Quick tears of wounded pride sprang to the long black lashes; but, with a dignified, even haughty inclination of the head, she turned from him and put her hand on the handle of the door. At the same instant he caught her arm. "Why, Nina, you're just the spoiled child you always were! Ah, your English doesn't go so far as that; you don't know what a spoiled child is?--_e la cianciosella_, you Neapolitan girl! Why, of course I'm glad to see you--I am delighted to see you--but you frightened me, Nina--your coming like this, alone--" "I frighten you, Leo?" she said, and a quick laugh shone brightly through her tears. "Ah, I see--it is that I have no chaperon? But I had no time--I wished to see you, Leo--I said, 'Leo will understand, and afterwards I get a chaperon all correctly.' Oh, yes, yes, I know--but where is the time?--yesterday I go through the streets--it is Leo, Leo everywhere in the windows--I see you in this costume, in the other costume--and your name so large, so very large, in the--in the--" "The theatre-bills? Well, sit down, Nina, and tell me how you come to be in London." She had by this time quite forgiven or forgotten his first dismay on finding her there; and now she took a chair with much quiet complaisance, and sat down, and put her black silk sunshade across her knees. "It is simple," she said, and from time to time she regarded him in a very frank and pleased and even affectionate way, as if the old comradeship of the time when they were both studying in Naples was not to be interfered with by the natural timidity of a young and extremely pretty woman coming as a stranger into a strange town. "You remember Carmela, Leo? Carmela and her--her spouse--they have great good-fortune--they get a grand prize in the lottery--then he says, 'Carmeluccia, we will go to Paris--we will go to Paris, Carmeluccia--and why not Nina also?' Very kind, was it not?--but Andrea is always kind, so also Carmela, to me. Then I am in Paris. I say, 'It is not far to London; I go to London; I go to London and see Leo.' Perhaps I get an engagement--oh, no, no, no, you shall not laugh!" she broke in--though it was she herself who was laughing, and not he at all. "I am improved--oh, yes, a little--a little improved--you remember old Pandiani he always say my voice not bad, but that _agilita_ was for me very difficult."