At the suggestion of the marriage which might have taken place, all the experiences of that varied day came rushing back to Nina—­Giovanni’s proposal, the revelation of his falseness, and the conversation with Zoya which had given her the true key to him who had until then been something of a mystery.

With a strained intensity of tone, she suddenly demanded, “Aunt Eleanor, tell me, supposing I had wanted to marry Giovanni, would you have made no protest?”

The princess answered thoughtfully:  “I am glad you are not to marry Giovanni—­yes, I am glad.  Yet even so, he might make a good husband.”

Instantly the blood rushed to Nina’s head, “Don’t you love me more than to let me risk a life of wretchedness?” she exclaimed, but the look in her aunt’s face brought from the girl an immediate apology, and presently the princess said: 

“I don’t think I should want you to marry over here at all.  At first I hoped it might be possible—­but I am afraid you would be unhappy.  There are plenty of girls who might be content, but not you!” The princess took her sewing out of a near-by chest and began hemming a table cloth.

“You mean,” said Nina, “that when one reads of the broken hearts and lost illusions of Americans married to Europeans, the accounts are true?  Why did you not tell me before?”

“I don’t know, dear.  Probably because such accounts are, to me, purely sensational writing—­and yet at the bottom of them lies a certain amount of truth.  In the majority of such cases of wretchedness, if you sift out the facts, you will wonder not so much at the outcome, as that such a marriage could ever have taken place.  When it happens that a nice, sweet, wholesome girl marries a disreputable nobleman, who is despised from one end of Europe to the other, American parents seem to feel no horror until she has become a mental, moral, and physical wreck.  To us over here it was unbelievable that a decent girl could think of marrying him; that her parents could be so dazzled by the mere title of ‘Lady’ or ‘Marquise’ or ‘Grafin’ or ‘Principessa’ that they were willing to give her into the keeping of an unspeakable cad, brute, or rake.  Do you think that it is the fault of Europe if such girls know nothing but wretchedness?”

The princess paused, then continued:  “On the other hand, if a girl marries in Europe as good a man, regardless of his title, as the American she would probably have chosen at home; and, above all—­for this is most essential—­if she is adaptable enough to change herself into a European, rather than to expect Europe to pattern itself upon her, she will have as good a chance of happiness as comes to any one.  Marriage is a lottery in any event.  Of course, if it turns out badly abroad, it is worse for her than it would have been at home—­much worse.  Everything over here is, in that case, against her:  custom, language, law, religion; she is literally thrown upon her husband’s indulgence.  In a contest against him she would have no chance at all—­there is no divorce; there is no redress.