“John!” echoed Nina dolefully.  “John is just the one person above all others who does not want to marry me—­or even my money!”

“Your money, no!  But you, indeed yes.”

Nina shook her head.  “No—­he is not in love with me.  In nothing that he has said or even looked, has he indicated it.”

“You are a little mole, then,” said the princess, smiling.  “Every look he gives you, even every expression of his face in speaking about you, tells the story.”

Like a whirlwind Nina threw herself at her aunt’s knees, pulled her sewing away, and claimed her whole attention.  “Tell me everything you know,” she demanded hungrily.  “Why haven’t you told me before?  Why do you think so?  What has he said to you?  Dearest auntie princess, tell me every word he has said.  Quick!  Every word——­”

The princess, between tears and laughter, looked down at Nina.  “Every word?  Oh, my very dear,” she said tenderly, “his love is not of the little sort that spends itself in words.”

And then suddenly they heard the sound of two men’s voices, and the next moment the portieres parted, admitting Sansevero and Derby.  Both the princess and Nina sprang up; the princess in her joy ran straight to her husband’s arms.  It was like a meeting after a long separation that had been full of perils.

A little later she put out her hand to Derby.  “I don’t think I shall ever be able to thank you enough; it was quite worth all the anxiety and distress to have found such a friend.”  Her smile was entrancing.  The charm of her was always not so much in what she said, as in the way she said it—­in the way she gave her hand, in the way she looked at one, in the varying inflection of her voice, in her sweetness, her calm, her dignity, and, under all these attributes, always her heart.  And never had she shown them all more vividly than now as she put her hand into Derby’s.

Then they all four sat down—­the princess in a big chair and her husband on the arm of it leaning half back of her.  And nothing could stop his talk about his friend the American, and the effect upon the members of the committee when the picture was produced and Derby presented his chain of evidence.  They had been more than polite and courteous to the prince, that was true, but they had detained him; him, a Sansevero!—­and in the telling he again grew indignant.  And yet it had been a terrible chain of evidence, and he had not seen how it was to be broken.

Then he branched off from his own affair, and went into an account of all that he had just heard of the experience of Derby himself with Calluci; and the adventure, in spite of Derby’s protests, certainly lost nothing in the recital.  The princess and Nina had not heard of this, and Nina sat and gazed at the hero in mute rapture.  In fact, the only one whose feelings were at all uncertain was Derby.  Not but that it was pleasant to hear such praise of himself but it is very hard to be a hero unless one has no sense of humor at all.  When the prince had used up half the adjectives of praise and admiration in the Italian language, and was about to begin on the other half, Derby succeeded in interrupting.