The following day dragged slowly. Towards evening Carlota suddenly pressed her cheek with one palm as she sat at the piano. It was nothing at all, she protested, a little faintness and pain in her head.
“Nothing at all!” exclaimed Maria stormily. “When that miserable old slave-driver Jacobelli is killing you! He thinks you are made of steel. You must not go out to-night. I will telephone Veracci at once and he will agree with me.”
But Carlota protested the Marchese would be broken-hearted if neither of them put in an appearance. He had his seats for the opera, and had even assured her he would order special delicacies from the chef he knew they would enjoy. It would never do to disappoint him. Maria must go, at all events.
It seemed hours before the last hum of the taxicab died away in the street below, and she turned from the window after waving to Maria. She was to go immediately to bed, relax utterly, breathe deep, forget everything and sleep. She had promised compliance faithfully, and now stood hesitant, feeling herself a traitor to all their love for her and kindness. Only for this one night, she told herself, to make sure of his success and she would never go to the Square again. It was a twenty-minute run out to Belvoir once the Jamaica turnpike was reached. She ordered a taxi softly over the house telephone, and turned to the chest. Almost wistfully and regretfully she drew the key from the hiding-place Maria had let her choose, in the back of an oval silver frame that held her mother’s portrait. Would not Bianca Trelango understand, more than any other, her daughter’s temptation to aid her love?
“You would not think it wrong, would you?” she whispered, as she knelt before the outspread treasures from the past. Maria kept each piece of jewelry carefully separate and wrapped in chamois, the pearls in one tray, the rubies in another, and so on. The largest pieces lay in their velvet cases at the bottom, tiaras and stomachers. Carlota hunted through the chest until she found all she longed for, the rubies her grandmother had worn in “Semiramide.” There were three pieces, the tiara, necklace, and heavy girdle, each set with the gems so thickly that she caught her breath with delight. The rubies were clumsily cut and needed polishing, but they glowed slumberously against the black-velvet case, and the center stone of the tiara was the superb Zarathustra jewel itself, part of the plunder of Persia. The necklace was in sixteen strands of matched pearls with a double pendant of rubies. As she stood up to try it around her neck, she let the heavy golden girdle fall to the floor.
The sudden noise startled her, and she listened, one hand pressed hard against her beating heart. The curtains were drawn at the front windows, but were up here at the fire escapes. She drew them carefully, and waited, but there was no sound, nothing but the occasional rumble of a street car over on Madison Avenue.
The telephone bell rang and she barely kept back a cry of alarm, forgetting the taxi call she had sent in. With the costumes in a suitcase and the jewels in her traveling bag, she went downstairs, whiter than usual, her eyes wide and expectant.
“Shall I take the bag outside, miss?” asked the chauffeur. He reached for it solicitously, but she held it on her lap with both hands, and leaned back with closed eyes.
“Thanks, no. Hurry, please. Belvoir, Mrs. Carrington Nevins’s residence at Strathmore. It is down near the shore past the country club. Take the shortest way after you leave the turnpike. How long will it take, do you think?”
“About an hour.”