Nina nodded an eager assent; Giovanni’s manner held her completely.

“Almost where you are standing, Cecilia Sansevero was stabbed by Guido Corlone before he killed himself, so that they might be together in the next world.  Out of that window, the third from the end, another daughter of our house descended by a silk ladder.  They—­she and her lover—­took the path directly below here; the guards saw them.  This happened just beside the statue yonder.  He drew his sword and stood before her, but the guards were too many, and he was killed.  She had poison in a locket that she wore, and almost before they could drag her arms from about her lover’s neck, she also was dead.”

“Horrible!” cried Nina.  Her face, mobile as Giovanni’s own, had unconsciously reflected, in changing expressions, the progress of his narrative.  “To think that in such a place as this such things really happened.”  She shuddered, then added, “But, Don Giovanni, are there no pleasant stories?  Please think of some.”

“Oh, any number.  Once there was a small house in the valley—­a lodge it would be called now.  A very pretty girl lived there.  This time it was the son of our house, a young, hot-headed fellow like all of us.”  Giovanni let just enough fire gleam in his eyes to give Nina a glimpse of another phase of him.  “Well, this son—­whose name was the same as mine, Giovanni, a Prince Sansevero—­he was mad about this girl.  He would marry her or he would take his life.  She was the star of his destiny, the crown of his life, and all the rest of it.  They were going to send her away—­she was to go into a cloister; he was locked up in the castle.  But the old custodian, who adored the boy, let him escape by the underground passage.  He came out in the church.  She had gone there to pray, knowing nothing of the underground way—­it was kept a profound secret in those days.  As the girl knelt, Giovanni appeared suddenly beside the altar.  Her duenna thought him an apparition, and the two fled up to the monastery—­that one you see from here.”

“And then——?” said Nina breathlessly.

“The Father Abbot relented and married them.”

Nina tried to discern the path to the monastery; in her imagination she saw them hurrying along on the night of their escape.

“And then?  In the end what became of them?”

“She bore him fifteen children; thirteen of them were girls.”

Giovanni’s manner was so casual as he said this that Nina laughed long and deliciously.  He swung himself lightly over the balustrade and gathered her a long-stemmed rose from the bush whose early branches were supposed to have known the touch of Beatrice.  Perhaps the legend was untrue, but his action, like the afternoon, held much that was alluring.  Something of this allure lay in Giovanni’s having the same name as the people he told about.  Something, too, in the carelessness, and yet the pride, of his telling, made his tales enchanting, and seemed in some