"Now you see," Giovanni answered her, as though there were a new and strong bond of sympathy between them, "why decorations are unnecessary. Can you imagine these walls, which for centuries have looked down upon every great personage of Rome, being decked up like a Christmas tree because a number of people whose achievements are in no way illustrious are coming for an hour or two?"
"I think," said Nina, "that I shall dance like a wraith. It seems almost a sacrilege to bob around and prattle in such surroundings. How silly their sainted ghosts might think us!"
"I never thought of the old masters as saints exactly. But come, Mademoiselle—let us pretend—in each of those chandeliers are burning a hundred wax candles. 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. He was in this, just as he was in everything else, a remnant of a past age; he had merely been transformed into a Bacchant! He was in no way a mere young man who had grabbed a young girl around the waist and made her dance.
But as the princess watched them, her feelings were strongly at variance. Admiration played the greater part. Even a much less biased mind than hers could not have failed to appreciate the wonderful grace of the man and the girl, for Nina was as graceful as he. Yet the princess looked vaguely troubled, too, at the thought that Giovanni was perhaps overstepping his privilege.
"Giovanni! Nina!" she called, but she might as well have appealed to the wind that blew through the courtyard below, and instead of their heeding she felt her own waist encircled as Sansevero, who had entered by the door behind her, swept her into the dance with him. "But, Sandro!" she exclaimed, resisting, "it is . . . not seemly! What if . . . the servants . . . should . . . see us?" But, joining Giovanni in the tune he was whistling, Sansevero seemed to have caught some of his brother's humor. If Giovanni had become the spirit of grace, Alessandro had become the spirit of recklessness, and Eleanor was whirled, breathless, not as one dances usually, but madly, so that her feet barely touched the floor. To add to the revelry of the scene, the Great Dane, who was never far from Giovanni's side, now joined the general whirl and leaped round and round as though he had but newly come from a bath, his deep bark punctuating the valse the two men were whistling. The princess felt an apprehensive dread of a servant's intrusion, and again a breathless "Sandro, stop!" escaped her lips just as——
The portière was lifted and the footman announced, "Suo Eccellenza il Duca di Scorpa!"
"Ah, I hope I do not intrude upon the family gaiety!" The duke's face was insinuatingly bland and his manner smooth as an eel.
The dancers stopped instantly. The princess flushed, but otherwise only one who knew her intimately might have guessed that she was conscious of having been put in the position of a careless and undignified chaperon. But she winced inwardly, and felt no reassurance in the knowledge that the duke's tongue was known to be more skillful in the art of embroidering than the fingers of the most expert needlewoman. 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.