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Updated: May 27, 2025
He was disturbed; but he could 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.
In fact, the gardens are hardly less celebrated than those of the Villa d'Este, and there are a few excellent paintings. Do you ask for any special reason?" "No," replied Derby casually. "I heard they had a Raphael that was especially beautiful; I should like to see it that is all." "Do you, by chance, know the Princess Sansevero's niece, from America, who is captivating Rome this winter?"
At first, Sansevero's investment in the "Little Devil" had seemed to Derby merely the unfortunate venture the prince thought it, but when, in the course of their talk, it came out that Scorpa was the "friend" who had sold him the mine, Derby was sure that the duke had deliberately saddled him with a property which he knew to be useless.
Meanwhile the prince, hands in pockets, had unaccountably become as silent as he had before been talkative, and Giovanni, upon observing his brother's sulky expression, leaned forward. "Well?" he questioned, with a new ring in his voice, for Sansevero's moodiness was never a good omen. "What are you thinking of? Come, say it!"
Shayne agreed to make his payments in cash, so that Sansevero's name should not appear on the checks. But Christopher Shayne was more than skeptical about the duke's disinterestedness. "There is a rake-off for this one somewhere," he thought. He also thought that for once he had been mistaken in his judgment of character.
But if the mine was as valuable as Scorpa declared, it was scarcely compatible with all that was known of his character that out of purely disinterested friendship, he should put such a prize in Sansevero's hands, while he bought up for himself less valuable mines at higher prices.
Sansevero's face, also changeable as an April day, was the spontaneous expression of unconscious mood. Giovanni was of a type to smile sweetly when most angry, or to assume an air of sulkiness when at heart he might be well content. Just now, with an assumption of extreme indifference, he turned to his brother.
As a matter of fact, Sansevero's horse had strained itself slightly in one of the jumps, and he had thought it best to drop out of the hunt. He had gone only a short distance on his way toward Rome when he was joined by Scorpa, who said that he did not care to ride farther but would go back with Sansevero.
Happily he had been at a meeting in the Tribunale Publico when the prince was arrested, and, as an important official and a great personal friend of Sansevero's, had hurried to inform the princess what had happened, and to place himself at her service.
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.
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