Many had proved, with more than words, that they did so.  In a word, he had been feted, followed, and caressed, as long as he could remember.  Now the incense of flattery floating continually in the air which he breathed had done its work.  He was not actually spoiled but he had grown arrogant; vain of his person and of his wealth.  He was vain, but not yet frivolous; he was insolent, but not yet heartless.  At his age, impressions come from without, rather than from within.  Nobili was extremely impressionable; he also, as has been seen, wanted resolution to resist temptation.  As yet, he had not developed the firmness and steadfastness that really belonged to his character.

But spite of foibles, spite of weakness—­foibles and weakness were but part of the young blood within him—­Nobili possessed, especially toward women, that rare union of courage, tenderness, and fortitude, we call chivalry; he forgot himself in others.  He did this as the most natural thing in the world—­he did it because he could not help it.  He was capable of doing a great wrong—­he was also capable of a great repentance.  His great wealth had hitherto enabled him to indulge every fancy.  With this power of wealth, unknown almost to himself, a spirit of conquest had grown upon him.  He resolved to overcome whatever opposed itself to him.  Nobili was constantly assured by those ready flatterers who lived upon him—­those toadies who, like a mildew, dim and deface the virtues of the rich—­that “he could do what he pleased.”

With the presumption of youth he believed this, and he acted on it, especially in regard to women.  He was of an age and temperament to feel his pulse quicken at the sight of every pretty woman he met, even if he should meet a dozen in the day.  Until lately, however, he had cared for no one.  He had trifled, dangled, ogled.  He had plucked the fair fruit where it hung freely on the branch, and he had turned away heart-whole.  He knew that there was not a young lady in Lucca who would not accept him as her suitor—­joyfully accept him, if he asked her.  Not a father, let his name be as old as the Crusades, his escutcheon decorated with “the golden rose,” or the heraldic ermine of the emperors, who would not welcome him as a son-in-law.

The Marchesa Guinigi alone had persistently repulsed him.  He had heard and laughed at the outrageous words she had spoken.  He knew what a struggle it had cost her to sell the second Guinigi Palace at all.  He knew that of all men she had least desired to sell it to him.  For that special reason he had resolved to possess it.  He had bought it, so to say, in spite of her, at the price of gold.

Yet, although Nobili laughed with his friends at the marchesa’s outrageous words, in reality they greatly nettled him.  By constant repetition they came even to rankle.  At last he grew—­unconfessed, of course—­so aggravated by them that a secret longing for revenge rose up within him.  She had thrown down the gauntlet, why should he not pick it up?  The marchesa, he knew, had a niece, why should he not marry the niece, in defiance of the aunt?