"
Derby laughed incredulously. "Well, if you mean it, come along! I wish
you would." Porter meant it enough to be interested in the project, at
any rate, for later the two men dined together, and they discussed
arrangements and expedients all the evening.
Derby went to the Palazzo Sansevero the next day, but again he had much
to talk over with the prince, and saw little of Nina. In some
unaccountable way she seemed changed; nothing definite happened to mark
the difference that he vaguely felt, but Mrs. Davis's remark came back
to him--"The Europeans are so finished," and he wondered whether Nina
found him unfinished; he even wondered whether he was or not--which was
a good deal of wondering for him.
At first, Sansevero's investment in the "Little Devil" had seemed to
Derby merely the unfortunate venture the prince thought it, but when, in
the course of their talk, it came out that Scorpa was the "friend" who
had sold him the mine, Derby was sure that the duke had deliberately
saddled him with a property which he knew to be useless. And yet every
word that Scorpa had urged as a reason for the mine's value, was--taken
literally--true. The mine was in close proximity to his own; the
surveys, furthermore, showed the "Little Devil" to be the richest in
sulphur deposit of any in the region.
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