“Take me home, tanta!” she exclaimed. “I—I am not well.”
Ward regarded them both with amused speculation.
“You are temperamental, my dear, perhaps a trifle gauche also, too much the gamine in your play.” He held out one hand to show the scratch that ran like a scarlet thread along the skin. “Tell Jacobelli I say it is time to prepare for her début.”
Carlota stood with her back to the piano, her eyes filled with quick tears, Maria’s caressing hand on her arm to check her.
“I do not need your permission,” she said passionately. “I have the voice and I will go to Casanova myself, and tell him who I am. He will hear me. And I will pay you back everything. You do not know that I can easily. I have my grandmother’s jewels—”
“But, my poor foolish one,” cried Maria, “Casanova would not give you standing-room in his chorus if you went to him without the backing of money and patronage.”
“Then I will go back to Italy. Where is the Marchese, Maria?” She spoke with sudden quietness and dignity. “I am sorry, Mr. Ward. Doubtless the fault is mine. I do not seem to have learned my part according to the rôle expected of me.”
Ward bowed as she passed him, his own face tense with repression. Out in the long gallery Jacobelli waited, detaining the Marchese over the collection of emeralds. Carlota pleaded a sudden faintness to account for her departure and he accompanied them down to Jacobelli’s waiting car, returning for a final glass of his favorite cordial in Ward’s library.
“You are not only the art lover supreme,” the old gentleman said genially, ensconcing himself in a deep armchair, “but likewise you know how to select the rare, the unusual. Before I had the enjoyment of our personal acquaintance, I had heard of you as an eccentric, that you carried about in your pockets loose pearls worth thousands, merely to touch and gaze on them when you were in the critical moment of some great financial deal. Is it so?”
Ward smiled non-committally.