"Who, indeed, but Scorpa! He has the luck, that man!"
"Were you there? I thought you never played any more; have you taken it up again?"
Sansevero, glancing apprehensively at his wife, answered quickly, "I never play." Fortunately, just then the dangerous conversation was ended by the arrival of the Contessa Potensi. She smiled graciously upon the prince as he pressed her hand to his lips, and bestowed the left-over remnant of the same smile, upon Tornik. She also kissed the air on either side of the princess with much affection, and shook hands cordially with two other ladies who were present, but she directed toward Nina the barest glance.
She and Nina, by the way, furnished at the moment a typical illustration of the difference in appearance between European and American women.
The contessa was wearing an untrimmed, black tailor-made costume with a very long train, a little fur toque to match a small neck piece, and a little sausage-shaped muff. Her diamond earrings were enormous, but not very good stones. Nina's dress was of raspberry cloth, cut in the latest exaggeration of fashion—her skirt was short and skimp as her hat was huge. Her muff of sables as big and soft as a pillow—she could easily have buried her arms in it to the shoulder. The elaborateness of Nina's clothes filled the contessa with satisfaction, for she thought them barbarously inappropriate, and she knew that Giovanni was a martinet so far as "fitness" went.
Presently, in spite of her more than rude greeting, she coolly sat down beside Nina. "Will you make me a cup of tea? I like it without sugar and with very little cream." She did not smile, and she did not say "please." Her bearing was a fair example of the cold, impersonal insolence of which Italian women of fashion are capable when antagonistic.
After a time she leaned over and scrutinized Nina's watch, as though it were in a show case. "Do many young girls in America wear jewels?"
Nina found herself congealing; instead of answering, she handed the contessa her tea, and expressed a hope that she had not put in too much cream.
Taking no notice of Nina's evasion, the contessa, talking indiscriminately about people, arrived finally at the subject of Giovanni. In her opinion, the Marchese di Valdo ought to marry money! Unfortunately, however, she feared he had loved too many women to be capable now of caring for one alone. From this she went to generalities. A man had but one grand passion in a lifetime, didn't Nina think so?
Nina's thoughts were very hazy, indeed, about grand passions, which were associated dimly in her mind with the seven deadly sins—in the category of things one didn't speak of. So she answered vaguely, feeling like a stupid child being cross-examined by the school commissioner.