Sabina was not suspicious, yet she could not help wondering why the Baroness had been so very anxious to take her in, and sometimes she thought that the object might be to marry her to one of Volterra’s two sons.  One was in a cavalry regiment stationed in Turin, the other was in the diplomacy and was now in Washington.  They were both doing very well in their careers and their father and mother often talked of them.

The Baron was inclined to be playful now and then.

“Ah, my dear young lady,” he would cry, shaking one fat finger at Sabina across the dinner table, “take care, take care!  You will lose your heart to both my boys and sow discord in my family!”

At this he never failed to laugh, and his wife responded with a smile of motherly pride, followed by a discreet side glance at Sabina’s delicate face.  Then the finely-pencilled eyebrows were just the least bit more arched for a second, and the slender neck grew slightly straighter, but that was all, and the Baron did not even see the change.  Sometimes Sabina said nothing, but sometimes she asked if the sons were coming home on leave.  No, they were not coming at present.  In the spring Volterra and his wife generally spent a few weeks in Turin, to see the elder son, on their way to Aix and Paris, but his brother could hardly expect to come home for another year.  Then the couple would talk about both the young men, until Sabina’s attention wandered, and she no longer heard what they were saying.

She did not believe that they really thought of trying to marry her to one of the sons.  In her own opinion they could gain nothing by it; she had no dowry now, and her mother had always talked of marriage as a business transaction.  It did not occur to her that they could care to be allied with a ruined family, and that her mere name could be worth anything in their scale of values.  They were millionaires, of course, and even the dowry which she might formerly have expected would have been nothing compared with their fortune; but her mother had always said that rich people were the very people who cared the most for money.  That was the reason why they were rich.  This explanation was so logical that Sabina had accepted it as the true one.

Her knowledge of the world was really limited to what she had learned from her mother, after she had come back from the convent six months before the crash, and it was an odd mixture of limitations and exaggerations.  When the Princess was in a good humour she believed in everybody; when she was not, which was when she had no money to throw away, she attributed the basest motives to all mankind.  According to her moods, she had encouraged Sabina to look forward to a life of perpetual pleasure, or had assured her with energy that all men were liars, and that the world was a wretched place after all.  It was true that the Princess entertained the cheerful view more often than not, which was perhaps fortunate for her daughter; but in her heart the young girl felt that she would have to rely on her own common sense to form any opinion of life, and as her position became more difficult, while the future did not grow more defined, she tried to think connectedly about it all, and to reach some useful conclusion.