of his short black hair and pointed beard.  His nose was perhaps a little large for his face, and the unusual brilliancy of his eyes gave him an expression of restless energy; there was something noble in the shaping of his high square forehead and in the turn of his sinewy throat.  His hands were broad and brown, but nervous and well knit, with straight long fingers and squarely cut nails.  Many women said Don Giovanni was the handsomest man in Rome; others said he was too dark or too thin, and that his face was hard and his features ugly.  There was a great difference of opinion in regard to his appearance.  Don Giovanni was not married, but there were few marriageable women in Rome who would not have been overjoyed to become his wife.  But hitherto he had hesitated—­or, to speak more accurately, he had not hesitated at all in his celibacy.  His conduct in refusing to marry had elicited much criticism, little of which had reached his ears.  He cared not much for what his friends said to him, and not at all for the opinion of the world at large, in consequence of which state of mind people often said he was selfish—­a view taken extensively by elderly princesses with unmarried daughters, and even by Don Giovanni’s father and only near relation, the old Prince Saracinesca, who earnestly desired to see his name perpetuated.  Indeed Giovanni would have made a good husband, for he was honest and constant by nature, courteous by disposition, and considerate by habit and experience.  His reputation for wildness rested rather upon his taste for dangerous amusements than upon such scandalous adventures as made up the lives of many of his contemporaries.  But to all matrimonial proposals he answered that he was barely thirty years of age, that he had plenty of time before him, that he had not yet seen the woman whom he would be willing to marry, and that he intended to please himself.

The Duchessa d’Astrardente made her speech to her hostess and passed on, still followed by the two men; but they now approached her, one on each side, and endeavoured to engage her attention.  Apparently she intended to be impartial, for she sat down in the middle one of three chairs, and motioned to her two companions to seat themselves also, which they immediately did, whereby they became for the moment the two most important men in the room.

Corona d’Astrardente was a very dark woman.  In all the Southern land there were no eyes so black as hers, no cheeks of such a warm dark-olive tint, no tresses of such raven hue.  But if she was not fair, she was very beautiful; there was a delicacy in her regular features that artists said was matchless; her mouth, not small, but generous and nobly cut, showed perhaps more strength, more even determination, than most men like to see in women’s faces; but in the exquisitely moulded nostrils there lurked much sensitiveness and the expression of much courage; and the level brow and straight-cut nose were in their