady in the wings—and—and Nina may have imagined something. I can only guess—it is possible—"
"Now I know," said Estelle, rather sadly. "Poor Nina! And still you think she would come back if you could find her? Her pride makes her fly from you; and you think you would persuade her? Never, never! ”

“ After long years of chastening remembrances of trouble, after years of the outflow toward good of a heart that refused to be checked in its love, and would be able from personal experience to understand, and thus lift up lovingly, wounded souls, and with many of the perfections of a ripened womanhood, we can imagine Nina as admirable among women, a power for good, controlling through the heart rather than the intellect, as generous as the sun. ”

“ I know nothing of it, except my love for Nina. It isn’t that now there’s anybody. Don’t think that. There is no one—no one. Only my self-confidence is gone. I can’t see clearly any more. My duty is to Nina and Nicholas. And if they are happy nothing else matters—nothing. ”

“ But Nina, as she rose from her chair and walked backwards and forwards through her chamber, telling herself all these things, clenched her fist, and stamped her foot, as she swore to herself that she would dare all that the saints could do to her, that she would face all the terrors of the black dark river, before she would succumb to her cousin Ziska. As she worked herself into wrath, thinking now of the man she loved, and then of the man she did not love, she thought that she could willingly perish — if it were not that her father lay there so old and so helpless. ”

“ You know, Ivan Andreievitch, that Nina’s simply everything to me. I don’t talk about myself, do I? but at least I can say that since—oh, many, many years, she’s been the whole world and more than the whole world to me. Our mother and father were killed in a railway accident coming up from Odessa when Nina was very small, and since then Nina’s been mine—all mine!”
She said that word with sudden passion, flinging it at me with a fierce gesture of her hands. “Do you know what it is to want that something should belong to you, belong entirely to you, and to no one else? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The thought of shrimps and bread and butter for tea was too much for Nina’s greedy little soul. She did condescend to get off the hot bed and kiss Brenda, who for her part was quite delightful, for the time being. She even took the account-book and pencil, and said that they should not be seen again until the day after to-morrow. Then she washed Nina’s flushed face, and made her wear the objectionable pink muslin with the folds across the bottom in lieu of flounces, and that little straw hat, which cost exactly one-and-sixpence, including its trimming. ”

“ Nina laughed.
"She sees in the papers that you come back—it is to be a great occasion—she says to herself, 'Will he sing with that Italian girl? No! Let my throat be well or ill, I am going back;' and she is coming, Leo. Never mind; I am to have the part of Clara; is it not an advancement? And everything is so much more comfortable now; Miss Girond has taken a room with Mrs. Grey; then we go home always together, and she has the use of the piano—"
"Miss Ross, please!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now you seem glorious beings, and I the rotter. I am no use at all—"
Nina came close to me and touched my hand—
"Poor darling Nicholas," she said again.
Something hurt awfully, as I realized that to touch me now caused her no thrill. No woman will ever thrill again when I am near.
Nina does know all about clothes! She is the best-dressed Englishwoman I have ever seen. She has worked awfully well for the war, too, I hear, she deserves her fortnight in Paris. ”

“ While Rebecca was chafing Nina's hands and feet, and tying a handkerchief from off her own shoulders round Nina's neck, Souchey stood over them, not knowing what to propose. "Perhaps we had better carry her back to the old house," he said.
"I will not be carried back," said Nina.
"No, dear; the house is desolate and cold. You shall not go there. You shall come to our house, and we will do for you the best we can there, and you shall be comfortable. There is no one there but mother, and she is kind and gracious. She will understand that your father has died, and that you are alone." ”

“ Perhaps that was what I was sent into the world for—to make things easier for Nina. I could have done so much for her, too. I could have made a woman of her. She has her soft side: I know: I have seen it. No other man can say that. ”

“ Nina was told. She trembled a little, but was ready to do whatever was required of her.
"Well, now," said Maurice to her, when she came up that morning (he noticed that she was dressed with extreme neatness and grace, and also that she seemed pale and careworn, though her beautiful dark eyes had lost none of their soft lustre) , "we mustn't startle him. We must lead up to his seeing you. I wonder whether your playing those Neapolitan airs may not have left some impression on his brain?—they might sound familiar?"
At once Nina went to the piano and silently opened it. ”

“ It is true he had given Nina those presents from time to time in a careless and haphazard fashion that ought not to have been misunderstood—only, as he had to remind himself, Nina must have perceived that he did not give similar presents to Miss Burgoyne, or Estelle Girond,{275} or anybody else in the theatre. And was Nina now thinking that he had treated her badly?—Nina, who had been always his sympathizing friend, his gentle adviser, and kind companion. Was there any one in the world that he less wished to harm? ”

“ We should hear. No; Nina will make sure we cannot reach her—that she is not to be seen by you or me—then perhaps I have a message. Oh, she is very proud; she will make sure; the pain in her heart, she will hide it and hide it—until some time goes, and she can hold up her head, with a brave face. Poor Nina!—she will suffer—for she will not speak, no, not to any one."
"But look here, Miss Girond," he exclaimed, "if she has gone back to her friends in Italy, that's all right; but if she is in this country, without any occupation, her money will soon be exhausted—she can't have had so very much. ”

“ For two days after this Nina heard nothing from the Jews' quarter, and in her terrible distress her heart almost became softened towards the man who had so deeply offended her. She began to tell herself, in the weariness of her sorrow, that men were different from women, and, of their nature, more suspicious; that no woman had a right to expect every virtue in her lover, and that no woman had less of such right than she herself, who had so little to give in return for all that Anton proposed to bestow upon her. ”

“ Nina watched the party with increasing interest. "Look how funny that little woman is. When the guide tells her anything, she follows his directions as though he had a string tied to her nose." Nina began to laugh, and the princess turned to see two of the tourists, who, like rodents, seemed to be judging a statue of Hermes entirely by the sense of smell. The party came nearer, and the princess turned away. But Nina, alert, exclaimed, "The guide is pointing you out to them." ”

“ The innovation created quite a stir and no little admiration. She bowed to Nina with unusual civility, and made a formal acknowledgment of the pleasure of riding with her. Yet shortly after, when she joined a group of friends a distance farther on, she was laughing and glancing back as she spoke, in a way that left little doubt that she was making disparaging remarks.
Sansevero and Giovanni had mounted their hunters, and now joined Nina, but that gave her little pleasure, for the contessa immediately returned. Nina was glad when Donna Francesca Dobini and the young Prince Allegro cantered up. ”

“ Would you like me to find you a husband? Nina. No, sir. Count. How no? Nina. How no? Because it's no, because to marry I have no need of you. Count. Do you not need my protection? Nina. No, indeed, not a bit of it. Count. Do you understand all I can do in this village? Nina. You may be able to do all in the village, but you can do nothing in my marriage. Count. I can do nothing? Nina. [Smiling gently.] Nothing, in truth, nothing, nothing. Count. You are in love with Crispino. Nina. He is to my taste. Count. And you prefer him to that worthy man, to that rich man, that admirable man, Coronato? ”

“ Can you ever be happy if you have been the cause of ruin to your husband?"
Nina was again silent for a while, sitting with her face turned altogether away from the Jewess. Then she rose suddenly from her chair, and, facing round almost fiercely upon the other girl, asked a question, which came from the fulness of her heart, "And you — you yourself, what is it that you intend to do? Do you wish to marry him?"
"I do," said Rebecca, bearing Nina's gaze without dropping her own eyes for a moment. "I do. I do wish to be the wife of Anton Trendellsohn." ”

“ At the same instant he caught her arm.
"Why, Nina, you're just the spoiled child you always were! Ah, your English doesn't go so far as that; you don't know what a spoiled child is?—è la cianciosella, you Neapolitan girl! Why, of course I'm glad to see you—I am delighted to see you—but you frightened me, Nina—your coming like this, alone—"
"I frighten you, Leo?" she said, and a quick laugh shone brightly through her tears. "Ah, I see—it is that I have no chaperon? ”

“ Nina De Haaven, dark and delicate; Rose taller, stronger, with a beautiful eagerness in her face, as if she waited in trust and delight for whatever her destiny might bring. She was twenty-four, and she had never really feared anything in her life.
Rose was not afraid, now, of this new existence, only a little puzzled, because she would have to be the one to start it. Nina was five years older, but she was too gentle, too easily rebuffed; she had never quite trusted life again after her beloved husband died.
“There’s dinner,” thought Rose. ”

“ The habit of getting what she wanted was in her blood and she simply couldn’t understand being balked in anything. But Nina was beginning slowly and with some difficulty to grasp the essentials of Philip Gallatin’s character and the permanence of his reconstruction; and with the passage of time and event Nina had a glimmering of the true caliber of his mind, all of which brought out with unflattering definiteness her own frivolity and gave a touch of farce-comedy, with which she had in her heart been far from investing it, to her unconventional wooing. ”

“ But while she was struggling to speak, the other girl rose and knelt at Nina's feet, putting her long tapering fingers upon Nina's thread-bare arms, so that her forehead was almost close to Nina's lips. "He does," said Rebecca. "It is true — quite true. He loves you, poor as you are, ten times — a hundred times — better than he loves me, who am not poor. You have won it altogether by yourself, with nothing of outside art to back you. You have your triumph. Will not that be enough for a life's contentment?" ”

“ Why, then, had Clayton, who always unreservedly corresponded with his sister, not kept her apprised of his gradual attachment to Nina? The secret of the matter was, that he had had an instinctive consciousness that he could not present Nina to the practical, clear-judging mind of his sister, as she appeared through the mist and spray of his imaginative nature. The hard facts of her case would be sure to tell against her in any communication he might make; and sensitive people never like the fatigue of justifying their instincts. ”