Some of
it she paid out for my debts; the greater portion I put into the 'Little
Devil' mine. I might much better have shoveled it into the Tiber. Do you
know what she has done--the woman whom you criticise as a bad manager
and stigmatize as mean--I would not care what you said, if you had not
thought Leonora mean! _Dio mio_, MEAN! Know, then, that the very jewels
she wears are false; that the real ones have been sold--to pay the debts
of the man standing before you--the gambling debts of the head of one of
the noblest houses in Italy!"
Giovanni was deeply moved, for this was a wound in his one vulnerable
point, his pride of birth. The cigarette dropped to the floor unheeded.
He moistened his lips as Alessandro continued:
"They were Leonora's own jewels that were sold, mark you. The Sansevero
heirlooms will go to your son's wife intact, as they came to mine! But
that is not all: I have given my oath to Leonora never again to go into
a game of chance, and really I want to keep it! Yet you know--no, you
don't; no one can who hasn't the fever in his veins--if I see a game, it
is as though an unseen force had me in its grip, drawing me against my
will; I can't resist! At Savini's I was dining, and I did not know they
were going to play--I won a very little; enough to pay the interest on
what I owe Meyer.
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