CORONETS FOR SALE

According to Italian etiquette, strangers must leave cards within twenty-four hours upon every person to whom they have been introduced.  Therefore the afternoon of the day following the ball was necessarily spent by Nina in three hours of steady driving from house to house.  Finally, as she and the princess were alighting at the Palazzo Sansevero, Count Tornik drove into the courtyard, and together they mounted to the apartments used by the family.

Nina settled herself in the corner of a sofa, pulling off her gloves.  Tornik dropped into a loose-jointed heap in a big chair opposite.  Suddenly he sat up straight, his eyebrows lifted.

“I did not know!” he said.  “May I felicitate you, mademoiselle?”

“On what?” she asked, puzzled.

“Since you wear a ring, it is evident that your engagement is to be announced.  Will you tell me who is the fortunate man?”

She saw that he was gazing at the emerald she wore on her little finger.  “Is there reason to think I am engaged—­because of this?”

“Certainly, what else?  A young girl’s wearing a ring can mean but one thing.”

“On my little finger?  How ridiculous!  My father gave it to me.  Sometimes, at home, I wear several rings.  Does that mean I am engaged to several men?”

“Then you are still free?”

He hesitated as though under an impulse to say something sentimental, then apparently changed his mind, and relapsed into his habitually detached indifference of manner.

“They have curious customs in your country,” he said casually.  “A friend of mine was in America last year.  He told me many things!”

“Did he?  What, for instance?”

“He said that the women sat in chairs that balanced back and forth——­”

“Chairs that——­” she interrupted.  “Oh, you mean rocking-chairs!  That’s true, you don’t have them over here, do you?  I did not mean to interrupt.  You said we rock——­”

“Not you, it’s the older women who balance all day on verandas, and let their daughters do whatever they please!  In an American family, I am told, the young girl is supreme ruler.  Is that true?”

Nina, laughing, shrugged her shoulders.  “I don’t know—­I never thought about it!  But over here I suppose a girl does not count at all?  Tell me, according to your ideas, what her place should be.”

“Oh, I do not say should.  I merely state the fact:  over here, a young girl plays a very small role.  But then, for the matter of that, most people belong naturally in the background, and very few, whether they are women or men, have their names on the program.”

“And you?  What part do you play?”

For a moment his eyes gleamed.  “That depends upon whether fate shall cast me to support a diva or to occupy an empty stage.”

“And if fate allowed you to choose, I could easily imagine that you would prefer a part with very little action and as few lines as possible.”