Mae was truly in a very tender mood to-day. I think if Norman had caught sight of her face at that moment, he would have sent Eric off, and right there and then, before all the Caesars—why what is the matter? The face contracts as if in pain. What was the cause? She had heard Norman say, “I’m afraid I was wrong, but I never meant anything by my attentions to the girl, Eric. It was really on your account. I never liked Miss Rae particularly. I was thrown much with her because you and I have been together constantly, but she does not grow on me. I never expected you should consider me as her necessary cavalier always. As for this evening, I am engaged to Miss Mae, so that settles this matter, but I wish that hereafter you would not get me into such scrapes.”
Poor Mae! she leaned against Nero—or was it Caracalla?—surely somebody very hard and cold and cruel,—and stopped breathing for a moment. For she had heard wrong, had misunderstood Miss Rae for Miss Mae, and supposed it was of herself that he spoke. Her heart stood still for the minutest part of a minute. Then she turned softly and quickly, went back to the Gladiator’s room, left word with the custode for Eric that she wasn’t well, and had gone home alone, walked off down the Capitol steps, took a cab and drove away.
At home she had a long, earnest talk with Lisetta, after which Lisetta had a short, brisk talk with the padrona. “It means money,” she said, “and I can play I did it for the Signorina’s safety.” Later, Mae wrote a brief, polite note to Norman Mann. She was ill, had gone to bed, and wouldn’t be able to go to the Corso with him to-night. She tried to stifle the hot anger and other emotions out of the words, and read and re-read them to assure herself that they were perfectly easy, natural, and polite. At last she tore them up and sent this instead:
MY DEAR MR. MANN:—Such a pity that we are not to have our fun, after all. Yet, perhaps it is just as well. I should be very speedily without my light, and the cry of “senza moccolo, senza moccola,” must be very dispiriting. Have a good time right along. Good-bye—good-bye.
Of course, if Mae had not been beside herself with conflicting emotions, she would never have sent this note, or repeated the good-bye in that echoing, departing sort of way. Norman Mann knit his brow as he read it. “What is the row now?” he thought. “What a child it is, anyway. She has had the mocoletti fun in her mind since we left America, and now she throws it away. Well, there’s no help for it; I’m booked for Miss Rae. I’ll get Eric to see if Mae’s really ill. I wonder if she’s afraid of me, because she cried last night, afraid I took that big tear for more than it was worth.
“Mae,” said Eric, entering her room an hour later, “Norman feels dreadfully that you are not able to go to-night, and so do I. I suppose those wretched marbles did it this morning. Couldn’t you possibly come?”
“No,” replied Mae, rising on her elbow, “but sit down a moment, Eric.”
“How pretty you look,” said her brother, seating himself by her side. Mae’s hair was tumbled in brown waves that looked as if they couldn’t quite make up their minds to curl, much as they wanted to; her eyes shone strangely; and the little scarlet shawl that she had drawn over her head and shoulders was no brighter than her flushed cheeks. She smiled at her brother, but said hurriedly; “Tell me of your plans for to-night. I suppose you and Mr. Mann are going with your new friends.”
“Yes, Norman will go with me and the girls, but he does it with a bad enough grace. He’s dreadfully tired of Miss Rae; and, to tell you the truth, Mae, she is rather namby-pamby—very different from Miss Hopkins, and then, besides, he had so set his heart on going with you to-night.”
“O, yes,” said Mae, scornfully, and bit her lips.