r a nephew-in-law a St. Anthony?"

As the princess still looked worried, he seemed afraid that he had hurt
his project. "Giovanni is of a type that women like," he said
reassuringly, "and probably he has had his successes--that is all I
meant. Don't be so suspicious! I want merely to further the interests of
two young people who are in every way suited to each other. Giovanni may
be an anchorite, for all I know."

Eleanor stood turning her wedding ring round and round on her finger.
Then she looked anxiously into her husband's face. He was puffing at a
cigarette that he had lighted, and his eyes looked back into hers with
the perfectly innocent expression of a child's.

CHAPTER IX

A DOOR IS OPENED THAT GIOVANNI PREFERS TO KEEP CLOSED

The eyes of La Favorita boded good to no one! As a hostess her
deportment left much to be desired, but since her visitors were limited
to her very intimate friends it mattered, perhaps, little. At all
events, as guest after guest arrived in her over-decorated salon, she
looked up expectantly, and then resumed her expression of ugly
indifference.

"_Per Bacco!_" she muttered quite audibly enough for one to overhear,
"this crowd seems to think I have asked all Rome to supper!"

She attacked two young men of fashion as they entered. Fortunately, her
manner somewhat modified the rudeness of her words--and the ill humor of
her tone carried no conviction. "You cannot come in. I did not invite
you! I have no room!"

Instead of being angry, one, the Count Rosso, answered her in a voice
that was half jesting, half conciliatory, in the familiar second person
singular: "But thou art quite mad, my dear! We were all asked at Zizi's
supper. I, for one, call it very ungracious of you to try to dispense
with our agreeable society."

La Favorita lapsed once more into indifference. "Oh well, I don't
care"--she shrugged her shoulders--"I don't care whether you all go or
stay!"

A moment later a group that had formed at the end of the room made a
great noise, and the hostess, suddenly rousing again, swept toward them
with the floating motion of the professional dancer. "I wish you to
understand," she said in a fury, "that you are to comport yourselves in
my house as you would in the palaces of the nobility!"

The group fell into a half-sympathetic hush as she moved back again to
the door of the entrance. A little woman--a _cafe_ singer--broke into a
snatch of song:

"The moo