CHAPTER VIII

OPENING DAY AT THE TITLE MARKET

On the evening of the dance the Princess Malio, stiff, thin, and sour, and the old Duchess Scorpa, stolid, ugly, and squat, sat together in a corner of the ballroom—­that is to say, the picture gallery—­of the Palazzo Sansevero.

“So that is the new American heiress!” said the duchess.  “Very presentable, I call her.  My Todo might do worse than marry her—­but of course”—­her face drew itself into the grimace that did duty for a smile—­“my Todo would have little chance for her favor in competition with your nephew.”

The princess bowed in acknowledgment and strongly protested against the idea of any one’s being able to compete with a Duke Scorpa.

The conversation between these two old women was always forced into just such channels of conscious politeness.  It was rarely that they disclosed the antagonism that formed the chief spice of their lives.  But the princess could not control an impulse to destroy, if possible, the satisfaction of her rival.

“My dear Duchess,” she insinuated dulcetly, “do you really credit her fabulous fortune?” Her manner expressed her pity for the other’s credulity.  “Such a sum as five hundred thousand lire a year too much oversteps the mark of probability.”

But the complacency of the duchess was not so easily disturbed.  “Oh, no, that is not right!” she broke in.  “I have been assured that she has five hundred thousand dollars a year.  Dollars!  And there are five lire in every dollar, remember.”

“Dollars!” echoed the princess—­and her voice rose several notes above normal pitch; in fact, she nearly screamed.  “I am very certain you are misinformed.”  But her skepticism barely covered her real chagrin because her nephew was a cadaverous nonentity, with little to recommend him to a title hunter.  As she looked at the girl in question, however, there was a decided relish in her next remark: 

“I think Giovanni Sansevero will carry off that prize!  See the way she is smiling up at him.  Ah! and now they are dancing together.  Certainly they make a suitable looking couple.”

The duchess straightened her dumpy figure to its greatest possible height.  For once she forgot herself.  “Would any one marry a Sansevero when there is a Scorpa to choose!”

“It has happened,” chuckled the princess.

The threatening break in their habitual politeness was averted by the arrival of a third old lady, the Marchesa Valdeste.  As her husband was the receiver of the “Gran Collare de l’Anunziata,” a distinction that gave him the rank of cousin to the king, the duchess and the princess both rose for a moment in deference.  The “collaress” seated herself with them.  In contrast to theirs, her face was sweet and fresh, with an expression almost like that of a young girl.  Her whole personality was gentle, and she punctuated what she said by a curious little swaying motion, a bending of the body from the waist, very suggestive of the way a flower bends on its stalk to the breeze.