pleasant stories? Please think of some."

"Oh, any number. Once there was a small house in the valley--a lodge it
would be called now. A very pretty girl lived there. This time it was
the son of our house, a young, hot-headed fellow like all of us."
Giovanni let just enough fire gleam in his eyes to give Nina a glimpse
of another phase of him. "Well, this son--whose name was the same as
mine, Giovanni, a Prince Sansevero--he was mad about this girl. He
would marry her or he would take his life. She was the star of his
destiny, the crown of his life, and all the rest of it. They were going
to send her away--she was to go into a cloister; he was locked up in the
castle. But the old custodian, who adored the boy, let him escape by the
underground passage. He came out in the church. She had gone there to
pray, knowing nothing of the underground way--it was kept a profound
secret in those days. As the girl knelt, Giovanni appeared suddenly
beside the altar. Her duenna thought him an apparition, and the two fled
up to the monastery--that one you see from here."

"And then----?" said Nina breathlessly.

"The Father Abbot relented and married them."

Nina tried to discern the path to the monastery; in her imagination she
saw them hurrying along on the night of their escape.

"And then? In the end what became of them?"

"She bore him fifteen children; thirteen of them were girls."

Giovanni's manner was so casual as he said this that Nina laughed long