“Will—will this girl, your new pupil, sing a rôle also?”
“Surely, dear,” he told her confidently. “One must throw some sops to Cerberus, three-headed monster of wealth and otherwise. She will only have the mezzo rôle of Nedda. But you will be my princess girl, singing my ‘Quest of Love’ for love of Italy and me. And some day, when we are very rich, just we two, we will go to Italy and find your Villa Tittani with its rose-tinted walls. Would you climb them to find me?”
Carlota smiled up at him, a flash of quick mischief in her glance.
“And what of your father who lives in Colorado? Would he allow you to”—she hesitated for the word: he had not said to marry—“to go away after love quests for rose-walled villas?”
“Dad wouldn’t say a word if I had produced several successful operas.” Ames went over to the window and stared quizzically down at the Square. “The verdict of your family rests solely on the world’s verdict first. That’s the last word with Dad, success; whether you can change your dreams into reality, kind of like the old alchemist’s trick with lead into gold. The difference is that, to us, it is the dreams that are more real than the consummation, eh, dear? Forget about him. Let’s figure out about your costume.”
“I can get both, signor,” she promised demurely; “and they will be perfectly correct, I promise.”
“Don’t call me that. Say Griffeth, or Griff. It isn’t exactly a pet name, but I rather like it. I got it from some old Welsh forbear. Listen, I know just what you should wear. Something with a straight mediæval line like the velvet gown you wore at the Phelpses the first night I met you. I thought then how much you were like some stray princess girl like Rostand’s Lointaine. Remember, he called her his remote princess.”
Carlota slipped aside from his disturbing nearness, and knelt by the fire to pet Ptolemy.
“But that dress was not at all royal. I shall amaze you with one truly magnificent.”
He laughed at her boasting and insisted on showing her his idea of the gown, draping her with a long silken strip of piña cloth that made a train from her slim shoulders. On the shelf above the door was a brown casserole in a perforated silver stand, crown-shaped. It made a perfect coronal, Ames declared gravely, setting it down low over her curls, somewhat heavy and Byzantine, but most becoming. Dmitri came in to acclaim her, bringing with him the first potted azalea he had happened to see in the market. He set it down on the window-seat in triumph.