The Innocent Adventuress

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

THE EAVESDROPPER

Maria Angelina was eavesdropping. Not upon her sister Lucia and Paolo Tosti whom she had been assigned 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 pricked 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 fiancés 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....