“I shall be delighted if I can be of any service,” Ames told her, as he followed down the four flights of stairs to the waiting car.
Even Ptolemy seemed to catch the contagion of trouble in the air and leaped stealthily out of her way to the top of the piano. Carlota waited, standing in the center of the floor, her eyes ablaze with scorn as Ames entered.
“You were exactly like old Pietro, my grandmother’s courier,” she told him. “I have never seen you like that before. Who are these people? Why did you ask me to sing for them?”
He swept her a low bow jubilantly.
“Dear, it means ten dollars a lesson. That is the Mrs. Carrington Nevins and her only daughter. She will bring me other pupils, too, from her crowd out on the north shore. You’re my mascot.”
“Did you try her voice?” She spoke very softly. “Do you intend giving her lessons?”
“I certainly do.” He began rummaging in the wall cupboard after his stock of china. “We’re going to celebrate my first real success. I’m going to the market and buy a spread and telephone Dmitri to come down, and you shall preside and sing.”
“Did you try her voice?” demanded Carlota again, her voice a warning of smouldering anger.
He nodded his head happily. “She has a very appealing quality, a light lyric soprano, well pitched and true. Of course she has had a lot of training.”
Carlota deliberately swept a jar of golden tulips from the top of the piano to the floor in crashing fragments. She herself had bought the jar for him, a squat plaster one, painted in dull-gold and Tuscan fruit tints. It had been her whim to keep it filled with flowers. There had been a small urn like it before a statue of Daphne in the garden at Tittani, and she had always as a child kept fresh flowers there, she told him. Now, it lay like a symbol of broken faith at her feet. As Ames swung about in amazement, she drew on her gloves with superb indifference.