Jacobelli stared at her. The memory of the duet from “Bohème” came back to him with a jolt of pain. It had been her voice, then, that day. He had not been mistaken.
“Ah, but everybody is crazy!” he exclaimed heatedly. “She is my pupil, Carlota Trelango, the greatest coming singer of the age! Where is she? See, I will confront her. I will show him up and prove that she is my pupil.”
With her hand drawn through his arm, Ames was leading Carlota down the opposite flight of stairs into the court when she suddenly drew back.
“Please, I can’t go down there,” she whispered, pleadingly. “Let me go home at once. I—I am not well; I want to leave now.”
Through the crowd came Ward towards them leisurely, with the abstracted air that was his habitually, but he had already seen her, and she shrank back from his amused, twisted smile that seemed to degrade all that this had meant to her. Before Griffeth could detain her, she had turned and sped back up the crimson carpeted staircase into the long salon, and there came face to face with Jacobelli.
“Ingrate!” he gasped explosively, beating the air with both hands at sight of her. He wheeled about on Ames. “You—you say you are the great teacher—the maestro, when you take my greatest pupil from me—from Jacobelli!”
“It’s a damned lie!” Ames retorted shortly. “She is not your pupil. I’ve been teaching her for weeks, months, myself.”
“But she knows nobody here in America; it is utterly impossible!” cried the old maestro. “For two years I have taught her all I know. You know not what you say.”
Ames caught the glances of those around them and bit his lip to keep back the words he longed to hurl at this wild-eyed, explosive individual.