Derby looked up from the water. "Go ahead—say what you like——"
"You ought to marry Miss Randolph!" Porter declared abruptly, and before Derby could protest he hurried on: "Yes, I know what you would say—she is too rich and she is scheduled to marry a title. But I don't think she is the sort of girl that really puts as much stock in titles as it would seem; and as for money, by the time you have two or three mines like the 'Little Devil' going, you will be pretty rich yourself. Even with your present prospects, no one could accuse you of marrying her for her fortune."
"Prospects are very different from actual money, and compared to her I'm a pauper," Derby answered. "I don't care what people accuse me of, but to marry a girl like Nina Randolph—even assuming the unlikelihood that she'd have me—would be a fatal mistake, unless I had a fortune to match her own. Every changing hour of the day would bring fresh doubt; she would never believe in a poor man's love. How could she!"
Derby stood up straight, thrust his hands into the pockets of his ulster, and as Porter tried to protest, he withdrew from the discussion by declaring that there was nothing to discuss. For himself—he was but a human machine that God had set upon the earth to bore holes in it, and to set swarms of human ants working.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SPIDER'S WEB
In Rome, after Easter, society blossomed out afresh. Giovanni Sansevero had returned, and to Nina the commencement of the spring season promised a repetition of the winter.
Nina's antipathy to the Duke Scorpa remained unchanged, and to her annoyance it had happened frequently, when dining out, that he had taken her in to dinner. Each time his unctuous, "It is my pleasure, Signorina, to conduct you," gave her so strong a feeling of resentment that she had to exert a real effort to put her finger tips on his coat sleeve. She always kept the distance between them as wide as possible by the angle at which her arm was bent.
On looking back, however, she had to acknowledge that his manner had undergone a radical change. He no longer alarmed her by aggressive pursuit, nor sought to lead the conversation to those personal topics which she had found so repellent. Furthermore, he never alluded to the threat he had made to her that day at the hunt, nor even mentioned his rejected suit. And yet she felt apprehensively that he had not given up his original determination.