Maria suddenly reached her hands upward and framed the face above her in a tremulous caress.
“You have the heritage of rebellion; how can I warn you or teach you to fight it? Your worst enemy, Carlota, is your own heart. Distrust it. It is the traitor to your individuality—your genius, whatever you like to call it.”
Carlota stood erect, laughing suddenly, her arms outstretched widely.
“Listen to this that Assunta told me too,” she said teasingly. “Once, hundreds of years ago, the Villa Tittani was part of an old castle. The wall is all that is left of it, and the old tower above the grottoes. And there was a Princess Fiametta—”
Maria made horns with her finger-tips hastily.
“Assunta was a scandalous waggle-tongue. Had I only guessed that she was stuffing your ears with this sort of gunpowder, I would have known how to finish her forever. I hear the bell.”
It was the Marchese, courtly and whimsical as he glanced shrewdly from one to the other.
“I have come to entreat a favor,” he said happily. “After I have partaken of your most excellent tea, ma bella Maria, I will ask it. I have not the courage yet. How is our little one?”
Carlota’s brows drew together behind his back. She waited in silence, listening while the Marchese brought Maria into a mellow mood with his little buoyant stories and high lights of adventure.
“Ah, but I have seen sights to-day, a whole avenue of traffic held up because a tiny goldfinch escaped from a bird store on Twenty-Third Street. It alighted directly in the car track and shrank there panting and terrified, and in this hard-hearted, prosaic city, not one would drive over it. Is not that a fair sign of the times, my friend? And again, I take the ’bus down the Avenue at dusk for the beauty of the lights in perspective, like magnolia blooms if you but half close your eyes. And yesterday I saw the conductor, a red-cheeked Irish boy, reading a newspaper that had been left on a seat. What you think? The baseball column? The sports? Not at all.” The Marchese chuckled tenderly. “He reads the advice to young mothers. See? It is the brand new bambino somewhere with its finger-tips rose-petaled, holding his heart fast. And a pack of children on Thompson Street fighting—for what? A trampled pink carnation. I would have turned them loose if I could have, in that meadow of oleanders and the orange grove beyond, you remember, Maria, as you come down from Frascati and below the Campagna and the sea. Salute!” He sighed reminiscently, and reached for his teacup. “I am an old romanticist, Carlota. Your youth must be patient with my maunderings of sentiment.”