Nina glanced appealingly at her aunt, but Eleanor's back was turned. Involuntarily she looked toward the doorway—Giovanni was to meet them there, and she longed to see his slender figure appear between the portières, to hear the announcement of the well-known name which was no less great than that of the odious man who was trying to compromise her by his air of proprietorship.
Nina could stand it no longer, and sprang to her feet, in the very midst of a long-winded story about—she had no idea what the duchess was saying to her, but she realized that she had done an inexcusably gauche thing, not only interrupting, but in starting to go before her chaperon made the move. And her discomfiture was increased by a quick sense of the Potensi's derisive criticism. Recovering herself, she exclaimed rapidly: "I am so much interested in sculpture; may I look at that statue?"
The duchess, far from showing resentment at the interruption, was apparently delighted with the opportunity of impressing upon her guest the greatness of the palace and the family of the Scorpas. "Certainly," she cooed, as nearly as a snapping turtle can imitate a turtledove; "that is a genuine Niccola Pisano. The original document is still intact in which he agreed with the cardinal of our house to execute it himself. The portrait of our ancestor who ordered the statue is in the gallery."
Before Nina could resist, she found herself being conducted between mother and son through the numerous rooms which terminated finally in the gallery. Unlike most of the collections of Italy, this included many modern canvases.
Before the portrait of a thin, heavy-boned, frightened-looking English girl, the duke assumed a deeply sentimental air, sighing as though out of breath. "That is the portrait of my beloved Jane," he said. "It was painted by Sargent while we were on our honeymoon." The artist, with his consummate skill of characterization, had transferred a crushed, fatalistic helplessness to the canvas. Nina found herself, partly in pity, partly in contempt, scrutinizing the face of the woman who had brought herself to marry such a man.
Suddenly an indescribable feeling of oppression seized her. She looked away from the picture, and then, glancing around to speak to the duchess, she saw the edge of her dress disappearing through the hangings of the doorway, while between herself and her retreating hostess stood the stolid figure of the duke, with the most odious smile imaginable upon his horrid face.
With a flush of anger that made her temples throb, Nina realized that a dastardly trap had been sprung upon her. To leave a young girl even for a moment unchaperoned was against the strictest rule of Italian propriety. The duchess had brought her all this distance on purpose to leave her with the villainous duke—in a situation that, should it become known, would so compromise an Italian girl that there would be no place for her in the social system of her world afterward outside of a convent. Her marriage with the duke would be almost inevitable.
Determined to give no evidence of the terror that gripped her, with the most fearless air she could assume she attempted to pass the duke; but he blocked her way so that her manœuvres came down to the indignity of a game of blind man's buff. Nina held her head very high and looked straight at her tormentor. "Please allow me to pass." She tried hard to speak quietly and to keep the tremulousness out of her voice.
For answer Scorpa quickly closed the intervening distance between them, and the next thing she knew the grasp of his thick, hot hands burned through the sleeve of her coat, and his face was thrust near to her own. In a frenzy of fury she wrenched herself free, and without thought or even consciousness of what she was doing, she struck him full in the face.
Instead of recoiling, he caught and pinned her arms in a grip like a vice. "Ah, ha, so that is the mettle you are made of, is it, you little fiend! Don't think that I mind your fury—you will be a wife after my own heart when I have tamed you! I am a man of my word—I said I would marry you, and I will! Not many men would want to marry a woman of your temper, but you suit me!"