Nina started.  “What have you heard?” She tried to look unconcerned, but her face was troubled, and she drew Zoya out of her aunt’s hearing.

“It is rumored that you lost your temper—­oh, but entirely! and walked yourself out of the Palazzo Scorpa without so much as saying good-by or waiting for your chaperon.”

Nina hesitated, then said in an undertone, “Yes, I am afraid it is true.  Was it a dreadful thing to do?”

The contessa laughed softly.  “I told you that you were a girl after my own heart.  In your place I should have walked myself out of that house as quickly as I had entered, but all the same—­that would not be my advice.  However, this is not the serious part of the story.”  Even Zoya’s buoyancy became restrained as she concluded:  “All Rome is asking what you have done with the duke.  He followed you out of the room and has not been seen since.  Giovanni is said to have spoken of seeing him at the club—­and that is known to be untrue.  Carlo was at the Circolo d’Acacia all the afternoon; so was that Ugo Potensi, as well as a dozen others—­and neither Scorpa nor Giovanni was there!  So where is the duke?  Come, tell me!”

A look of terror came into Nina’s eyes, and the young contessa darted her a swift returning glance of comprehension.  “Listen, carissima,” she said, “I am your friend, therefore don’t look so frightened—­you are a regular baby!  The situation is not difficult to read.  Obviously there was a scene between you, the thick duke, and the agile Giovanni.  Just what it was all about, of course, I can only surmise; but I do know that Giovanni is deep in it, and, what is more important, I know also that the result is likely to be troublesome for you.  For men to quarrel between themselves is one thing; but when a woman comes into it, one can never see the end.”

“Woman?  I know nothing of any woman.”  Nina shook her head.

“I told you that you were a baby!  But we can’t talk here.  I shall come to see you to-morrow, but not until late in the afternoon.  I shall then perhaps be useful, for in the meantime I am going about like the wolf in the sheep’s pelt, to see what news I can pick up.  Till then—­have courage!”

Just then the Sansevero carriage was announced, and Nina was obliged to hasten after her aunt.  At the door she glanced back at Zoya with a half-questioning look, which the contessa answered by blowing her a kiss.

That night the little sleep Nina was able to get was fitful and broken by dreams.  The duke and his mother appeared to her as cuttlefish in a cave under perpendicular cliffs that ran into the sea.  Nina was out in a little boat alone, and the waves dashed the tiny craft nearer and nearer to the cave where the cuttlefish were waiting; finally she came so close that one tentacle seized her.  Terrified, she awoke.  After hours of half-waking, half-sleeping, formless confusion, she dreamed again.  In this dream she