And a great secret it remained for many months, during which Armando toiled by day and night, releasing from the block of marble the supposed First Lady of the Land. Marianna saw little of him. When she ventured to look in at the shop where he worked, her visit never seemed welcome. He returned short answers to her questions, and showed petulance because of the interruption; and the dreadful truth was borne in upon her that he had given himself heart and soul to the woman who took shape from the marble. One day, when the bust was almost finished, she said timidly:
“Armando, don’t you love me any more?”
“What a question! Of course I do,” and he gave her a hasty kiss. Then he went on chipping at Juno’s snub nose.
Not at all reassured, Marianna went back to Aunt Carolina, whose convalescence had met with a serious setback; but she was out of bed now, and talking about returning to Mulberry by the next ship.
“Sit by my side, carina,” she said. “I have something to say to you. Soon I shall go to America. Do you know what a fine country that is? Well, you shall see. Aunt Serafina permits it, and I will bear the expense—and it is decided that you may go with me. Ah, how happy you must be to hear this! How many girls would like to go, and how few have the chance!”
“But Armando!”
“The amante!” said Carolina scornfully. “Bah! he is nothing.”
“True enough,” sneered Aunt Serafina. “All Cardinali knows what he is. A good-for-naught who will starve when the money that old Daniello the Image Maker left him is eaten up.”
“He is no good-for-naught,” said the girl. “He is a sculptor.”
She could not help defending him then, but none the less that night she went to bed with serious thoughts in her head of accepting Aunt Carolina’s offer. It was the month of the finished bust, and with the sense that Armando no longer cared for her was mingled a feeling of resentment, which she vaguely fancied could be expressed most potently by forsaking him—leaving him alone with the stony woman who had robbed her of his heart. Of course, this would not have weighed against the love that was only wounded, had not the tone of her two aunts taken a ring of command, instead of solicitation, as the day drew nearer for Carolina’s departure. Thus it came to pass that on the very morning that the bust was carried down the winding road to Genoa and put aboard a ship for New York, Marianna said to Armando: