He laughed lightly at her vanity, and, leaning
over, kissed her lovely shoulder. Quickly, with both hands she held him
close, her cheek against his.
"_Carissimo_," she said tensely, "if you ever love any other woman----"
"I love you," he said, against her lips; "let there be no doubt of
that." And there was a long silence between them.
Giovanni was not one of those who can withstand a woman of beauty. He
loved La Favorita passionately; she perhaps more than any one else could
hold him--a Griselda one day, a fury the next, but always alive and
always beautiful.
Yet he might have indulged his curiosity as to what she would do if
seriously aroused to jealousy, had it not been for his innate hatred of
all exhibitions of feeling, which seemed to him _bourgeois_. He knew
that if the dancer had an idea that he might be falling in love with
Nina, she would be capable of any scandal. On the other hand, he could
not imagine Favorita's being jealous of the American girl. He had often
congratulated himself that she was not jealous of her only real rival,
the Contessa Potensi, his devotion to whom, however, he had managed to
keep so quiet that very few persons in Rome had a suspicion of it.
The contessa, on the other hand, looked upon Giovanni's attention to the
dancer as an artifice practised solely on her account, so that the world
would the less suspect his attachment to herself.
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