At all events he is young--that is
compared to your uncle and me. It has been dull for you, darling, with
no one your own age."
Nina interrupted her reproachfully. "Don't you dare! To hear you, one
might suppose you were a hundred. I don't care a bit whether Don
Giovanni is a Calaban or an Antinous--All the same," she laughed, "had I
better tidy my hair--or does it not matter?"
The tourists were all filing out of the castle now, and as the porter
locked the doors, the princess shook hands with the little American.
"Thank you, Your Highness," she said, "you have been real kind. We--I
didn't think, when I left home that I was going to be talking this way
to princesses. I never dreamed they were like you; and you talk
beautiful English, too."
With a warm impulse the princess laid her left hand over the
cotton-gloved one in her right.
"Ah, but I was an American myself," she said, "and it does me good to
see a country-woman."
They parted. Again the guide made a deep reverence to "Her Excellency,"
but to Nina the look in his eyes seemed both sly and suspicious.
In the meantime, the pony-cart carrying the prince and his brother was
jogging slowly up the hills from the station.
Don Giovanni Sansevero--by his own title the Marchese di Valdo--was
still on the hither side of thirty, but if a reputation for being
"irresistible to women" goes for anything, he must by this time have
had some experience in their ways.
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