s own? Had he
begged anything of her for himself? Ought she not to have understood
that though he loved her, he could not ask her to be his wife unless or
until she could prove herself worthy--not of him--but of a name and of
traditions honoured in history? Ought she not to have trusted him, and
seen that he was resisting temptation, not yielding to it, when he
implored her to take his help and friendship?

Already Angelo had disappointed their father, by marrying a girl of whom
no one knew anything except her beauty and talent as an artist. Marie
Gaunt had come to Rome to paint the portrait of a fashionable woman; had
been "taken up" by other _mondaines_; and Angelo, meeting her at a
dinner, had fallen in love with and followed her to Dresden, where she
lived and had made her reputation as an artist. In spite of the Duke's
objections they had married; and Vanno, who was his father's favourite,
surely owed some duty to the old man who loved him. At worst, Marie
Gaunt the artist had in no way laid herself open to gossip. According to
what friends had written from Rome, she was more than discreet, demure
as a Puritan maiden, and the elderly chaperon who travelled with her
was a dragon of virtue. With this girl whom Vanno had met at Monte Carlo
it was different. She was not discreet. Whatever else she might be, she
was not Puritan. She was gossiped about on all sides, and gayly fed the
fire of gossip by appearing in startling dresses, by doing startling
things, and picking up extraordinary acquaintances. Even as far away as
Mentone and Nice she was talked about. Two women had started some story
about her travelling to Paris with a French artist; and the man himself,
who had arrived since, had made a fool of himself at the Casino, and
apparently tried to blackmail her. She was said to have given him money.
No love, no matter how great, could justify Prince Giovanni Della Robbia
in making such a girl his wife while uncertain of the truth which
underlay her amazing eccentricities, and the gossip which followed her
everywhere, like a dog that barked at her heels.

This was what one side of him protested anxiously to the other side,
which in turn raged against it and its cold plausibilities. The side
which was all passion and romance and high chivalry lashed its enemy
with contempt, and evil epithets of which the hardest to bear was
"prig." For no man can endure being thought a prig, even by himself.

"You, who said that her