The Title Market | Page 6

opened it by pressing a hidden spring. This led directly into the
apartments at the end of the south wing next to the kitchen offices--the
only ones at present in use. She went directly to her own sitting-room,
from which the evidences of her toilet had meantime been removed.

This room better than anything else proclaimed the manner of woman
who occupied it. It had been arranged by one to whom comfort was of
paramount importance, and, in spite of a certain incongruity, the whole
effect was pleasing and harmonious. The frescoes on the walls were
almost obliterated by age, and were partially covered by dull red stuff.
Against this latter hung three pictures from the famous Sansevero
collection: a Holy Family by Leonardo da Vinci, a triptych by Perugino,
and a Madonna by Correggio. Hardly less celebrated, but sharply at
odds with the ecclesiastical subjects of the paintings, was the mantle,
carved in a bacchanalian procession of satyrs and nymphs--a model
said to have been made by Niccola Pisano.
The floor, of the inevitable black and white marble, was strewn with
rugs; and in front of desk and sofa bear skins had been added as a
double protection against the cold. The furniture was modern
upholstery, with gay chintz slip-covers. Frilled muslin curtains were
crossed over and draped high under outer ones of chintz. And
everywhere there were flowers--roses, orange blossoms, and camellias;
in tall jars and short, on every available piece of furniture. Scarcely less
in evidence were photographs, propped against walls, ornaments, and
flower jars; long, narrow, highly glazed European photographs with
white backgrounds, uniformed officers, sentimentally posed engaged
couples, young mothers in full evening dress reading to barefooted
babies out of gingerly held picture books. There were photographs of
all varieties; big ones and little ones, framed and unframed--the king
and the queen with crown-surmounted settings and boldly written first
names, and "_A la cara Eleanor_" inscribed above that of her majesty.
In the other photographs the signatures grew in complication and length
as their aristocratic importance diminished. Books and magazines
littered the tables; French, Italian, and English in indiscriminate
association. A workbasket of plain sewing lay open among the pillows
on the sofa. An American magazine, with a paper-knife inserted
between its leaves, was tossed beside a tooled morocco edition of
Tacitus. A crucifix hung beneath the Correggio; a plaster model of the
Discobolus stood between the windows.
And in the midst of old and new, religious and pagan, priceless and

insignificant, sat her Excellency, the ex-American beauty and present
chatelaine of the great family of the princes of the Sansevero, in a golf
skirt and walking boots, a plain starched shirtwaist and stock tie,
adding to the wrinkles in her forehead and in the corners of her eyes by
trying to figure out how, with forty thousand lire, she was going to pay
a debt of sixty thousand lire and have enough left over to open the great
palace in Rome, and realize a dream that had always been in her
heart--to take Nina out in Roman society, to give herself the delight of
showing Rome to Nina, and the greater delight of showing Nina to
Rome.
She glanced up at two photographs, the only ones on her desk. The first
was of her husband, taken in the fancy costume of a troubadour, with
the signature "Sandro" across the lower half, in characters symbolical
of the song he might have sung, so gay and ascending was the
handwriting. The other picture was of a young woman in evening dress.
The face was bright and winning rather than pretty; the personality
really chic, and this in spite of the fact that the girl's clothes were
over-elaborate. Her dress was a mass of embroidery, and around her
throat she wore a diamond collar. Diamond hairpins held the loops of
waving fair hair--very like the princess's own--and two handsome rings
were on the fingers of one hand. It in no way suggested the Italian idea
of a young girl; yet there was a youthful freshness in the expression of
the face, a girlish slimness of the figure that could not have been
produced by touching up the negative. Under the picture was written in
a clear and modernly square handwriting, "To my own Auntie Princess
with love from Nina."
The name "Auntie Princess" carried as much of Nina's personality to
the mind of her aunt as the picture itself. It was the one her childish lips
had spoken when she was told that her aunt was to marry a prince.
Most distinct of all Eleanor Sansevero's memories of home was one of
Nina being held up high above the crowd at the end of the pier to blow
good-by kisses to the bride of a foreign nobleman, being carried