Maria Angelina felt a quick little inrush of fear. If it should be blue eyes that Americans—that is, to say now, that Barry Elder—preferred——!
And then she wondered why, if this Leila with the blue eyes had not taken Barry Elder before, Cousin Jane now regarded it as a foregone conclusion between them? Was it because she could not get that Signor Bobby Martin? Or was Barry Elder more successful now that he had left the army?
She puzzled away at it, like a very still little cat at an indestructible mouse, but dared say not a word. And while she worried away her surface attention was caught by the glance of candid humor exchanged between Mr. Blair and his wife.
"Ah, Jane, Jane," he was saying, in mock deprecation, "is that why we are spending the summer at Wilderness, not two miles from the Martin place——?"
Mrs. Blair was smiling, but her eyes were serious. "I preferred that to having Ruth at a house party at the Martins," she said quietly.
At that Maria Angelina ceased to attend. She would know soon enough about her Cousin Ruth and Bobby Martin. But as for Barry Elder and Leila Grey——! Had he cared? Had she? . . . Unconsciously her young heart repudiated her cousin's reading of the affair. As if Barry Elder would be unsuccessful with any woman that he wanted! That was unbelievable. He had not wanted her—enough.
He could not want Leila now or he would not have spoken so of coming to the mountains to see her—his direct glance had been a promise, his eyes a prophecy.
Dared she believe him? Dared she trust? But he was no deceiver, no flirt, like the lady-killers who used to come to the Palazzo to bow over Lucia's hand and eye each other with that half hostile, half knowing swagger. She had watched them. . . . But this was America.
And Barry Elder was—different.
She was lost to the world about her now. Its color and motion and hot counterfeit of life beat insensibly upon her; she was aware of it only as an imposition, a denial to that something within her which wanted to relax into quiet and dreaming, which wanted to live over and over again the intoxicating excitement, the looks, the words. . . .