“Honest and straight?”

She looked at him with a distracted expression that reminded him of a child afraid of losing its way.

“Jack”—­she hesitated; her voice sounded constrained—­“please don’t look so—­so serious.  It is nothing—­that I can tell you!  Don’t notice that I am any different.  Really, I am not.  You are my best friend, and the first I would go to if I needed help.”

Yet, as she said the words, she felt with a sudden, poignant pain that they were no longer true.  Her mind was in a turmoil, and at that very moment, had she followed her inclination, she would have screamed aloud.  She did not understand why she was so wretched; but one thing was certain—­it was Giovanni who filled her thoughts!

Perhaps Derby interpreted the change in her.  He put a question suddenly, “Nina, you couldn’t really care for an Italian, could you?”

Nina flushed.  “I don’t know whether I could or not,” she said.  “I think there may be just as wonderful men over here as at home.  I know there are some that are quite as brave.”

Derby frowned.  “Nina, Nina——­”

But Nina did not even hear his interruption.  “I wish you knew Don Giovanni, Jack,” she said.  “You would like Italians better, I think!”

“It is not that I think ill of Italians—­quite the contrary; but—­I should not like to think of your marrying Don Giovanni.”

“And why shouldn’t I?” The question came near to summing up the problem of her own meditations, and his opposition—­with its carefully maintained impersonal quality—­piqued her and made the smoldering consideration of marrying Giovanni suddenly flame into a definite intention.

“Well?” she repeated.

“Because I think American men make the best husbands.”

Nina was brutal.  “You say that because you are an American yourself!”

He let the injustice of her remark pass unnoticed.  “I merely repeat,” he said calmly, “that, married to the Marchese di Valdo, you would be a very unhappy woman.  That is my straight opinion.  If you don’t like it, I can’t help it.”

“Why should I be unhappy?”

“Don’t let’s discuss it.”

“That is just like an American.  Do you wonder women care for Europeans?  A man over here would sit down sensibly and tell you every sort of reason.”

“Yes, and one sort of reason as well as another.  For, or against, whichever way the wind might happen to be blowing!”

In spite of herself, Nina was disagreeably conscious of the truth of his judgment.  But she shut her mind to it, as she exclaimed, “And you say you don’t dislike Italian men!”

“No, I don’t!  You are altogether wrong.  I have been over here often enough to admire them tremendously, in a great many ways.  But I don’t like to see the girl I—­the girl I have known all her life, marry a man that I feel sure will break her heart.”

“Aunt Eleanor’s heart is not broken!”