Finally even Giovanni became uneasy; a well-bred woman could be counted on in given circumstances to do thus and so, but Favorita was of lowest peasant birth:  her people were of the mountain districts, so primitive in thought and habit that her early training had taught her obedience to nothing higher than impulse.  Superficially, she submitted to the dictates of civilization, just as a half-wild animal submits to the control of his trainer.  And in a very real sense Giovanni occupied, in relation to her, the trainer’s position.  He was the force that held her in check; but though to the audience of the world he appeared perfectly at ease, a definite apprehensiveness underlay his seeming composure.

Matters at last came to a crisis.  Giovanni was about to leave the palace one morning a day or two after the Masco dinner, when a neatly dressed woman passed him on the grand stairway.  She was wearing a thick veil, but he had an eye for outline and he knew that there was only one woman in Rome with just that half-floating lightness of movement.  At once he blocked her way.

She was forced to halt; but her feet did not stand quite still, and there was an effect of briefly suspended motion in her attitude, as though she sought a chance to dart past him.

“Good-morning, signorina!” Giovanni’s urbanity was for the benefit of the footmen.  For a few seconds there was a straightening of her figure; poised for flight, she held her head a little to one side as she swiftly scanned his face.

Giovanni dropped his voice.  “I was just on my way to see you.  Come, cara mia,” he said persuasively.  “I have something I want to talk over with you—­it is impossible here with lackeys listening to everything we may say.  Come, dear.”

She looked at him a moment, wavering, then shrugged her shoulders.  “Very well,” she said, and descended the stairs at his side.  They crossed the wide hall, and she stopped to gaze about it in wonder and curiosity, even though she did not appreciate the splendor of its proportions.  The great baldachino, of blue and silver, surmounting the Sansevero arms, held her attention.

“Do the broken silver chains in your coat of arms represent mercy or weakness?” she asked.

“Both, probably,” he answered grimly, as he caught the sound of an automobile chugging in the courtyard.  Feeling sure that it was Nina’s car, he slipped his arm through Favorita’s to urge her forward, whereupon she grew suspicious and lagged purposely.  She looked deliberately about, as though she were a tourist intent upon finding every object starred in Baedeker.  To his inward rage and chagrin, Giovanni realized his mistake in having attempted to hurry her, and now changed his tactics.  Although his every nerve was strained to catch the sound of Nina’s approaching footfall, he went into a long, prosy dissertation upon the history of the ceiling, dwelling purposely upon the dullest facts he could think of, until his tormentor was glad enough to leave.