“I never like to be hurried,” he told her. “I do not like this—what do they call it?—joy of speeding. The aeroplane, yes. I have two boys in the service at home, but not for amusement. I like to take my little moments of outdoor enjoyment leisurely. You will see, my dear, how beautiful this is. I call it my avenue of flower lights.”
The home of the Phelpses was on East Tenth Street, a tall four-storied residence of dark brown stone. Above the low deep French doorway there stretched across the entire second floor a great carved Moorish window of exquisite fretwork which Phelps had transported from an old palace in Seville.
Despite her indisposition Maria had given much thought and anxiety to Carlota’s toilette for the occasion. Finally, she had laid out for her a beautiful old scarf of Point Venise, so yellowed by age that it was the tint of old ivory. It was encrusted with tiny seed pearls, and with it she selected from one of the chests a girdle of gold links, cunningly joined in serpentine fashion with pendent topaz here and there.
“It is a trifle too barbaric,” she had mused, “but yet it suits you. And you shall wear white velvet like Julietta.”
“Oh, no, I will not,” laughed Carlota, kissing her. “You would have me perpetually making my début, tanta.” Accordingly she had chosen her own gown, the hue of an oak autumn leaf, which fell close to her slender young figure in mediæval lines. As she lingered before the mirror before leaving, Carlota smiled back at her reflection almost with a challenge. Back at the villa there was an old painting hanging at a turn in a staircase, where the sunlight would fall full upon it from an oriel window high above. It was the Princess Fiametta, her eyes wearied with the weight of the golden crown that bound her brows, her gown the same tint and style as the one Carlota wore to-night. She turned her girdle sideways so that its line might correspond with that in the painting, and rumpled her hair to make the resemblance more striking.
The old legend Assunta had told her recurred vividly to-night. She had been merely a girl princess, imprisoned in the old garden and towered castle by custom and precedent. And there had been a young fisherman from the village at the foot of the mountain, Peppino, who had come to the Castle. From her tower window she had seen and loved him, and at a fête in the village she had dared to escape over the wall and mingle with the people. Peppino had danced with her, and wooed her, not knowing she was the princess in disguise, and his sweetheart had stabbed her through jealousy. It was the tragedy of youth’s eternal quest after romance and had lost nothing from Assunta’s impassioned telling.
“To-night, maybe,” Carlota told herself, half laughingly, half in earnest, as she looked back in the mirror, “we scale the wall of Tittani.”
CHAPTER IV
They passed up a carven, squarely built staircase to the second floor. The rooms were lofty and spacious. It seemed to Carlota, in the first glance about her, there here prevailed something of the same spirit that had marked her grandmother’s receptions. Little groups gathered intimately in corners, a girl played something of Grieg’s at the grand piano in the far room. Her hair had a golden sheen beneath the lampshade of Chinese embroidery, bronze and yellow.
The Marchese was in his happiest mood, the smiling courtier to his finger-tips. He left her with Mrs. Phelps, a little dark woman with frankly graying hair, but as the other guests came up the staircase, Carlota found herself on a low Moorish stool beside Carrollton Phelps’s chair. He attracted her greatly. During the drive down the Avenue the Marchese had told her his story with unction. It was a favorite tale with him. Phelps had gone abroad in the earliest days of the war, joining the Lafayette Escadrille. Only those who knew him intimately before this happened, could appreciate what his personal gift of service had meant at that time even in the great summing-up of sacrifice that followed later. He had been a very successful artist, painting portraits of celebrities and social leaders. He had always been lavish in entertaining even then, and now, when he returned at thirty-five, a helpless paralytic from his final fall, the most amazing thing had been, as the Marchese expressed it, that “his wings were unbroken.”