! _Ah Dio!_ I cannot! She is young--and
surely she loves him."

"Every woman thinks the man she prefers is alike beloved by every other
woman he meets! I have not heard that she loves him!"

"Be quiet about what you have heard--what I want to know is, does he
return it? I am told she is attractive; if she is--I shall----"

Count Rosso chanced upon the right remark in answering, "Could a man, do
you, think, who has had your favor, be satisfied with a cold American
girl? Do not be stupid!"

Favorita was slightly pacified. "Is she at all like me? Paint me her
portrait!"

"Her eyes are--m--m--rather nice; her skin--yes, good; her
features--imperfect; she holds herself haughtily--chin out, and her back
very straight, and"--as a last assurance, he added, "she speaks broken
Italian."

La Favorita's coal-black eyes lit with a new light, and her whole body
seemed to flutter. Her carmine lips parted as, with an expression of
quick joy, she clapped her hands together and exclaimed, "American
accent! _Per Dio!_ She has an American accent!"

In her delight she threw her arms about the count's neck and kissed him
on the lips. With perfect impartiality she turned to two other men
standing near and kissed them also, repeating to herself the while, "An
American accent!"

The next arrivals she received as though they were both expected and
welcome; greeting them with the unintelligible exclamation, "Imagine
speaking the only language in the world worth speaking with an American
accent!"

"But why do we not go into the dining-room?" asked her stage manager, a
heavy puff of a man. "I have a void within."

"May the void always stay, great beef!" she laughed. Then, with a shrug
and a wave of her arms, as though to sweep every one out of the room,
she cried petulantly, "Go! and eat, all of you. I am glad, if only you
go!"

The company, for the most part, laughed and went into the dining-room,
whence the sound of revelry gradually grew louder. The Count Rosso alone
remained with the hostess. "Come, Fava, don't be so headstrong--you're
spoiling the party."

"Spoiling the party! Do you hear the noise they are making? Is that the
way to conduct one's self in a lady's house--I said a lady's house! Why
do you look at me like that? Am I not a lady just as much as that
daughter of an Indian squaw from over the Atlantic? Those in there"--she
pointed with her thumb toward the dining-room--"they would not behave so
in the Palazzo Sansev