whirling dance. It had been perfectly done; even in his _abandon_ there
was no lack of ceremony. There was none of the "come along" spirit of
youth in America. He was in this, just as he was in everything else, a
remnant of a past age; he had merely been transformed into a Bacchant!
He was in no way a mere young man who had grabbed a young girl around
the waist and made her dance.

But as the princess watched them, her feelings were strongly at
variance. Admiration played the greater part. Even a much less biased
mind than hers could not have failed to appreciate the wonderful grace
of the man and the girl, for Nina was as graceful as he. Yet the
princess looked vaguely troubled, too, at the thought that Giovanni was
perhaps overstepping his privilege.

"Giovanni! Nina!" she called, but she might as well have appealed to the
wind that blew through the courtyard below, and instead of their heeding
she felt her own waist encircled as Sansevero, who had entered by the
door behind her, swept her into the dance with him. "But, Sandro!" she
exclaimed, resisting, "it is . . . not seemly! What if . . . the servants
. . . should . . . see us?" But, joining Giovanni in the tune he was
whistling, Sansevero seemed to have caught some of his brother's humor.
If Giovanni had become the spirit of grace, Alessandro had become the
spirit of recklessness, and Eleanor was whirled, breathless, not as one
dances usually, but madly, so that her feet barely touched the floor. To
add to the revelry of the scene, the Great Dane, who was never far from
Giovanni's side, now joined the general whirl and leaped round and round
as though he had but newly come from a bath, his deep bark punctuating
the valse the two men were whistling. The princess felt an apprehensive
dread of a servant's intrusion, and again a breathless "Sandro, stop!"
escaped her lips just as----