America. . . . A rich husband. . . . Travel. . . . Adventure. . . . The unknown. . . .
It was wonderful. It was unbelievable. . . . It was desperate.
That knowledge brought a chill of gravity into the hot currents of her beating heart--a chill that was the cold breath of a terrific responsibility. She felt herself the hope, the sole resource of her family. She was the die on which their throw of fortune was to be cast.
Dropping her book she slid down from her chair and crossed to a long mirror in an old carved frame where a dove was struggling in a falcon's talons while Cupids drew vain bows, and in the dimmed glass stared in passionate searching.
She was so childish, so slight looking. She was white--that was the skin from Mamma--and now she wondered if it were truly a charm. Certainly Lucia preferred her own olive tints.
And her eyes were so big and dark, like caverns in her face, and her lips were mere scarlet threads. The beauties she had seen were warm-colored, high-bosomed, full-lipped.
Her distrust extended even to her coronet of black braids.
Her uncertain youth had no vision of the purity and pride of that braid-bound head, of the brilliance of the dark eyes against the satin skin, of the troubling glamour of the red little mouth. In the clear definition of the delicate features, the arch of the high eyebrows, the sweep of the shadowy lashes, her childish hope had never dreamed of more than mere prettiness and now she was torturingly questioning that.
"Practicing your smiles, my dear?" said a voice from the threshold, Lucia's voice with the mockery of the successful, and Maria Angelina turned from her dim glass with a flame of scarlet across her pallor, and joined, with an angry heart, in the laugh which her sister and young Tosti raised against her.
"But yes--for the better fish are yet uncaught," she retorted with a flash of the eyes toward the young man, and Paolo, all ardor as he was for Lucia's olive and rose, shot a glance of tickled humor at her impudence.
He promised himself some merry passes with the little sister-in-law.
"Wait your turn, little one," she scoffed. "You will be in pinafores until our poor Julietta is wed," and she laughed, unkindly.
There were times, Maria felt furiously, when she hated Lucia.