In the spring Volterra and his wife generally spent a few weeks in
Turin, to see the elder son, on their way to Aix and Paris, but his
brother could hardly expect to come home for another year. Then the
couple would talk about both the young men, until Sabina's attention
wandered, and she no longer heard what they were saying.

She did not believe that they really thought of trying to marry her to
one of the sons. In her own opinion they could gain nothing by it; she
had no dowry now, and her mother had always talked of marriage as a
business transaction. It did not occur to her that they could care to
be allied with a ruined family, and that her mere name could be worth
anything in their scale of values. They were millionaires, of course,
and even the dowry which she might formerly have expected would have
been nothing compared with their fortune; but her mother had always
said that rich people were the very people who cared the most for
money. That was the reason why they were rich. This explanation was so
logical that Sabina had accepted it as the true one.

Her knowledge of the world was really limited to what she had learned
from her mother, after she had come back from the convent six months
before the crash, and it was an odd mixture of limitations and
exaggerations. When the Princess was in a good humour she believed in
everybody; when she was not, which was when she had no money to throw
away, she attributed the basest motives to all mankind. According to
her moods, she had encouraged Sabina to look forward to a life of
perpetual pleasure, or had assured her with energy that all men were
liars, and that the world was a wretched place after all. It was true
that the Princess entertained the cheerful view more often than not,
which was perhaps fortunate for her daughter; but in her heart the
young girl felt that she would have to rely on her own common sense to