“When do you begin operations?  I suppose you realize, my friend, that it is no joke to interfere with the Sicilians?  They are as suspicious of a new face as a tribe of savages.  Savages is just about what they are, too!  And there is another element that you should not lose sight of:  If you are going to upset Scorpa’s methods, it is not the Sicilians alone that you will have to deal with, but also the duke himself.”

“I am not going to try his property.”

“No, but he controls the sulphur output.  If you come into his market—­well, I’d not give a soldo for your skin.  Besides, that would be the second grudge he’d have against you!”

“Second?  I don’t understand——­”

“He wants to marry your best girl!  Oh, hold on—­no offense meant.  She is having a splendid time of it, if a string of satellites as long as the Ponte San Angelo constitutes a woman’s joy.  All the same, my boy; put this in your pipe and smoke it:  ’Ware Scorpa, don’t turn your back to any one who might be in his employ, and bolt your door at night.  Will you have my Winchester?”

Derby smoked on, unperturbed.  “It sounds as though it might be interesting.  I had expected a mere proposition of machinery; the human element always adds.  Wasn’t it you who told me that?”

“In a book, decidedly!” and then with a sudden impulse, “By Jove, Jack, I believe it would be a good thing for me to go along with you!  I might get new copy.”

Derby laughed incredulously.  “Well, if you mean it, come along!  I wish you would.”  Porter meant it enough to be interested in the project, at any rate, for later the two men dined together, and they discussed arrangements and expedients all the evening.

Derby went to the Palazzo Sansevero the next day, but again he had much to talk over with the prince, and saw little of Nina.  In some unaccountable way she seemed changed; nothing definite happened to mark the difference that he vaguely felt, but Mrs. Davis’s remark came back to him—­“The Europeans are so finished,” and he wondered whether Nina found him unfinished; he even wondered whether he was or not—­which was a good deal of wondering for him.

At first, Sansevero’s investment in the “Little Devil” had seemed to Derby merely the unfortunate venture the prince thought it, but when, in the course of their talk, it came out that Scorpa was the “friend” who had sold him the mine, Derby was sure that the duke had deliberately saddled him with a property which he knew to be useless.  And yet every word that Scorpa had urged as a reason for the mine’s value, was—­taken literally—­true.  The mine was in close proximity to his own; the surveys, furthermore, showed the “Little Devil” to be the richest in sulphur deposit of any in the region.  But if the mine was as valuable as Scorpa declared, it was scarcely compatible with all that was known of his character that out of purely disinterested friendship, he should put such a prize in Sansevero’s hands, while he bought up for himself less valuable mines at higher prices.  Derby kept his opinions to himself; but his blood boiled with indignation and, mentally, he resolved to beat Scorpa if it was humanly possible.