Out of those hands, so delicately, ideally white and transparent, with their faint tracery of azure veins--from those rosy hollowed palms, wherein a chiromancer would have discovered many an intricate crossing of lines, ten, twenty different men had drunk at a price.

He could _see_ the heads of these unknown men bending over her and drinking the wine.

But Secinaro was one of his friends--a great handsome jovial fellow, imperially bearded like a very Lucius Verus, and a most formidable rival to have.

He felt as if the dinner would never come to an end.
'You are such an innovator,' Elena was saying to Donna Francesca, as she dipped her fingers into warm water in a pale blue finger-glass rimmed with silver, 'Why do you not revive the ancient fashion of having the water offered to one after dinner with a basin and ewer?
The modern arrangement is very ugly, do you not think so, Sperelli ?' Donna Francesca rose.

Every one followed her example.