nd the greater delight of showing Nina to Rome.

She glanced up at two photographs, the only ones on her desk. The first
was of her husband, taken in the fancy costume of a troubadour, with the
signature "Sandro" across the lower half, in characters symbolical of
the song he might have sung, so gay and ascending was the handwriting.
The other picture was of a young woman in evening dress. The face was
bright and winning rather than pretty; the personality really chic, and
this in spite of the fact that the girl's clothes were over-elaborate.
Her dress was a mass of embroidery, and around her throat she wore a
diamond collar. Diamond hairpins held the loops of waving fair
hair--very like the princess's own--and two handsome rings were on the
fingers of one hand. It in no way suggested the Italian idea of a young
girl; yet there was a youthful freshness in the expression of the face,
a girlish slimness of the figure that could not have been produced by
touching up the negative. Under the picture was written in a clear and
modernly square handwriting, "To my own Auntie Princess with love from
Nina."

The name "Auntie Princess" carried as much of Nina's personality to the
mind of her aunt as the picture itself. It was the one her childish lips
had spoken when she was told that her aunt was to marry a prince. Most
distinct of all Eleanor Sansevero's memories of home was one of Nina
being held up high above the crowd at the end of the pier to blow
good-by kisses to the bride of a foreign nobleman, being carried out
into the river whose widening water was making actual the separation
between herself and all that till then had been her life.

It was only for a little while, she had thought at the time. She would
go back once a year or so, surely; and Nina should come over often. But
in the intervening fifteen years, though the Randolphs had been in
Europe many times, they had always chosen midsummer for their trip, and
the princess had joined her sister at some northern city or
watering-place. This visit, therefore, was to be Nina's first glimpse
of her aunt's home, and the princess was determined that she should not
spend the time desolately in the country! She might come here for a
little while--for reasons that the princess would have found hard to
explain to herself, she did not want Nina to get a false impression. Yet
for nothing would she have exposed her husband's failing--even to her
own family. With the weakness of a