“No—­not a bit!” Nina answered, looking as though she were about to faint.  After several unsuccessful attempts to turn the conversation into happier channels, the princess met with some success in the topic of John Derby and the miracles with which rumor credited him.  Nina listened with half-pathetic interest, but her hands trembled, and the few mouthfuls she took almost refused to go down her throat.  In her heart, at that moment, everything gave way to Giovanni.  She reproached herself deeply for lack of belief in him.  Always she had acknowledged that he was charming, but the doubt of his sincerity had weighed against her really caring for him.  She had accepted John Derby’s casual words, “The Europeans do a lot of beautiful talking and picturesque posing, but when it comes to real devotion you will find that one of your Uncle Samuel’s nephews will come out ahead.”

All that was ended; there was no more question about what the Europeans would do when it came to a test.  Giovanni had done far more than say beautiful, graceful things—­he had proved to her that her honor was dearer to him than his life, and she was stirred to the very depths of her soul.  In the midst of Eleanor’s talk of John Derby, she tried to imagine what John would have done in Giovanni’s place.  He would have thrashed the man within an inch of his life—­that she knew.  But, manly as that would have been, it could not compare with Giovanni’s course in silently waiting fourteen or fifteen hours and then deliberately going out in the dull gray dawn and standing up at forty paces as a target for Scorpa’s bullet.  She thought how, while she had been merely tossing in her bed, unable to sleep, intent on herself, dwelling on her injured dignity and the horror of that brute’s touch, Giovanni had been sitting up through the same long night, putting his affairs in order, and looking death in the face!  And she found herself forced to realize that Giovanni—­whose instability had been the strongest argument against allowing herself to love him—­had paid a price so high that his right to her faith must henceforward be unquestioned.

She had only a vague idea when luncheon ended, or what visits she and her uncle and aunt paid that afternoon.  She went through the rest of the day as though dazed.  Fortunately, her agitation seemed natural to the prince and princess, and her apparent interest in Giovanni was so near to the truth that she did not mind.  Late that afternoon she and Zoya Olisco sat together behind the tea table, for most of the time alone.  Zoya had the story pretty straight, but Nina simply looked at her dumbly—­answering nothing.  She was relieved, however, to hear that, so far, people had evidently not ferreted out the facts.

They were not to find out through the papers.  On the morning after the duel, the Tribunale had this paragraph: