The Innocent Adventuress.

by Mary Hastings Bradley.

CHAPTER I

THE EAVESDROPPER

Maria Angelina was eavesdropping. Not upon her sister Lucia and Paolo Tosti whom she had been a.s.signed to chaperon by reading a book to herself in the adjoining room--no, they were safely busy with piano and violin, and she was heartily bored, anyway, with their inanities. Voices from another direction had p.r.i.c.ked her to alertness.

Maria Angelina was in the corner room of the Palazzo Santonini, a dim and beautiful old library with faded furnishings whose west arch of doorway looked into the pretentious reception room where the fiances were amusing themselves with their music and their whisperings. It was quite advanced, this allowing them to be so alone, but the Contessa Santonini was an American and, moreover, the wedding was not far off.

One can be indulgent when the settlements are signed.

So only Maria Angelina and her book were stationed for propriety, and, wanting another book, she had gone to the shelves and through the north door, ajar, caught the words that held her intent.

"Three of them!" a masculine voice uttered explosively, and Maria knew that Papa was speaking of his three daughters, Lucia, Julietta and Maria Angelina--and she knew, too, that Papa had just come from the last interview with the Tostis' lawyers.

The Tostis had been stiff in their demands and Papa had been more complaisant than he should have been. Altogether that marriage was costing him dear.

He had been figuring now with Mamma for a pencil went clattering to the floor.

"And something especial," he proclaimed bitterly, "will have to be done for Julietta!"

At that the eavesdropper could smile, a faint little smile of shy pride and self-reliance.

Nothing especial would have to be done for _her_! A decent dowry, of course, as befitting a daughter of the house, but she would need no more, for Maria was eighteen, as white as a lily and as slender as an aspen, with big, dark eyes like strange pools of night in her child's face.

Whereas poor Julietta----!

"Madre Dio!" said Papa indignantly. "For what did we name her Julietta?

And born in Verona! A pretty sentiment indeed. But it was of no inspiration to her--none!"

Mamma did not laugh although Papa's sudden chuckle after his explosion was most irresistible.

"But if Fate went by names," he continued, "then would Maria Angelina be for the life of religion." And he chuckled again.

Still Mamma did not laugh. Her pencil was scratching.

"It's a pity," murmured Papa, "that you did not embrace the faith, my dear, for then we might arrange this matter. They used to manage these things in the old days."

"Send Julietta into a convent?" cried Mamma in a voice of sudden energy.

Maria could not see but she knew that the Count shrugged.

"She appears built to coif Saint Catherine," he murmured.

"Julietta is a dear girl," said the Contessa in a warm voice.

"When one knows her excellencies."

"She will do very well--with enough dowry."

"Enough dowry--that is it! It will take all that is left for the two of them to push Julietta into a husband's arms!"

When the Count was annoyed he dealt directly with facts--a proceeding he preferred to avoid at other moments.

Behind her curtains Maria drew a troubled breath. She, too, felt the family responsibility for Julietta--dear Julietta, with her dumpy figure and ugly face. Julietta was nineteen and now that Lucia was betrothed it was Julietta's turn.

If only it could be known that Julietta had a pretty dot!

Maria stood motionless behind the curtains, her winged imagination rushing to meet Julietta's future, fronting the indifference, the neglect, the ridicule before which Julietta's sensitive, shamed spirit would suffer and bleed. She could see her partnerless at b.a.l.l.s, lugged heavily about to teas and dinners, shrinking eagerly and hopelessly back into the refuge of the paternal home. . . . Yet Julietta had once whispered to her that she wanted to die if she could never marry and have an armful of _bambinos_!

Maria Angelina's young heart contracted with sharp anxiety. Things were in a bad way with her family indeed. There had always been difficulties, for Papa was extravagant and ever since brother Francisco had been in the army, he, too, had his debts, but Mamma had always managed so wonderfully! But the war had made things very difficult, and now peace had made them more difficult still. There had been one awful time when it had looked as if the carriages and horses would have to go and they would be reduced to sharing a barouche with some one else in secret, proud distress--like the Manzios and the Benedettos who took their airings alternately, each with a different crested door upon the identical vehicle--but Mamma had overcome that crisis and the social rite of the daily drive upon the Pincian had been sacredly preserved.

But apparently these settlements were too much, even for Mamma.

Then her name upon her mother's lips brought the eavesdropper to swift attention.

It appeared that the Contessa had a plan.

Maria Angelina could go to visit Mamma's cousins in America. They were rich--that is understood of Americans; even Mamma had once been rich when she was a girl, Maria dimly remembered having heard--and they would give Maria a chance to meet people. . . . Men did not ask settlements in America. They earned great sums and could please themselves with a pretty, penniless face. . . . And what was saved on Maria's dowry would plump out Julietta's.

Thunderstruck, the Count objected. Maria was his favorite.

"Send Julietta to America, then," he protested, but swallowed that foolishness at Mamma's calm, "To what good?"

To what good, indeed! It would never do to risk the cost of a trip to America upon Julietta.

Sulkily Papa argued that the cost in any case was prohibitive. But Mamma had the figures.

"One must invest to receive," she insisted; and when he grumbled, "But to lose the child?" she broke out, "Am _I_ not losing her?" on a note that silenced him.

Then she added cheerfully, "But it will be for her own good."

"You want her to marry an American? You are not satisfied, then, with Italians?" said Papa playfully leaning over to ruffle Mamma's soft, light hair and at his movement Maria Angelina fled swiftly from those curtains back to her post, and sat very still, a book in front of her, a haze of romance swimming between it and her startled eyes.

America. . . . A rich husband. . . . Travel. . . . Adventure. . . . The unknown. . . .

It was wonderful. It was unbelievable. . . . It was desperate.

It was a hazard of the sharpest chance.

That knowledge brought a chill of gravity into the hot currents of her beating heart--a chill that was the cold breath of a terrific responsibility. She felt herself the hope, the sole resource of her family. She was the die on which their throw of fortune was to be cast.

Dropping her book she slid down from her chair and crossed to a long mirror in an old carved frame where a dove was struggling in a falcon's talons while Cupids drew vain bows, and in the dimmed gla.s.s stared in pa.s.sionate searching.

She was so childish, so slight looking. She was white--that was the skin from Mamma--and now she wondered if it were truly a charm. Certainly Lucia preferred her own olive tints.