The Innocent Adventuress Part 5

She was grateful when Cousin Jane declared for an early return. She could hardly wait to be alone.

"_What did I tell you?_" Jane Blair stopped suddenly in their progress to the door and turned to her husband in low-toned triumph. "She's with him. Leila's with him."

"Huh?" said Cousin Jim unexcitedly.

"She's pretended some errand in town--she's come in to get hold of him again," went on Cousin Jane hurriedly, as one who tells the story of the act to the un.o.bservant. "She's afraid to leave him alone. . . . And he never mentioned her. I wonder----"

Maria Angelina's eyes had followed theirs. She saw a group about a table, she saw Barry Elder's white-clad shoulders and curly brown head.

She saw, unregardfully, a man and woman with him, but all her eagerness, all her straining vision was on the young girl with him--a girl so blonde, so beautiful that a pang went to Maria Angelina's heart. She learned pain in a single throb.

She heard Cousin Jim quoting oddly in undertone, "'And Beauty drew him, by a single hair,'" and the words entered her consciousness hauntingly.

If Leila Grey looked like that--why then----

Yet he had said that he would come!

Maria Angelina's first night in America, like that last night in Italy, was of sleepless watching through the dark. But now there were no child's tears at leaving home. There was no anxious planning for poor Julietta. Already Julietta and Lucia and the Palazzo, even Papa and dear, dear Mamma, appeared strangely unreal--like a vanished spell--and only this night was real and this strange expectant stir in her.

And then she fell asleep and dreamed that Barry Elder was advancing to her across the long drawing-room of the Palazzo Santonini and as she turned to receive him Lucia stepped between, saying, "He is for me, instead of Paolo Tosti," and behold! Lucia's eyes were as blue as the sea and Lucia's hair was as golden as amber and her face was the face of the girl in the restaurant.

CHAPTER III

LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE

Wilderness Lodge, Cousin Jane had said, was a simple little place in the mountains, not a hotel but rather a club house where only certain people could go, and Maria Angelina had pictured a white stucco pension-hotel set against some background like the bare, bright hills of Italy.

She found a green smother of forest, an ocean of greenness with emerald crests rising higher and higher like giant waves, and at the end of the long motor trip the Lodge at last disclosed itself as a low, dark, rambling building, set in a clearing behind a blue bend of sudden river.

And built of logs! Did people of position live yet in logs in America?

demanded the girl's secret astonishment as the motor whirled across the rustic bridge and stopped before the wide steps of a veranda full of people.

Springing down the steps, two at a time, came a tall, short-skirted girl in white.

"Dad--you came, too!" she cried. "Oh, that's bully. You must enter the tournament--Mother, did you remember about the cup and the--you know?

What we talked of for the b.o.o.by?"

She had a loud, gay voice like a boy's and as Maria was drawn into the commotion of greetings, she opened wide, half-intimidated eyes at the bigness and brownness of this Cousin Ruth.

She had expected Heaven knows what of incredible charm in the girl who had detached the Signor Bobby Martin from the siren Leila. Her instant wonder was succeeded by a sensation of gay relief. After all, these things went by chance and favor. . . . And if Bobby Martin could prefer this brown young girl to that vision at the restaurant why then--then perhaps there was also a chance for--what was it the young Signor Elder had called her? A _pet.i.te brune_ wrapped in cotton wool.

These thoughts flashed through her as one thought as she followed her three cousins across the wide verandas, full of interested eyes, into the Lodge and up the stairs to their rooms, where Ruth directed the men in placing the big trunk and the bags and hospitably explained the geography of the suite.

"My room's on that side and Dad's and Mother's is just across--and we all have to use this one bath--stupid, isn't it, but Dad is hardly ever here and there's running water in the rooms. You'll survive, won't you?"

Hastily Maria Angelina a.s.sured her that she would.

Glimpsing the white-tiled splendors of this bath she wondered how Ruth would survive the tin tub, set absurdly in a red plush room of the Palazzo. . . .

"Now you know your way about," the American girl rattled on, her tone negligent, her eyes colored with a little warmer interest as her glance swept her foreign little cousin. "Frightfully hot, wasn't it? I'll clear out so you can pop into the tub. You'll just have time before luncheon,"

she a.s.sured her and was off.

The next instant, from closed doors beyond, her voice rose in unguarded exclamation.

"Oh, you baby doll! Mother, did you ever----"

The voices sank from hearing and Maria Angelina was left with the feeling that a baby doll was not a desirable being in America. This Cousin Ruth intimidated her and her breezy indifference and lack of affectionate interest shot the visitor with the troubled suspicion that her own presence was entirely superfluous to her cousin's scheme of things. She felt more at home with the elders.

Uncertainly she crossed to her big trunk and stood looking down on the bold labels.

How long since she and Mamma had packed it, with dear Julietta smoothing the folds in place! And how far away they all were. . . . It was not the old Palazzo now that was unreal--it was this new, bright world and all the strange faces.

The chintz-decked room with its view of alien mountains seemed suddenly remote and lonely.

Her hands shook a little as she unpacked a tray of pretty dresses and laid them carefully across the bed. . . . Unconsciously she had antic.i.p.ated a warmer welcome from this young cousin. . . . She winked away the tears that threatened to stain the bright ribbons, and stole into the splendor of the white bathroom, marveling at its luxurious contrast to the logs without.

The water refreshed her. She felt more cheerful, and when she came to a choice of frocks, decidedly a new current of interest was stealing through life again.

First impressions were so terribly important! She wanted to do honor to the Blairs--to justify the hopes of Mamma. This was not enough of an occasion for the white mull. The silks look hot and citified. Hesitantly she selected the apricot organdie with a deeper-shaded sash; it was simple for all its glowing color, though the short frilled sleeves struck her as perhaps too chic. It had been a copy of one of Lucia's frocks, that one bought to such advantage of Madame Revenant.

With it went a golden-strawed hat--but Maria Angelina was uncertain about the hat.

Did you wear one at a hotel--when you lived at a hotel? Mamma's admonitions did not cover that. She put the hat on; she took the hat off. She rather liked it on--but she dropped it on the bed at Ruth's sudden knock and felt a sense of escape for Ruth was hatless.

And Ruth still wore the same short white skirt and white blouse, open at the throat, in which she had greeted them. . . . Was the apricot too much then of a toilette? Ruth's eyes were frankly on it; her expression was odd.

But Mrs. Blair had changed. She appeared now in blue linen, very smart and trim.

Worriedly Maria Angelina's dark eyes went from one to the other.

"Is this--is this what I should wear?" she asked timidly. "Am I not--as you wish?"

It would have taken a hard heart to wish her otherwise.

"It's very pretty," said Cousin Jane in quick rea.s.surance.

"Too pretty, s'all," said Cousin Ruth. "But it won't be wasted. . . .

Bobby Martin is staying to luncheon," she flung casually at her parents.

"Has a guest with him. You remember Johnny Byrd."

American freedom, indeed! thought Maria Angelina following down the slippery stairs into the wide hall below where, in a boulder fireplace that was surmounted by a stag's head, a small blaze was flickering despite the warmth of the day.

Wasteful, thought Maria Angelina reprovingly. One could see that the Americans had never suffered for fuel. . . .