s goes to
Giovanni--with Nina's immense fortune it would be very well. We could
all live as it used to be; there are the apartments on the second floor
in Rome, and the west wing here. I can think of nothing more fitting or
delightful. Has she grown pretty?"

"I don't know that you would call her pretty," mused the princess.

"Besides _you_, my dearest, a beauty might seem plain!" His wife tried
to look indifferent, but she was pleased, nevertheless.

"Tell me, Sandro, you flatterer, but tell me honestly, am I still
pretty? No, really? Will Nina think me the same, or will her thought be
'How my Aunt has gone off'?"

Melodramatically he seized her wrists and drew her to the window;
placing her in the full light of the sun, he peered with mock tragedy
into her face. "Let me see. Your hair--no, not a gray one! The gold of
your hair at least I have not squandered--yet."

"Don't, dear." She would have moved away, but he held her.

"Your face is thinner, but that only shows better its beautiful bones.
Ah, now your smile is just as delicious--but don't wrinkle your forehead
like that; it is full of lines. So--that is better. You make the eyes
sad sometimes; eyes should be the windows that let light into the soul;
they should be glad and admit only sunshine." Then with one of his
lightning transitions of mood, he added, not without a ring of emotion,
"_Mia povera bella_."

But Eleanor reached up and took his face between her hands. "As for
you," she said, "you are always just a boy. Sometimes it is impossible
to believe you are older than I--I think I should have been your
mother."

CHAPTER III

NINA

A ponderous, glossy, red Limousine turned in under the wrought bronze
portico of one of the palatial houses of upper Fifth Avenue. As the car
stopped, the face of a woman of about forty appeared at its window. Her
expression was one of fretful annoyance, as though the footman who had
sprung off the box and hurried up the steps to ring the front doorbell
had, in his haste, stumbled purposely. The look she gave him, as he held
the door open for her to alight, rebuked plainly his awkward stupidity.

Yet, in spite of Mrs. Randolph's petulant expression, it was evident
that she had distinct claims to prettiness, though of the carefully
prolonged variety. The art of the masseuse was visible in that curious
swollen smoothness of the skin which gives an effect of spilled
candle-wax--its lack of wrinkles never to be m