As Derby was leaving, Nina deliberately went from the room with him.  “I want to speak with John a few minutes,” she said to her aunt.  “We are both Americans, you know,” she added, laughing.  In the adjoining room she motioned him to sit beside her, but he stood instead, leaning against the window frame.  She looked up with something like apology.  “Am I keeping you?” she asked quickly.  “Are you in a hurry?”

Almost with the manner of Mr. Randolph, he pulled out his watch.  “Not especially.  I have an appointment with the Duke Scorpa—­but not for half an hour.”  She had not noticed before the nervously hurried manner of her countrymen.  There were many things she wanted to talk to John about—­but she might as well have tried to carry on a restful conversation at a railroad station, when the train was coming in.

“With Scorpa?” She tried to hold his attention.  “What are you going to see him about?”

Derby seemed preoccupied.

“I don’t think I’m very sure myself—­further than that he wants to buy my patents, which I have no intention of selling, and I want to rent his mines, which he has no intention of renting.  Rather asinine, going to see him!  Still, as he insists——­” There was an eagerness in Derby’s face inconsistent with the shrugging of his shoulders.

But Nina’s thoughts were not on the processes of mining just then, though they were on Scorpa.  She looked at Derby appealingly.

“Jack!”

“Yes, Nina?”

“Do you know what I think?—­Aunt Eleanor won’t say a word; she hides it all she can, but she must have lost almost her entire fortune.  Jack, do you think that Duke Scorpa could be at the bottom of it?”

Derby gave her a glance of keen interest, but he expressed no surprise and asked her no questions.  As a matter of fact, the gossip of the Cook’s guide had partly prepared him for Nina’s revelation about her aunt’s fortune, and he had his own theories about Scorpa.  “Quite likely,” he answered dryly, “but it is also quite likely that we shall get the better of him——­” Then, with a sudden change in his manner he looked at her steadily.  “But perhaps you don’t want us to get the better of him?”

“Do you mean——?”

“I hear he is very devoted—­and he has not only the handle to his name that you women seem to be keen about, but he is too rich to be after your money.”  Derby had no sooner said the words than he regretted them.  But seeing Nina color, he misinterpreted her feelings, and spoke under a sudden flash of jealousy.  “And I suppose the title of duchess is irresistible.”

Nina was deeply hurt.  “That is pretty blunt,” she said, the pupils of her eyes contracted as though the sun blinded them.  “Have you ever seen the man you speak of?  No?  Well, you would not say such a thing if you had.  I hate him!”

Derby seemed fated to blunder.  Again he made the wrong remark.  “Hate, they say, is next to love.”