"NINA LOOKED AT HIM—'I WONDER IF YOU WOULD BE AMUSED IF YOU KNEW WHY I LAUGHED'"
"If it gives you pleasure—it is delicious, whatever it is!"
All the softness went out of the girl's brown eyes; they glittered curiously. "Yes," she said, "that is just what I thought." After which ambiguous remark she returned to her former gayety—"Come," she said, "let's go fast; we shall be the last!" Urging her horse, she galloped across the fields.
She would have been at a loss to understand her own vacillations of mood that day: she seemed to feel an unaccountable revulsion against every one. The gesticulations of the men around her, their airs and blandishments, annoyed her. Not an hour earlier she had found John dull and flat by comparison with Europeans. Now suddenly they were effeminate dandies, and John alone was a real man.
But the exhilaration of jumping brought her to a more equable frame of mind, and at the first check she and the Prince Allegro were in the lead. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright from the long gallop.
They had stopped on a knoll out on the Campagna, and Nina remained apart from the other hunters, walking her horse slowly, while Allegro went over to the carriage to get a handkerchief for her from the Princess Sansevero. She drew in deep breaths of the fresh air, as she gazed out over the rolling hills to the snowclad tops of the Albanian mountains glistening in the sunshine.
Then suddenly a deep, oily voice jarred through her wandering thoughts. "You are very pensive!" exclaimed the Duke Scorpa, appearing beside her.
Nina started violently, for, besides his unexpected appearance, there was something in this man's personality that always sent a shudder through her.
"The Marchese di Valdo has been telling me that I am very gay," she answered, not so much to give the duke the information as to contradict him.