On the evening of the first court ball, the Sanseveros gave a small dinner, after which they went to the opera. The guests were the Count and Countess Olisco, Count Tornik, Don Cesare Carpazzi, and Prince Minotti. Don Cesare Carpazzi, a thin swarthy youth, sat just across the corner of the table from Nina. Although his appearance was one of great neatness, it was all too evident, if one observed with good eyes, that the edges of his shirt had been trimmed with the scissors until the hem narrowed close to the line of stitching; and his evening clothes in a strong light would have revealed not only the fatal gloss of long use, but also careful darning. The old saying that "Clothes make the man" was refuted in his case, however, as his arrogance was proclaimed in every gesture.

Sitting next to him was the Countess Olisco, the Russian whom Nina had noted and admired at her aunt's ball. As there were but nine at dinner, and the conversation was general, Nina had time to observe closely her appearance. She had the broad Russian brow, the Egyptian eyes and unbroken bridge of the nose. She was the most slender woman imaginable, and her slenderness was exaggerated by the fashion of wearing her hair piled up so high and so far forward that at a distance it might be taken for a small black fur toque tipped over her nose. She rarely wore colors, but to-night, because of the etiquette against wearing black at court, her long-trained dress was of sapphire blue velvet, as severe and as clinging as possible.

Nina divined better than she knew, when she put the little Russian and Carpazzi in the same category. Fundamentally they were much the same, but whereas he was always bursting into flame, the contessa suggested a well banked fire that burned continually, but within destroyed itself rather than others. Thin, white, and self-consuming, she was like the small Russian cigarettes that were never out of her lips. Fragile as she looked, she had a will that brooked no obstacle, an energy that knew no fatigue.

Aside from her appearance, the story that Giovanni had related of the contessa's marriage was in itself enough to arouse the interest of any girl alive to romance. According to him, she was the daughter of a Russian nobleman of great family and wealth. The Count Olisco (a mild-eyed Italian boy, he looked) had been attached to the legation at St. Petersburg. Zoya was only sixteen years old when she announced her intention of marrying him. Her father, furious that the Italian had dared approach his daughter, demanded his recall, whereupon she told him the astonishing news that Olisco had never, to her knowledge, even seen her. But she declared that if her father did not marry her to him, she would kill herself.

She did take poison but, being saved by the doctors, who discovered it through her maid, she sent the same maid to tell the Count Olisco the whole story. The romance of her act, coupled with her beauty and her birth, naturally so flattered the young Italian that he offered himself as a suitor, and, her father relenting, they were married.

Nina was left for some time to her own thoughts, as her Italian (not particularly fluent at best) was altogether lacking in idiom, and she missed the point of most that was said. In the first lull, the Count Olisco asked her the usual question put to every stranger, "How do you like Rome?"

The Countess Olisco, like an echo, caught and repeated her husband's inquiry, "Ah, and do you like Rome?"

And then Carpazzi hoped she liked Rome—and this very harmless subject was tossed gently back and forth, until Prince Minotti gave it an unexpectedly violent fling by remarking, "I suppose Signorina, that you have been impressed"—he held the pause with evident satisfaction—"with the great history of the Carpazzi, without which there would be no Rome!"

All at once the young man in the threadbare coat became like a live wire! His hair, which already was en brosse, seemed to rise still higher on his head, his thin lips quivered, and his hands worked in a complete language of their own. He put up an immediate barrier with his palms held rigidly outward. All the table stopped to look, and to listen.

"Does a Principe Minotti"—he pronounced the word "Principe" with a sneering curl of the lips—"dare to criticize a Carpazzi?" He threw back his head with a jerk.

"What is he?" whispered Nina to Tornik, who was sitting next her. "Is he a duke?"

"A Don, that is all, I believe."

Softly as the question was put and answered, Carpazzi heard. Showing none of the fury of a moment before he spoke suavely, though still with arrogance.

"Signorina is a stranger in Rome; the Count Tornik also is a foreigner, which excuses an ignorance that would be unpardonable in an Italian."

Tornik at that moment pulled his mustache, looking at it down the length of his nose. It was impossible to tell whether the movement hid annoyance or amusement. Nina was keen with curiosity.

"Of course," Nina said sweetly, eager to soothe his over-sensitive pride, "I have heard of the Carpazzi, but I do not know what is the title of your house. I asked Count Tornik whether you were a duke."

"I am Cesare di Carpazzi!" He said it as though he had announced that he was the Emperor of China.

"The Carpazzi are of the oldest nobility," Giovanni interposed. "Such a name is in itself higher than a title."

Don Cesare bowed to Don Giovanni as though to say, "You see! thus it is!"

The subject would have simmered down, had not Tornik at this point set it boiling, by saying in an undertone to Nina, "Why all this fuss? It is stupid, don't you think?"

He spoke in French, carelessly articulated, but the sharp ears of Carpazzi overheard.

"Why all this fuss!" he repeated. "It is insupportable that an upstart of 'nobility' styled p-r-ince"—he snarled the word—"a title that was bought with a tumbledown estate, dares to speak lightly the great name of the Carpazzi, a name that is higher than that of the reigning family."

His flexible fingers flashed and grew stiff by turns. Nina had seen a good deal of gesticulating since she had come to Rome; she had even been told that the different expressions of the hand had meanings quite as distinct as smiles or frowns or spoken words, and Carpazzi's fingers certainly looked insulting, as with each snap he also snapped his lips.

"You know whereof I speak, Alessandro and Giovanni—not even the Sansevero have the lineage of the Carpazzi!"

"Certainly, certainly, my friend," answered Giovanni. "No one is disputing the fact with you."

"But I should think," ventured Nina, her velvety eyes looking wonderingly into his flashing black ones, "that you would accept a title, it would make it so much simpler—especially among strangers who do not know the family history. A duke is a duke and a prince for instance——"

Up went his hand, rigid, palm outward, and at right angles to his wrist, "There you are wrong. A duke or a prince may be a parvenu. For me to accept a title—Non! It would mean that the name of Carpazzi,"—he lingered on the pronunciation—"could be improved! The name of Minotti, for instance, what does it say? Nothing! It is the name of a peasant. It may be dressed up to masquerade as noble, if it has 'Principe' pushed along before it. But it could not deceive a Roman. It is not the 'Principe' before Sansevero that gives it renown. Don Giovanni Sansevero is a greater title than the Marchese Di Valdo, by which Giovanni is generally known. Yet Di Valdo is a good name, too, let me tell you."

The Princess Sansevero kept Minotti's attention as much as possible, so that it might appear that Carpazzi's arraignment had not been heard. All that Carpazzi said was perfectly true. There was little therefore that Minotti could have answered. He was a man of plebeian origin. His father, a rich speculator, had bought a piece of property and assumed the title that went with it. To a Roman the name Carpazzi was a great deal higher than that of any number of dukes and princes.

The question of "Good Taste," however, was another matter and the princess changed the subject by asking:

"Does any one know what the opera is to-night?"

The Contessa Olisco announced: "La Traviata." "They are to have a special scene in the third act," she said, "to introduce a new dance of Favorita's." She did not look at Giovanni, and yet she seemed to be aiming her remarks at him. To Nina it all meant nothing. Once or twice she had heard the name of the celebrated dancer, but it merely brushed through her perceptions like other fleeting suggestions; nothing ever had brought it to a full stop.

The talk turned on other topics, and as the meal was very short, only five courses, the princess, the contessa, and Nina soon withdrew to another room. The conversation there, as it happened, came back to the subject of Carpazzi.

Zoya Olisco lit her cigarette and spoke with it pasted on her lower lip. She smoked like this continually, and never touched the cigarette except to light it and put a new one in its place.

"Though I see what he means," she said, "I should, were I in his place, claim a title! They need not take a new one. My husband told me that the Carpazzi were of the genuine optimates of the Roman Duchy."

"I think Cesare regrets in his heart," said the Princess Sansevero, "that his ancestors did not accept one, but I agree with him now."

She stirred her coffee slowly and then added, "I am fond of the boy, but I do not think I shall have him to dinner soon again. He is too uncontrolled."

The contessa agreed. And then, with her eyes half shut to avoid the smoke of her cigarette, she stared with fixed curiosity at Nina.

"Do you find people here like those in America?" she asked.

"Yes, some are quite like Americans," Nina answered, and added frankly, "but you at least are altogether different from any one I have ever seen!"

"Really, am I?" The contessa raised her eyebrows and laughed. "I know of what you are thinking!" She said it with a deliciously impulsive candor. "You are thinking of my marriage. Yes, it is true! The instant my father said 'no,' I took poison. It was the only way. Had fate willed it, I would have died. But fate willed that I should be—just married." She laughed again.

Nina glanced at her aunt, whose answering smile said clearly, "I told you she was like this."

The contessa lit another cigarette—everything she said and did seemed incongruous with her appearance, she was so fragile and so young. Nina became more and more fascinated as she watched her.

"But supposing that, after meeting him, you had not liked him?" she asked.

"That is impossible. I know always if I like people. I like people at sight—or I detest them! For instance, I detest Donna Francesca Dobini. She is a beauty, I know. She has charming manners; so has a cat. She is all soft sweetness. Ugh! I hate her!—But I like you."

Nina was delighted, but she could not help being amused. "You don't know me in the least," she laughed. "I may be a perfectly horrid person."

The contessa shrugged her shoulders. "That is nothing to me. No doubt I adore some very horrid persons!" Then impetuously she ran her arm through Nina's as they walked through the long row of rooms to the one where their wraps were. "I like you!" she repeated; "that is all there is to it!"

In the hall they were joined by the men, and started for the opera.

Here, Nina had an unusual opportunity to see Roman Society, as the house that night was brilliant with the people who were going afterwards to the Court Ball. Donna Francesca Dobini, a celebrated beauty, was rather affectedly draped in a tulle arrangement around her shoulders. The Contessa Olisco, who for the time being was forced to do without her cigarette, said to Nina:

"Look at her, there she is! She is 'going off,' so that she has to wrap tulle about her old neck to hide the wrinkles."

She moved the column of her young throat with conscious triumph as she spoke. A moment later, as though Nina would understand, she whispered: "There is the Potensi! No! In the box opposite. She has on a dress of purple velvet. Sitting very straight, and quantities of diamonds."

Nina put up her opera glass and encountered an insolent stare, as though the Contessa Potensi were purposely disdainful of the American girl.

"She is the same one with whom Don Giovanni danced opposite in the quadrille! Heavens! but she is a disagreeable person!"

"She has reason for looking disagreeable," announced the Contessa Zoya with a meaning laugh; but more she would not say.

Giovanni leaned over Nina's chair. "Do you find the Romans attractive? How does our opera compare with that of New York?"

"The house seems made of cardboard," Nina answered. "I never thought our opera houses especially wonderful——"

"No?" Giovanni rallied her. "Is it possible that you have anything in America that is not the most wonderful in the world! I am sure you will say your opera house is bigger! And richer! and more comfortable! Yes? Of course it is!" He laughed. "My apple is bigger than your apple. My doll is bigger than your doll! What children you are, you Americans!"

"If we are children," retorted Nina, piqued by his laughter, "we must be granted the advantages of youth!"

With a sudden gravity, but none the less mockingly, Giovanni besought her for enlightenment.

"We gain in enthusiasm, energy, and honesty," she announced sententiously. "A country and a people never attain perfection of finish until they have begun to grow decadent. I'd rather have my doll and my big apple than sit, like an old cynic, in the corner, watching the children play!"

She was immensely pleased with this speech,—mentally she quite preened herself. Giovanni looked amused, but the Contessa Potensi caught his glance from across the house, and his smile faded as he bowed. Nina, who had good eyes, saw a complete change in her face as she returned his salutation.

"Do you like that woman?"

"She is one of the beauties of Rome," he said evasively.

"No, but do you like her?" Nina could not herself have told why she was so insistent.

"She is an old friend of mine," he said lightly; then changed the subject. "Do you follow the hounds, Miss Randolph?"

"At home, yes." But she came back to the former topic. "Does she ride very well, the Contessa Potensi?"

"Wonderfully." This time he answered her easily. "But I am sure you ride well, too. Any one who dances as you do, must also be a horsewoman."

There was something in Giovanni's manner that excited suspicion, but she did not know of what. She half wondered if there had been a love affair between him and the Contessa. Maybe he had wanted to marry her and she had accepted Potensi instead. She wondered if Giovanni still cared; and for a while her sympathy was quite aroused.

The curtain went up and every one stopped talking. At the beginning of the entr'acte Giovanni left the box, and Count Tornik took his chair. He was a strange man, but Nina was beginning to like him. Notwithstanding his brusque indifference, he had a charm that he could exert when he chose. Giovanni's speeches were no more flattering than Tornik's lapses from boredom.

As a matter of fact, in spite of his assumed bad manners, the social instinct was so strong in him that, just as a vulgar person shows his origin in every unguarded moment or unexpected situation, Tornik's good breeding was constantly revealed. And in appearance, he was an attractive contrast to the Italians, tall, broad-shouldered, very blond, and high cheekboned; he might have been taken for an Englishman.

Presently her Majesty, the Dowager Queen, appeared in the royal box, and every one in the audience arose.

"Shall we see both queens to-night at the ball?" Nina asked the Princess Sansevero.

"No; only Queen Elena. The Queen Mother has never been present at a ball since King Umberto's tragic death."

"I wish this evening were over," said Nina, with a half-frightened sigh.

The Contessa Olisco, who had caught the remark and the sigh, asked sympathetically, "But why?"

"I was nervous enough over going alone to the presentation the other afternoon, but to go to a ball is much worse."

"But you won't be alone. We shall be there! You may have your endurance put to the test, though. Are you very strong?"

Nina laughed. "You mean, have I the strength to stand indefinitely without dropping to the floor?"

"Ah! you know, then, how it is. Still—if it is hard for us, think what it must be for their Majesties. To-night, for instance, the King does not once sit down!"

Nina opened her eyes wide. "I thought the King and Queen sat on their throne. But then—I had an idea the presentation would be like that, too—and that I should have to courtesy all across a room, and back out again."

The Contessa Zoya seemed to be occupied with a reminiscence that amused her. "If you have a special audience, you do, or if you go to take tea. We had a private audience yesterday with Queen Margherita and—I had on a long train—and clinging. Of course, entering the room is not hard—I made my three reverences very nicely, very gracefully, I thought,—one at the door, one half-way across the room, and one directly before the Queen, as I kissed her hand. But when the audience was over, the distance between where her Majesty sat and the door of exit—my dear, it seemed leagues! One must back all the way and make three deep courtesies! The first was simple, the second, half-way across the room, was difficult. I was already standing on nearly a meter of train, and when I got to the door—well, I just walked all the way up the back of my dress, lost my balance and fell out!"

Nina laughed at the picture, but was glad the presentation had not been like that.

"When you go to take tea with the Queen it is difficult, too," Zoya, having begun to explain, went on with all the details that came to mind. "Since two years Queen Elena has given 'tea parties' of about thirty or forty people. Her Majesty talks to every one separately, or in very small groups, while tea and cake and chocolate and iced drinks are served by the ladies in waiting—there are never any servants present. It is of course charming, and the Queen puts every one at ease, but there is always a feeling that you may do something dreadful—such as drop a spoon or have your mouth full just at the moment when her Majesty addresses a remark to you. At the Queen Mother's Court things are more formal—more ceremonious. I always feel timid before I go. And yet no sovereign could be more gracious, and her memory is extraordinary. She forgets nothing. Yesterday she asked me how the baby was. She knew his age, even his name and all about him. She asked me if he had recovered from the bronchitis he was subject to. Think of it!"

Nina looked long at the royal box, and could well believe the contessa's account. Her Majesty was talking to the Marchesa Valdeste.

Of all the older ladies to whom she had been presented, Nina liked the marchesa best. Her face had the sweet expression that can come only from genuine kindness and innate dignity. At a short distance from the royal box Don Cesare Carpazzi was talking to a young girl. Don Cesare's expression was for the moment transfigured; instead of arrogance, it suggested rather humility; both he and the young girl seemed deeply engrossed.

Tornik told Nina that she was Donna Cecilia Potensi, the little sister-in-law of the contessa in the box opposite. He also added that Carpazzi was supposed to be in love with her, and she with him, but they had not a lira to marry on. There were no poorer families in Italy than the Carpazzis and the Potensis.

Certainly there was nothing in the appearance of the young girl to indicate wealth, but her plain white dress with a bunch of flowers at her belt, and her hair as simply arranged as possible, only increased her Madonna-like beauty.

Nina was enchanted with her, and instinctively compared her appearance with that of the sister-in-law, glittering with diamonds. "The Contessa Potensi was a rich girl in her own right, I suppose," Nina remarked aloud.

With a suspicion of awkwardness Tornik glanced at Giovanni, who had returned to the box. The latter began to screw up his mustache as he replied in Tornik's stead. "The Contessa Potensi inherited some very good jewels from her mother's family, I am told."

"Her mother was an Austrian, a cousin of mine," Tornik drawled. "I never heard of that branch of the family's having anything but stubble lands and debts. However, it is evident she has got the jewels! I felicitate her on her valuable possessions. Elle a de la chance!" He shrugged his shoulders. Tornik's detached and impersonal manner gave no effect of insult, and Giovanni, beyond looking annoyed, made no further remark. But the Princess Sansevero interposed:

"Maria Potensi has a passion for jewels, as a child might have for toys, and she accepts them in the same way. She tells every one about it quite frankly; in that lies the proof of her innocence."

But the Contessa Zoya showed neither sympathy nor credulity, and there was no misinterpreting her meaning as she said:

"It is true, Princess, you know the Potensi well, and I only slightly—but if my husband offered a diamond ornament——"

"He would never give her another! Is that it?" put in Tornik.

"No—nor any one!" The intensity of her tone alarmed Nina, who was beginning to feel confused by the succession of violent impressions. Scorpa, Giovanni, Carpazzi, Zoya Olisco, all struck such strident notes that their vibrations jangled.

Another act and entr'acte passed. Nina saw Giovanni enter the box of the Contessa Potensi. In contrast to her greeting across the house, she seemed now scarcely to speak to him. He talked to her companion, the Princess Malio, who bobbed her head and prattled at a great rate; but as he left the box Nina saw him lean toward the Contessa Potensi as though saying something in an undertone. She answered rapidly, behind her fan. Giovanni inclined his head and left.

This small incident made a greater impression on Nina than its importance warranted. And the Contessa Potensi occupied her thoughts far more than the various men who had come into the box, and who seemed little more than so many varieties of faces and shirt-fronts. She noticed that many of the older men wore Father Abraham beards and clothes several sizes too big. On account of the Court Ball those who had orders wore them, frequently so carelessly pinned to their coats that the decorations seemed likely to fall off. The Marchese Valdeste—a really imposing man—had two huge ones dangling from the flapping lapel of his coat, and a sash with a bow on the hip that would put any man's dignity to a supreme test.

"The ballet is very important to-night," Nina heard the marchese saying to the Princess Sansevero. "La Favorita is to appear in the Birth of Venus. She does another dance first—a Spanish one, I think."

As he spoke, the ballet music had already begun, and the Spanish coryphÉes were twisting and bowing, and straightening their spines as they danced to the beat of their castanettes. Then they moved aside for the ballerina.

It may have been intended as a Spanish dance, or Eastern, or gypsy—but it was more likely a dance of La Favorita's own imagination. She appeared clad in a thin slip of transparent and jetted gauze. Upon her feet were socks and ballet slippers of black satin. A black mask covered the upper part of her face, and her black hair was drawn high and held with a diamond bracelet; she wore a diamond collar, long diamond earrings, and the gauze of her upper garment—which could hardly be called a bodice—was held on one shoulder with a band of diamonds. For the space of a second she faced the audience, standing still and rigid; then, with a quiver, the rigidity was shattered! A serpent's coiling was not more swift than the movement of her dazzling, glittering form, which twirled and turned and bent, while the twinkling rapidity of her steps was faster than the eye could follow. A twirl, another twirl, a flash—and she was gone.

The coryphÉes, who had seemingly danced well before, were now so awkward by comparison that Nina and Tornik laughed aloud.

"They look like cows," commented Tornik.

"Or nailed to the ground," Nina rejoined. She leaned forward, eager for Favorita's reappearance.

To make a background for the second dance, the stage hands had moved in folding wings or screens of sea green. The calciums had gradually been turning to the blue of moonlight, and now, at the back of the stage, Venus arose, veiled in a mist of foam.

Seeming scarcely to touch her feet to the ground, the dancer was a puff of the foam itself, a living fragment of green and white spray. She caught her arms full of the sea-colored gauze, like a great billow above her head, and then with a swirl she bent her body and drew the diaphanous film out sideways, like a wave that had run up on the sands. Drawing it together again, she seemed to produce another breaker.

So perfectly was the fabric handled that it seemed exactly like the spray of the sea, which, in its freshness, clung to her, and at the last, by a wonderful illusion, she gave the appearance of having gone under the waves.

For several seconds the house remained absolutely hushed, and in that moment Nina found herself vaguely groping through a confusion of ecstatic, yet slightly shocked, sensations. She wondered whether La Favorita had really nothing on except a number of yards of tulle which she held in her hands.

But the verdict of the audience was voiced by a torrent of bravos and handclappings that thundered until La Favorita, having thrown a long mantle about her, came out into the glare of the footlights.

She bowed and kissed her hands, her smiles of acknowledgment sweeping the house from left to right, but at the box of the Sanseveros her smile faded, and she threw back her head with a movement of triumph.

Nina was startled into fancying that she looked long, directly, and particularly at her.