"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?"