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 balls, 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 glass stared in passionate 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.

And her eyes were so big and dark, like caverns in her face, and her lips were mere scarlet threads. The beauties she had seen were warm-colored, high-bosomed, full-lipped.

Her distrust extended even to her coronet of black braids.

Her uncertain youth had no vision of the purity and pride of that braid-bound head, of the brilliance of the dark eyes against the satin skin, of the troubling glamour of the red little mouth. In the clear definition of the delicate features, the arch of the high eyebrows, the sweep of the shadowy lashes, her childish hope had never dreamed of more than mere prettiness and now she was torturingly questioning that.

"Practicing your smiles, my dear?" said a voice from the threshold, Lucia's voice with the mockery of the successful, and Maria Angelina turned from her dim glass with a flame of scarlet across her pallor, and joined, with an angry heart, in the laugh which her sister and young Tosti raised against her.

But Maria Angelina had a tongue.

"But yes—for the better fish are yet uncaught," she retorted with a flash of the eyes toward the young man, and Paolo, all ardor as he was for Lucia's olive and rose, shot a glance of tickled humor at her impudence.

He promised himself some merry passes with the little sister-in-law.

Lucia resented the glances.

"Wait your turn, little one," she scoffed. "You will be in pinafores until our poor Julietta is wed," and she laughed, unkindly.

There were times, Maria felt furiously, when she hated Lucia.

Her championing heart resolved that Julietta should not be left unwed and defenseless to that mockery. Julietta should have her chance at life!

Not a word of the great plan was breathed officially to the girl, although the mother's expectancy for mail revealed that a letter had already been sent, until that expectancy was rewarded by a letter with the American postmark. Then the drama of revelation was exquisitely enacted.

It appeared that the Blairs of New York, Mamma's dear cousins, were insistent that one of Mamma's daughters should know Mamma's country and Mamma's relatives. They had a daughter about Maria Angelina's age so Maria Angelina had been selected for the visit. The girls would have a delightful time together. . . . Maria would start in June.

Vaguely Maria Angelina recalled the Blairs as she had seen them some six years ago in Rome—a kindly Cousin Jim who had given her sweets and laughed bewilderingly at her and a Cousin Jane with beautiful blonde hair and cool white gowns. Their daughter, Ruth, had not been with them, so Maria had no acquaintance at all with her, but only the recollection of occasional postcards to keep the name in memory.

She remembered once that there had been talk of this Cousin Ruth's coming to school for a winter in Rome and that Mamma had bestirred herself to discover the correct schools, but nothing had ever come of it. The war had intervened.

And now she was to visit them. . . .

"You are going to America just as I went to Italy at your age," cried Mamma. "And—who knows?—you too, may meet your fate on the trip!"

Mamma would overdo it, thought Maria Angelina nervously, her eyes downcast for fear her mother would read their discomfort and her knowledge of the pitiful duplicity, and her cheeks a quick shamed scarlet.

"She will have to—to repair the expense," flashed Lucia with a shrill laugh. "Such expenditure, when you have just been preaching economy on my trousseau!"