There was indeed, with this trip to be arranged for before the onrush of Lucia's preparation! Once committed to the great adventure it quickly took on the outer aspects of reality. There were clothes to be made and clothes to be bought, there were discussions, decisions, debates and conjectures and consultations. A thousand preparations to be pushed in haste, and at once the big bedroom of Mamma blossomed with delicate fabrics, with bright ribbons and frilly laces, and amid the blossoming, the whir of the machine and the feet and hands of the two-lire-a-day seamstress went like mad clockwork, while in and out Mamma's friends came hurrying, at the rumor, to hint of congratulation or suggest a style, an advice.
The contagion of excitement seized everyone, so that even Lucia was inspired to lend her clever fingers from her own preparations for September.
"But not to be back by then! Not here for my wedding—that would be too odd!" she complained with the persistent ill-will she had shown the expedition.
Shrewd enough to divine its purpose and practical enough to perceive the necessity for it, the older girl cherished her instinctive objection to any pleasure that did not include her in its scope or that threatened to overcast her own festivities.
"That will depend," returned Mamma sedately, "upon the circumstance. Our cousins may not easily find a suitable chaperon for your sister's return. And they may have plans for her entertainment. We must leave that to them."
A little panic-stricken, Maria Angelina perceived that she was being left to them—until otherwise disposed of!
So fast had preparations whirled them on, that parting was upon the girl before she divined the coming pain of it. Then in the last hours her heart was wrung.
She stared at the dear familiar rooms, the streets and the houses with a look of one already lost to her world, and her eyes clung to the figures of her family as if to relinquish the sight of them would dissolve them from existence.
They were tragic, those following, imploring eyes, but they were not wet. Maria understood it was too late to weep. It was necessary to go. The magnitude of the sums already invested in her affair staggered her. They were so many pledges, those sums!
But America was so desolately far.