haped muff. Her diamond earrings were enormous, but not
very good stones. Nina's dress was of raspberry cloth, cut in the latest
exaggeration of fashion--her skirt was short and skimp as her hat was
huge. Her muff of sables as big and soft as a pillow--she could easily
have buried her arms in it to the shoulder. The elaborateness of Nina's
clothes filled the contessa with satisfaction, for she thought them
barbarously inappropriate, and she knew that Giovanni was a martinet so
far as "fitness" went.

Presently, in spite of her more than rude greeting, she coolly sat down
beside Nina. "Will you make me a cup of tea? I like it without sugar
and with very little cream." She did not smile, and she did not say
"please." Her bearing was a fair example of the cold, impersonal
insolence of which Italian women of fashion are capable when
antagonistic.

After a time she leaned over and scrutinized Nina's watch, as though it
were in a show case. "Do many young girls in America wear jewels?"

Nina found herself congealing; instead of answering, she handed the
contessa her tea, and expressed a hope that she had not put in too much
cream.

Taking no notice of Nina's evasion, the contessa, talking
indiscriminately about people, arrived finally at the subject of
Giovanni. In her opinion, the Marchese di Valdo ought to marry money!
Unfortunately, however, she feared he had loved too many women to be
capable now of caring for one alone. From this she went to generalities.
A man had but one grand passion in a lifetime, didn't Nina think so?

Nina's thoughts were very hazy, indeed, about grand passions, which were
associated dimly in her mind with the seven deadly sins--in the category
of things one didn't speak of. So she answered vaguely, feeling like a
stupid child being cross-examined by the school commissioner.

"Still, he is very attractive, don't you find? Of course, he says the
same things to all of us--but then no one understands how to make love
as well as he, so what does it matter whether he means it or not? It
takes a woman of great experience," insinuated the contessa, "to parry
Giovanni's fencing with the foils of love."

Nina was goaded into answering. "You seem to know a great deal about his
love-making," she said at last, with the breathy calm of controlled
temper.

Half shutting her eyes, the contessa replied: "It is common hearsay. One
has only to follow the list of his conquests to know that he must be a
past