She could not sleep, that last night. She lay in the big four-poster where once heavy draperies had shut in the slumbers of dead and gone Contessas, and she watched the square of moonlight travel over the painted cherubs on the ceiling. There was always a lump in her throat to be swallowed, and often the tears soaked into the big feather pillows, but there were no sobs to rouse the household.
Julietta, beside her, slept very comfortably.
But the most terrible moment of all was that last look of Mamma and that last clasp of her hands upon the deck of the steamer.
"You must tell me everything, little one," the Contessa Santonini kept saying hurriedly. She was constrained and repetitious in the grip of her emotion, as they stood together, just out of earshot of the Italian consul's wife who was chaperoning the young girl upon her voyage.
"Write me all about the people you meet and what they say to you, and what you do. Remember that I am still Mamma if I am across the ocean and I shall be waiting to hear. . . . And remember that but few of your ideas of America may be true. Americans are not all the types you have read of or the tourists you have met. You must expect a great difference. . . . I should be strange, myself, now in America."
Maria's quick sensitiveness divined a note of secret yearning.
"Yes, Mamma," she said obediently, tightening her clasp upon her mother's hands.
"You must be on guard against mistakes, Maria Angelina," said the other insistently—as if she had not said that a dozen times before! "Because American girls do things it may be not be wise for you to do. You will be of interest because you are different. Be very careful, my little one."
"Yes, Mamma," said the girl again.
"As to your money—you understand it must last. There can be little to pay when you are a guest. But send to Papa and me your accounts as I have told you."