“If mamma and Signor Casanova think it worth while,” Nathalie added smilingly. “It was so nice of you to come out to-day. Griff has talked of you a great deal but rather made you out a little tiger cat in temperament. He told us how you broke the flower jar. You mustn’t have any attacks out here to-morrow night, will you? We’ll all promise to make everything easy for you.”
“Better to break the flower jar than to flat your B,” laughed Carlota wickedly, and the girl flushed quickly.
Ames had pleaded with her for nearly fifteen minutes to beware of one high note she always missed the purity of. The quick rap of his baton called them to attention, but the sparkle did not leave Carlota’s eyes, and on the way home she was silent and unresponsive.
She had planned a dozen different ways how to escape from Maria’s watchfulness the following night. Almost she had decided to take the Marchese into her confidence, and beg him to coax the signora away for the evening. It could not possibly go on much longer, the deception, nor did she wish it to. She would appear for him this once, secure the triumph for him, and afterwards the visits to the Square would cease. He was too absorbed, too selfish, she told herself passionately. He was stupid, too, else he would never have been deceived by her voice. If he had loved her, he would have found out about her at all hazards. She had given him freely, all she knew of art, had even given him the theme for his operetta, and he was thankless, as Dmitri said. He took it for granted that she was a girl of the people, from the Italian quarter below the Square, when, if he had merely thought twice, he might have known, as the protégée of the Marchese Veracci that first night he had seen her, she must have been somebody unusual.
“Shall I take you to the entrance?” Ames asked, as they neared the apartment. “You are tired, aren’t you?”
She shook her head.
“Stop at the subway station in the Circle. I will take a taxi over from there, and say I have been shopping. Maria is not home, anyway. She had a call from her lawyer here—” Suddenly she turned and faced him. “How did you know where I lived? I did not know what I was saying.”
He took both hands in his, drawing her to him tenderly.
“Dmitri told me you were from peacock land. That is what he calls it up this way. He has a friend who knows you and gave it away.”
“A friend who knows me, Dmitri?” she repeated in surprise. “But I—we have no friends here. What did he tell you?”