That night another extravagance of Nina’s came to light.  In the morning they had been at an exhibition of furs brought to Rome by a Russian dealer.  Among them was a set of superb sables, and Nina, throwing the collar around her aunt’s shoulders, had exclaimed at their becomingness.

The princess unconsciously stroked the furs as she put them down.  “I have never seen anything more lovely,” she said wistfully, and with no idea that she had sighed.  A sable collar and muff had been one of the desired things of her life, but it was utterly impossible now to think of so much as one skin, and in the piece and muff in question there were more than thirty.

That evening, upon their return, the princess found the furs in her room when she went to dress.  At first she felt that they were too much to accept, but when Nina’s hazel eyes implored, and her lips begged her aunt to take “just one present to remember her by,” the princess for once gave free reign to her emotions and was as wildly delighted as a child.

The very next afternoon, however, Scorpa saw the sables, and on a slip of paper made the following note: 

Sables                  80,000 lire
60 H. P. motor car      30,000 lire

With a smile that would have done no discredit to his Satanic Majesty, he put the paper in his pocket.

CHAPTER XIV

APPLES OF SODOM

“It amounts to this:  do you take a fitting interest in the name you bear, or do you not?” Sansevero was the speaker, and beneath his usual volubility there was an unwonted eagerness.  The two brothers were in Giovanni’s apartment on the second floor, which in Roman palaces usually belongs to the eldest son, and Giovanni sat astride a chair, his arms crossed over the back.

“I don’t think you can ask such a question,” he retorted hotly.  “I am as much a Sansevero as you!  But I really see no reason why—­just because you have got a notion in your head that a pile of gold dollars would look well in our strong box—­I should tie myself up for life.  I am well enough as I am.  My income is not regal, but it suffices.”

Sansevero, like many talkative persons, was too busy thinking of what he was going to say next himself, to listen attentively to his brother’s responses.  He was merely aware that Giovanni’s manner proclaimed opposition, so, when the sound of his voice ceased, Sansevero continued:  “Nina is all the most fastidious could ask. Noblesse oblige—­are you going to keep our name among the greatest in Rome, or are you going to let it fall like that of the Carpazzi?  Shall they say of us in the near future, as they say of them to-day:  ’Ah, yes, the Sanseveros were a great family once, but they are all dead or beggared now’?”