Nina glanced critically toward the small features and blond curls of Allegro.  “No,” she said, “he is much too effeminate.”

“Then who is your Adonis?”

“The best-looking man I have ever seen?  Well—­I think I’d choose the Marchese di Valdo.”  The pink mounted over her cheeks into her hair, for she thought Porter was going to deride.  To her surprise he agreed with her.

“Of his type, yes, he certainly is good; but I prefer John’s.  I can see how di Valdo would appeal to a girl, though personally I should ask more masculinity, more bone and sinew.”

Nina remembered how Giovanni had nearly choked the Great Dane, and she shuddered slightly.  “Oh, but he is strong,” she exclaimed; “he is strong as a panther!  He always makes me think of Bagheera in the Jungle Book.”

“Bagheera was warm-blooded; there was truth and affection in him—­for Mowgli, at all events.  Your friend di Valdo is as cold a proposition as you could find.”

Nina thought this last characterization absurd, and said so.

“All right!” Porter answered.  “You mark my word.  He is a man swayed by the emotions of the moment.  He has feeling, yes—­but no heart; he has certain inborn principles, but they are racial rather than ethical.  His is the code of Noblesse oblige, not of the Golden Rule.  In a point of honor he is irreproachable, but it is he, himself, who defines the boundaries of his code.”

He paused a moment and continued in a more personal tone:  “I don’t know you very well, Miss Randolph, but you are a girl from home.  And—­excuse my frankness—­you are one of our great heiresses.  I am a stranger to you, and that is why I am going to say something—­perhaps all the more forcefully because I have only a racial and not a personal interest:  but between marrying Giovanni Sansevero—­or that Austrian over yonder—­or the golden-headed ornament on your right, and such a man as John Derby, no woman with an ounce of sense could for one minute hesitate.  The first, by the gift of kings, are noblemen, but John over there, by the grace of God, is a man!”

Nina was so deeply stirred by his words that she sat for a little while quite motionless, looking down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap.  Then, before she either looked up or answered, the women left the table.

In the drawing-room, as the other women lighted their cigarettes, Nina stood leaning her cheek on her hand as it rested against the mantel—­and for some time she gazed down into the fire, while Porter’s words echoed and reechoed through her mind.  When she turned away from the fire her attention was caught by an Englishwoman who had thrown herself full length on the sofa.  Her person was a curious mixture of cleanliness and untidiness, her face was even polished by soap and scrubbing, but her frock, although probably quite clean, looked anything but fresh, and lying down among the cushions had not improved her hair, which had been frowzily frizzed anyway.  Nina would have thought Lady Dorothy an impossible person were it not for the “Lady” which, as Carpazzi put it, “was pushed before the name.”