CHAPTER II

THE PRINCESS PLANS TO RECEIVE THE AMERICAN HEIRESS


When the pony-cart arrived at the castle the princess alighted, too
preoccupied with her own thoughts to notice that her husband drove off
in the opposite direction from the stables. Her forehead was wrinkled
and her head bent as she walked between the high hedges of ilex toward
the south wing of the building. Her worry over their inability to pay
the debt was increased by the fact that their creditor was the Duke
Scorpa.

There had been a feud between the Sanseveros and the Scorpas for over a
century, and while the present generation tried to ignore it, the
princess felt instinctively that like the people of Alsace Lorraine, who
never really forgave the government that changed their nationality, the
Scorpas never forgave the Sanseveros for lands which they claimed were
unjustly lost in 1803, when a daughter of the house married a Sansevero
and took a portion of the Scorpa property as her dowry. That these same
lands were distant from either county seat, and of comparatively small
value, in no way mitigated the Scorpa resentment, and every time they
looked at the map and saw the triangular piece painted over from the
Scorpa red to the Sansevero blue, there was bad feeling.

When the old Prince Sansevero was alive, he and the present Duke, who
was then a violent tempered youth, had several unfriendly encounters
about the boundary line of this same property. All this had seemed very
trivial to Alessandro, the present Prince, who looked upon the Duke as
one of his best friends--but Alessandro had no perspicacity. He believed