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-à-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.