"I hope you know, Angie, that I want you to have the best—the very best there is. I think you deserve it. Only, deary, I don’t want you to be disappointed; and I don’t see how you can help being. I want you to know, deary, that I’m——”
She couldn’t think of a word. She stood anxiously frowning, looking at the ground for a minute.
"I’m always—on your side," she ended.
Angelica sprang up from the table and seized her mother in a fierce embrace.
"Mamma mia!" she whispered, as her father had taught her, long ago.
Her mother was curiously thrilled and touched. She looked up with brimming eyes at the dark and foreign face bending above her.
"What’s that he used to say—feeliar, or something?" she murmured, embarrassed. "You’re a good girl, Angelica. I hope you’ll be lucky!"
CHAPTER TWO
I
In spite of an air of complete self-assurance, Angelica was very nervous the next morning. She lingered over her breakfast with a sort of languor well-known to her mother, for wasn’t that, hadn’t that always been, her air of desperation and defiance? She saw that Angelica had no idea of changing her mind, and also that, upon thinking it over, she had realized to some extent how daring was her project, and was frightened.