Sansevero himself looked dejected.  “Don’t you think, dear one,” he protested, “that you were rather severe!  What difference can it make after all, whether the poor girl wears a few leaves in her hair or a bit of tulle?”

But the princess was inflexible.  “It would not be just to the others,” she answered, “since we made this rule there has been a great difference in the village.  It is almost rare now that the family arrives before the wedding.  The question of irregularity never used trouble the girls at all.  The only disgrace they seem able to feel is that they may not dress as brides; and that being the case, I think we have to be strict.”

“All right, wise one,” said the prince as he drew up at the post-office, “I am sure you know best.”  He looked at her with such obvious satisfaction that two urchins standing by the road-side grinned.  The post-master hurried out with the mail, and the princess looked through the letters.  One with an American stamp held her attention.  As she read, her cheeks flushed with pleasure, her eyes grew bright, a sweet and tender expression came into her face.

“Nina is coming!” she cried.  Gladness rang in her voice.  “Coming for the whole winter—­let me see, the letter is dated the fifteenth—­she will sail this week.  Oh, Sandro, I am so happy!”

For a moment it would have been hard to say which looked more pleased, the prince or the princess.  But then, as though by thought transference, in blank consternation each stared at the other, and exclaimed in the same breath, “But how about Rome?”

In silence the prince turned the pony about and slowly they drove back up the hills.

CHAPTER II

THE PRINCESS PLANS TO RECEIVE THE AMERICAN HEIRESS

When the pony-cart arrived at the castle the princess alighted, too preoccupied with her own thoughts to notice that her husband drove off in the opposite direction from the stables.  Her forehead was wrinkled and her head bent as she walked between the high hedges of ilex toward the south wing of the building.  Her worry over their inability to pay the debt was increased by the fact that their creditor was the Duke Scorpa.

There had been a feud between the Sanseveros and the Scorpas for over a century, and while the present generation tried to ignore it, the princess felt instinctively that like the people of Alsace Lorraine, who never really forgave the government that changed their nationality, the Scorpas never forgave the Sanseveros for lands which they claimed were unjustly lost in 1803, when a daughter of the house married a Sansevero and took a portion of the Scorpa property as her dowry.  That these same lands were distant from either county seat, and of comparatively small value, in no way mitigated the Scorpa resentment, and every time they looked at the map and saw the triangular piece painted over from the Scorpa red to the Sansevero blue, there was bad feeling.