But
Beatrice was the only one of the party who had arrived at no distinct
determination in the matter. San Miniato attracted her, and was very
well in his way, but that was all. Amidst the shoals of migratory
Neapolitans with magnificent titles and slender purses, who appeared,
disported themselves and disappeared again, at the summer resort, it was
quite possible that one might be found with more to recommend him than
San Miniato could boast. Most of them were livelier than he, and
certainly all were noisier. Many of them had very bright black eyes,
which Beatrice liked, and they were all dressed a little beyond the
extreme of the fashion, a fact of which she was too young to understand
the psychological value in judging of men. Some of them sang very
prettily, and San Miniato did not possess any similar accomplishment.
Indeed, in the young girl's opinion, he approached dangerously near to
being a "serious" man, as the Italians express it, and but for his known
love of gambling he might have seemed to her altogether too dull a
personage to be thought of as a possible husband. It is not easy to
define exactly what is meant in Italian by a "serious" man.
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