d not bring himself to read into the duke's words
a covert threat. His first impulse was to repeat the conversation to
Eleanor, but he knew how the mere suspicion that Scorpa had detected her
false stones had worried her. Curiously enough, in Sansevero's mind the
larger issue of the picture was quite overlooked in the more immediate
consideration of the jewels. By the time he reached home he had decided
to wait until further events should show Scorpa's intentions. And until
then he would say nothing to any one--least of all to Eleanor.

In the meantime Nina was galloping across the Campagna. For a while the
fear of Scorpa remained, but when she realized that he was no longer
with the hunt, she breathed more freely, and again began to enjoy the
day. It was almost as though she were riding through the country at
home. She might have been hunting in Westchester, or on Long Island,
for any actual difference that there was, and the finish, as at home,
was merely anise seed, and the hounds were fed raw meat.

CHAPTER XVII

NINA DUSTS BEHIND THE COUNTER

Kate Titherington, daughter of Alonzo K. Titherington, the Pittsburg
iron magnate, had some six years before married the Count Masco. After a
short experience of living in his ancestral palace, they had moved into
an apartment out in the new part of the city; very handsome, very
luxurious and modern in every way. "Deliver me from these musty old
dungeons!" she had exclaimed to her husband. "I will give a free deed of
gift to the rats, who are really, my dear, the only beings I can think
of to whom this tumbledown barracks of yours would be comfortable." Her
husband was a meek and inoffensive appendage, who had been well brought
up by an overbearing mother and turned over, perfectly trained, to the
strenuous requirements of the bonny Kate.

The vivid Countess Masco, _nee_ Titherington, was looked upon with
disfavor by the more conservative Romans, and her position was rather,
one might say, on the outer edge of the inner circle. There were those
who liked her, and who found her amusing and lively; indeed, that was
the trouble--it was her liveliness that had banished her to the outer
edge, instead of making a place for her in the inmost circle, where
Eleanor Sansevero, for instance, was so securely established.

Nina had known Kate Titherington one summer at Bar Harbor, but her first
encounter with this flamboyant personality in Italy was at the Grand
Hotel a few d