"That's a little better. I guess he'll have to be Manlio to me. Bring him along, whatever happens, and then let's pray hard to have everything happen right."

Not much later on the same day Mrs. Hawthorne's brougham might have been seen climbing Viale dei Colli, with the lady inside, alone, engaged in meditation.

"It would be a pity," she was thinking, as she alighted before Villa Foss, "that a little matter of eight thousand dollars should stand in the way of perfect bliss!"

CHAPTER VIII

So many forces had been enlisted, into so many hands the white card given, to make Mrs. Hawthorne's ball a success, that it could hardly fail to be somewhat splendid. On a platform raised in one corner of the ball-room sat the little orchestra a.s.sembled and conducted by Signor Ceccherelli, who, from his mien, might have been the creator of these musicians and originator of all music.

Charlie Hunt was floor-master, and busy enough. Another might perhaps have done as much and not appeared so busy. The cotillion especially gave him a great deal to do. Everybody understood that he had planned all the figures and bought the favors. Some received an impression that the ball was entirely managed by him, who was such a very great friend of the hostess's. Some even carried home an idea that the hostess never did anything without consulting him, and more often than not besought him to do it for her.

This sounds cruder than it actually was. Charlie was looking most handsome and high-bred. Animation shone from his eyes, his teeth, his skin, over which he now and then swept a fine white silk handkerchief.

He danced devotedly every minute during which he was not engaged in making others dance. Mrs. Hawthorne, gazing after him with a benignant smile, was truly grateful to him for putting into her party so much "go." It was his atmosphere rather than his words--though he did drop words, but not many or really in bad taste--that made him appear the one indispensable person in the house.

Mrs. Foss stood near the central door with Mrs. Hawthorne, receiving.

She had not omitted from her list one acquaintance in Florence of the suitable cla.s.s. Everybody was there; the style of invitation-card sent had suggested a grand occasion.

All the persons she had seen at the Fosses on the first Friday evening at their house Mrs. Hawthorne saw again, and many more. Balm de Breze, with a gallantry of old style, bent his black-lacquer mustache over her glove. The dark Landini pressed her hand with a pinch the warmth of which p.r.i.c.ked her attention, and she found his eyes fixed on her with more the air of seeing her than is common at a first meeting.

Suddenly her heart thumped like a school-girl's. Gerald was coming, and with him an officer who must surely be Manlio. She tried to keep down her emotion, but the pink of her face deepened, a trembling seized her smile.

The Italian was as white as paper, his mustache and brows made spots of ink on it; his eyes were as deep and still as wells in the night. She could hardly doubt that his heart was in a tumult, but he spoke without disaster to his voice, thanking her in a formal phrase. She perceived, from a distinct advantage over him in height, how faultlessly handsome he was in a quiet, unmagnetic way. Never had she seen anything to equal the whiteness of his teeth except her pearls in their black velvet case.

After having paid his duty to her, he remained for some minutes speaking with Mrs. Foss, who appeared as kind, while he appeared as calm and natural, as if time had moved back, and they were still at last spring and the beginning of his visits. Of all concerned Aurora was the least collected.

"I can't help it!" she murmured to Gerald, while the other two were talking together. "I'm all of a tremble. I feel as if I were Brenda; and at the same time I feel as if I were him--or he."

Mrs. Foss turned to them to say she believed everybody had arrived, and with Giglioli moved away from the door. Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne if they should waltz, but she refused, because she ought to be looking after the people who were not dancing and seeing that every one had a good time. She should dance only once that evening, she told him, and it should be with Mr. Foss, who had promised to dance at her party if she would promise to dance with him.

Mr. Foss was seen approaching, and Mrs. Hawthorne smiled and sparkled in antic.i.p.ation of the jokes they would exchange on her fairy weight and his youthful limberness.

Gerald sent his eyes around the room to see if any one were free whom it would be a sort of duty to ask to dance. He did not look for pleasure from dancing, the less so that Charlie Hunt, on the perpetual jump, and dancing with a perfection almost unmanly, had brought the exercise into temporary discredit with him. Miss Madison was dancing, Miss Seymour was dancing, Leslie was dancing, Brenda--his eyes were unable to find. In a doorway, and not quite as festive in looks as the majority, which gave to the room the effect of an animated flower-bed, he perceived a figure in snuff-brown silk, just in front of which, soberly watching the dancers, was a little girl in a short dress of embroidered white, a blue hair-ribbon and blue enamel locket. At once dropping his search for a partner, Gerald went to join this pair, thinking, as he approached, that Lily without her spectacles was beginning to have a look of Brenda,--a Brenda with less beauty, but more originality; more--what could one call it?--geniality, perhaps.

"Oh, Gerald!"--the little girl caught his hand without ceasing for more than a second to watch the ball-room floor,--"I have promised to go home willingly at ten o'clock!" It was spoken in a gentle wail.

"My child," said Fraulein, "you must begin to prepare, for I fear it cannot be far from ten."

"Oh, Fraulein, don't keep talking about it! _Please!_"

"When you leave this pleasure, Lili, remember, there will be still that other pleasure of the long ride home in the night and the moonlight."

"Yes." Lily, glad again, turned wholly to Gerald, the music having stopped. "Mrs. Hawthorne told mother that if she would let me come I should be taken home in her own carriage, with all the furs around us and a hot water-box for our feet, so that we never could catch cold.

Wasn't it sweet of her? And we've both already had ices and cakes, before anybody else, because she said we must. Don't you think she's sweet, Gerald?"

"Sweet as honey," he said.

"Oh, Gerald,"--Lily's tone was fairly lamentable,--"have you seen the baskets of favors that are going to be given away by and by? There are roses of red silk, and lilies of white velvet, and chocolate cigars, and fans, and bonbonnieres, and silver bangles! Then funny ones of little monkeys and ducks and things. And I have to go home willingly, cheerfully, promptly, at ten o'clock!"

"Lily, if any lady is so good and so misguided as to honor me with a favor, I will bring it to you in my pocket to-morrow or soon after, I promise."

"What hour is it, Herr Fane?" asked Fraulein over Lily's head.

Gerald drew out his watch and hesitated, sincerely sorry.

"To be exact, it is three minutes and three quarters to ten," he said.

Lily's mouth dropped open, and out of the small dark hollow one could fear for a second that a cry of protest or revolt might come; but the very next moment it was seen that Lily had returned to be the best child in the world and the most honorable.

"Good night, Gerald!" she said, with a wistfully willing, cheerful, ready face. "You won't forget?"

He was left in the oval room, and as the dancers who had come in to occupy its seats seemed all to be in pairs, he remained aloof. He took the occasion to have a look at the panels, which he had not before seen, the tapestries, which were not tapestries, but paintings on rep. He remembered--the Fountain of Love, not Biblical.

The fountain, surely enough, spouted from a marble dolphin squeezed in the chubby arms of a marble Love, and was four times repeated, at different hours of the day and seasons of the year. In spring, at dawn, a maiden filled her cup at it. At noon, in summer, the same maiden and a youth drank from it with cheeks close together. In autumn, at sunset, the maiden, sadder of countenance, stared at the fountain, visibly wrapped in memories. In winter the fountain stood solitary and frozen, Cupid had a hood of snow, the purplish twilight landscape was drowned in melancholy.

Gerald's mind made an excursion from the things before him to the studio where those facile works of art had been produced. The place was imaginary, and the artist not altogether clear, but the features of the second figure which he saw, the visitor at the studio, were well-known to him, and the sentiments of the artist receiving the order to treat a subject in four large panels for a rich _forestiera_ not difficult to estimate.

The ball had been raging, if one may so express it, for several hours, the feast was at its height, when Aurora, confused with the richness and multiplicity of her impressions, and aware of a happy fatigue, withdrew from her guests to be for a few minutes just a quiet looker-on. She chose as her retreat a spot at the curve of the stairs, where she felt herself in the midst of everything and yet isolated. Her back was toward the persons going up and down; she leaned on the sloping bal.u.s.trade, and breathed and rested and hoped no one would notice her for a little while, all being delightfully engaged.

She could see a little way into the ball-room, where certain younger couples, mad for dancing, were making the most of the time when the floor was relatively empty, the supper-room being proportionately full.

Supper over, the cotillion would begin. She could see Leslie, in Nile-green c.r.a.pe, eating an ice out in the hall with that American boy, the singer, whose conceit, by his looks, had not yet been made to totter. She could hear the merry sound of spoons and gla.s.ses, and knew what good things were being consumed. All the house was involved in festivity, and resounding with it. In the upstairs sitting-room were card-tables. In the improvised conservatory opposite one large dim lantern glowed softly amid palms and flowers. To Aurora every goose present that evening was a swan. There were frumpy dresses more than a few,--there always are,--and there was the usual proportion of plain girls and uninteresting men, but she did not see those. She saw a crowd more brilliant and beautiful and fit to be loved than had ever before been a.s.sembled beneath one roof. Her heart felt very large, very soft, very light.

All evening it had seemed to her rather as if she walked in a dream.

More than ever now, as she stopped to take account of all the wonderfulness surrounding her, it felt to her like a dream; so that she said to herself, "This is I, Nell--is it possible? Is it possible that this is I--Nell?"

And no doubt because she had been too excitedly happy and was tired, and the time had come for some degree of reaction, her joy fell, withered like a child's collapsing pink balloon, when, contrasting the present with the past for the sake of seeing the things before her as more rarely full of wonder and charm, she saw those other things. Memories she did not willingly call up rose of themselves, and forced her to give them her attention in the midst of that scene of flowers, light, music.

The brightness, the flavor, went out of these as if under an unkind magic.

"It's a wonder," she thought, "that I can ever be as happy as I am. I do wonder at myself how I can do it to rejoice."

But the next minute she was smiling again, sweetly, heart-wholly, forgetfully. She had caught sight of Gerald looking at her as if about to approach.

"Who are you going to dance the cotillion with?" she asked gaily.

"You, Mrs. Hawthorne, with your kind consent."

"No, I couldn't do it. I only dance a little bit, just what Estelle has taught me since we've been here. I don't keep step very well; I walk all over my partner's feet. Besides, it wouldn't do, because I've already refused to dance with Mr. Landini."

"Sit it out with me, then, I implore you, if you positively do not wish to dance."

"Oh, but you must dance! I want you to. I want to behold you all stuck over with favors."