And much as they might deplore the fact that it was
probably going to adorn the museum of Mr. Cornelius van Koppen, an
alien millionaire, not one of them found it in his heart to disapprove
Count Caloveglia's action. For they all liked him. Every one liked him.
They all understood his position. He was a necessitous widower with a
marriageable daughter on his hands, a girl whom everybody admired for
her beauty and charm of character.
Mr. van Koppen, like all the rest, knew what hard times he had gone
through; how, born of an ancient and wealthy family, he had not
hesitated to sell his wonderful collection of antiques together with
all but a shred of his ancestral estates, in order to redeem the
gambling debts of a brother. That amounted to quixotism, they declared.
They little realized what anguish of mind this step had cost him, for
he concealed his true feelings under a cloak of playful worldliness.
Excess of grief, he held, is an unlovely thing--not meet to be displayed
before men. All excess is unlovely.
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