smile sweetly when most angry, or to assume an air of sulkiness when at
heart he might be well content. Just now, with an assumption of extreme
indifference, he turned to his brother.

"What is she like, this heiress of yours whom you are so anxious to have
me marry?" he asked. "Plain, stupid, a nonentity?--So much the
better--those make the easy wives to manage. Give me a woman with little
real success--I mean, one who has seen only the imitation fire that is
lighted when man pursues with reason and not with feeling. The American
men make it easy for the rest of us--they are what you call curtain
raisers in the play of love. They keep the gallery busy until the
entrance of the hero. I hope she is not a beauty."

"_Per Bacco_, how you do talk!" interrupted the prince. "I have no
chance to answer. Miss Randolph is not a beauty; but she is
_simpatica_; she has an air, a _chic_."

"So much the better, so long as the _chic_ is one of appearance and not
of personality. I don't want my wife to be a siren." Suddenly he laughed
and hit his brother's knee. "But what nonsense! Imagine a cold American
miss having the power to make a man's pulses leap! Oh, don't make a face
like that--I am not speaking of my honored sister-in-law; she is indeed
of the true type of our mother." Mechanically both men indicated the
sign of the cross at the word "mother."

"But," continued Giovanni, "I am not exactly worthy of a saint--it would
not suit my disposition. It is bad enough associating always with good
Brother Antonio as it is. By the way, where is he?"

He gave a shrill whistle and looked back down the road for the gray