“Exactly,” said I. “So many of the nobles I’ve met looked and acted like frauds. They seemed afraid it wouldn’t be known that they were of the aristocracy.” “You are prejudiced,” said Edna. “Then why do I size up Frascatoni so well?” “You happen to like him.” “But I don’t,” replied I. “Of course not,” said Edna with sarcasm. “He isn’t in business.” “Precisely,” I answered. “He couldn’t do anything--build a railroad, run a factory, write a book, paint a picture. He and his kind are simply amateurs at life, and their pretense that they could be professionals if they chose ought to deceive nobody. He probably could ride a horse a little worse than a professional jockey, or handle a foil almost as well as a fencing master, or play on the piano or the violin passably. I don’t admire that sort of people, and I can’t like where I don’t admire.” Edna yawned and prepared to go up to her own rooms. “I hope he’ll stay a while,” said she. “And I hope he’ll let me see something of him. He’s the first ray of interest I’ve had this winter.” “You will see something of him,” said I. “He liked you.” “You think so?” said she, seating herself on the arm of a chair. “I know it. Unless he finds what he’s looking for, he’ll attach himself to you.” “What is he looking for?” “A very rich wife,” said I. “But she must be attractive as well as rich, Armitage tells me. Frascatoni doesn’t need money badly enough to annex a frump. And Armitage says that while Englishmen and Germans and the heiress-hunting sort of French don’t care a rap what the lady looks like, the Italians--of the old families--are rather particular--not exacting, but particular. Unless, of course, the fortune is huge.” Edna yawned again. That sort of talk either irritated or bored her. Frascatoni was constantly with her thenceforth--not pointedly or scandalously so; there are discreet ways of doing those things, and of discretion in all its forms the Italian was a supreme master. The game of man and woman had been his especial game from precocious and maddeningly handsome boyhood. He had learned both by being conquered and by conquering. They say--and I believe it--that of all the foreigners a clean Italian nobleman is the most fascinating. The Hungarian or Russian is a wild, barbaric love-maker, the German a wordy sentimentalist, the Englishman dominates and absorbs, the Frenchman knows how to flatter the most subtly, how to make the woman feel that life with him would be full of interest and charm. But the right sort of Italian combines the best of all these qualities, and adds to them the allure of the unfathomably mysterious. He constantly satisfies yet always baffles. He reveals himself, only to disclose in the inner wall of what seemed to be his innermost self a strangely carved door ajar.