Derby walked up and down the floor, then stood still, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and looked down at his shoes as though their varnish were the only thing in life that interested him.

“Well?  Is Aunt Eleanor’s heart broken?”

“Perhaps not; but, even so, you and she are very different women.  From her girlhood she was more or less trained for the life she leads.  She went from a convent school to the house of a brother-in-law—­in other words, from one dependence to another.  She is the type of woman who weathers change and storm by bending to the wind.”

“Aunt Eleanor!  Hers is the strongest character I know!”

“Of course it is!  But it is exactly because she is apparently unresisting and pliant to surrounding conditions that her spirit is unassailable.  You, on the contrary, would snap in the first tempest!  Or, to change the simile, have you ever seen a young bull calf tied to a tree, and, in a frantic effort to get loose, wind itself up tighter, until its head was pulled close to the tree?  That is exactly what you would be over here.  No girl has ever had her own way all her life more than you!  Believe me, you have no idea what it would mean to be tied to a rope of convention that would tighten like a noose at any struggle on your part.  As the wife of a man like di Valdo, you would be bound by endless petty formalities.  Another thing—­which your aunt has made me realize—­as an American, you would have to excel the Italians in dignity in order to be thought to equal them.  Things perfectly pardonable for them would finish you.  You need only take your aunt and Kate Masco for your examples.  Kate’s behavior is not any worse than that of plenty of the born countesses, even.  But that’s just it—­she isn’t a countess born, and her ways won’t do!  Your aunt, on the other hand, is ’grande dame’ in every fiber of her being.  Hardly another woman in Rome has her graciousness and dignity.  These qualities were hers, doubtless, from the beginning, but you needn’t tell me even she found it as easy to be a princess as it would seem!”

Nina looked up at Derby in open-eyed amazement.  “Gracious, John!  I never dreamed you were so observing!  In a way, I imagine you are right, too.  But at least, if a woman has to follow conventions to earn a position over here, that position is real and worth while when she does get it.  And a woman like Aunt Eleanor is far more appreciated here than she would be at home.”

“Humph!” was Derby’s retort.  “You needn’t think that all the appreciating of women is done in Italy, though the men at home may not put things so gracefully as these over here, who have nothing else to do but learn to turn beautiful phrases.  I don’t think that I am flattering myself in saying that if I were to give up my life to the one accomplishment of artistic love-making, I might make good, too!  However, that is pretty far out of my line.  I’m a blunt sort of person, but I—­well, I care a lot for you, Nina!  I’d rather see you marry—­Billy Dalton, any day!”