"One must economize on the trousseau when the bridegroom has cost the fortune," Maria found her wicked little tongue to say and Lucia turned sallow beneath her olive.

Briskly Mamma intervened. "We are thinking not of one of you but all. Now no more words, my little ones. There is too much to be done."

There was indeed, with this trip to be arranged for before the onrush of Lucia's preparation! Once committed to the great adventure it quickly took on the outer aspects of reality. There were clothes to be made and clothes to be bought, there were discussions, decisions, debates and conjectures and consultations. A thousand preparations to be pushed in haste, and at once the big bedroom of Mamma blossomed with delicate fabrics, with bright ribbons and frilly laces, and amid the blossoming, the whir of the machine and the feet and hands of the two-lire-a-day seamstress went like mad clockwork, while in and out Mamma's friends came hurrying, at the rumor, to hint of congratulation or suggest a style, an advice.

The contagion of excitement seized everyone, so that even Lucia was inspired to lend her clever fingers from her own preparations for September.

"But not to be back by then! Not here for my wedding—that would be too odd!" she complained with the persistent ill-will she had shown the expedition.

Shrewd enough to divine its purpose and practical enough to perceive the necessity for it, the older girl cherished her instinctive objection to any pleasure that did not include her in its scope or that threatened to overcast her own festivities.

"That will depend," returned Mamma sedately, "upon the circumstance. Our cousins may not easily find a suitable chaperon for your sister's return. And they may have plans for her entertainment. We must leave that to them."

A little panic-stricken, Maria Angelina perceived that she was being left to them—until otherwise disposed of!

So fast had preparations whirled them on, that parting was upon the girl before she divined the coming pain of it. Then in the last hours her heart was wrung.

She stared at the dear familiar rooms, the streets and the houses with a look of one already lost to her world, and her eyes clung to the figures of her family as if to relinquish the sight of them would dissolve them from existence.

They were tragic, those following, imploring eyes, but they were not wet. Maria understood it was too late to weep. It was necessary to go. The magnitude of the sums already invested in her affair staggered her. They were so many pledges, those sums!

But America was so desolately far.

She could not sleep, that last night. She lay in the big four-poster where once heavy draperies had shut in the slumbers of dead and gone Contessas, and she watched the square of moonlight travel over the painted cherubs on the ceiling. There was always a lump in her throat to be swallowed, and often the tears soaked into the big feather pillows, but there were no sobs to rouse the household.

Julietta, beside her, slept very comfortably.

But the most terrible moment of all was that last look of Mamma and that last clasp of her hands upon the deck of the steamer.

"You must tell me everything, little one," the Contessa Santonini kept saying hurriedly. She was constrained and repetitious in the grip of her emotion, as they stood together, just out of earshot of the Italian consul's wife who was chaperoning the young girl upon her voyage.

"Write me all about the people you meet and what they say to you, and what you do. Remember that I am still Mamma if I am across the ocean and I shall be waiting to hear. . . . And remember that but few of your ideas of America may be true. Americans are not all the types you have read of or the tourists you have met. You must expect a great difference. . . . I should be strange, myself, now in America."

Maria's quick sensitiveness divined a note of secret yearning.

"Yes, Mamma," she said obediently, tightening her clasp upon her mother's hands.

"You must be on guard against mistakes, Maria Angelina," said the other insistently—as if she had not said that a dozen times before! "Because American girls do things it may be not be wise for you to do. You will be of interest because you are different. Be very careful, my little one."

"Yes, Mamma," said the girl again.

"As to your money—you understand it must last. There can be little to pay when you are a guest. But send to Papa and me your accounts as I have told you."

"Yes, Mamma."

"You will not let the American freedom turn your head. You will be wise—Oh, I trust you, Maria Angelina, to be very wise!"

How wise Maria Angelina thought herself! She lifted a face that shone with confidence and understanding and for all her quivering lips she smiled.

"My baby!" said the mother suddenly in English and took that face between her hands and kissed it.

"You will be careful," she began again abruptly, and then stopped.

Too late for more cautions. And the child was so sage.

But it was such a little figure that stood there, such young eyes that smiled so confidently into hers. . . . And America was a long, long way off.

The bugles were blowing for visitors to be away. Just one more hurried kiss and hasty clasp.

An overwhelming fright seized upon the girl as the mother went down the ship's ladder into the small boat that put out so quickly for the shore.

Suppose she should fail them! After all she was not so wise—and not so very pretty. And she had no experience—none!

The sun, dancing on the bright waves, hurt Maria Angelina's eyes. She had to shut them, they watered so foolishly. And something in her young breast wanted to cry after that boat, "Take me back—take me back to my home," but something else in her forbade and would have died of shame before it uttered such weakness.

For poor Julietta, for dear anxious Mamma, she knew herself the only hope.

So steadily she waved her handkerchief long after she had lost the responding flutter from the boat.

She was not crying now. She felt exalted. She pressed closer to the rail and stared out very solemnly over the blue and gold bay to beautiful Naples. . . . Suddenly her heart quickened. Vesuvius was moving. The far-off shores of Italy were slipping by. Above her the black smoke that had been coming faster and faster from the great funnels streamed backward like long banners.

Maria Angelina was on her way.

CHAPTER II

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

With whatever emotion Jane Blair had received the startling demand upon her hospitality she rallied nobly to the family call. She left her daughter in the Adirondacks where they were summering and descended upon her husband in his New York office to rout him out to meet the girl with her.

"An infernal shame—that's what I call it!" Jim Blair grumbled, facing the steaming heat of the unholy customs shed. "It's an outrage—an imposition——"

"Oh, not all that, Jim! Lucy—that's the mother—and I used to visit like this when we were girls. It was done then," his wife replied with an air of equable amusement.

She added, "I rather think I did most of the visiting. I was awf'ly fond of Lucy."

"That's different. You'll have a total stranger on your hands. . . . Are