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Mae Madden 

by Mary Murdoch Mason

July, 1998  [Etext #1829]


The Project Gutenberg Etext of Mae Madden by Mary Murdoch Mason
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MAE MADDEN

by Mary Murdoch Mason




With an introductory poem, by Joaquin Miller.


The wheel of fortune guide you,
The boy with the bow beside	you
Run aye in the way, till the dawn of day
And a luckier lot betide you.

Ben Jonson.



A DREAM OF ITALY.

AN ALLEGORY INTRODUCING "MAE MADDEN."


I.

We two had been parted, God pity us, when
The stars were unnamed and when heaven was dim;
We two had been parted far back on the rim
And the outermost border of heaven's red bars:
We two had been parted ere the meeting of men
Or God had set compass on spaces as yet.
We two had been parted ere God had set
His finger to spinning the spaces with stars,--
And now, at the last in the gold and set
Of the sun of Venice, we two had met.

II.

Where the lion of Venice, with brows afrown,
With tossed mane tumbled, and teeth in air,
Looks out in his watch o'er the watery town,
With a paw half lifted, with his claws half bare,
By the blue Adriatic, in the edge of the sea,
I saw her.  I knew her, but she knew not me.
I had found her at last!  Why, I had sailed
The antipodes through, had sought, had hailed
All flags, had climbed where the storm clouds curled,
And called from the awful arched dome of the world.

III.

I saw her one moment, then fell back abashed
And filled full to the throat. . . .  Then I turned me once more
So glad to the sea, while the level sun flashed
On the far, snowy Alps. . . .  Her breast!  Why, her breast
Was white as twin pillows that allure you to rest;
Her sloping limbs moved like to melodies, told
As she rose from the sea, and she threw back the gold
Of her glory of hair, and set face to the shore. . . .
I knew her!  I knew her, though we had not met
Since the far stars sang to the sun's first set.

IV.

How long I had sought her!  I had hungered, nor ate
Of any sweet fruits.  I had tasted not one
Of all the fair glories grown under the sun.
I had sought only her.  Yea, I knew that she
Had come upon earth and stood waiting for me
Somewhere by my way.  But the path ways of fate
They had led otherwhere.  The round world round,
The far North seas and the near profound
Had failed me for aye.  Now I stood by that sea
While a ship drove by, and all dreamily.

V.

I had turned from the lion a time, and when
I looked tow'rd the tide and out on the lea
Of the town where the warm sea tumbled and teemed
With beauty, I saw her.  I knew her then,
The tallest, the fairest fair daughter of men.
O, Venice stood full in her glory.  She gleamed
In the splendor of sunset and sensuous sea;
Yet I saw but my bride, my affinity,
While the doves hurried home to the dome of Saint Mark
And the brass horses plunged their high manes in the dark,

VI.

Was it well with my love?  Was she true?  Was she brave
With virtue's own valor?  Was she waiting for me?
O, how fared my love!  Had she home?  Had she bread?
Had she known but the touch of the warm-tempered wave?
Was she born upon earth with a crown on her head;
Or born like myself, but a dreamer, instead?
So long it had been!  So long!  Why the sea,
That wrinkled and surly old time-tempered slave,
Had been born, had his revels, grown wrinkled and hoar
Since I last saw my love on that uttermost shore.

VII.

O, how fared my love?  Once I lifted my face
And I shook back my hair and looked out on the sea;
I pressed my hot palms as I stood in my place
And cried, "O, I come like a king to your side
Though all hell intervene." . . .  "Hist! she may be a bride!
A mother at peace, with sweet babes on her knee!
A babe at her breast and a spouse at her side! . . .
Have I wandered too long, and has destiny
Set mortal between us?"  I buried my face
In my hands, and I moaned as I stood in my place.

VIII.

'Twas her year to be young.  She was tall, she was fair 
Was she pure as the snow on the Alps over there?  
'Twas her year to be young.  She was fair, she was tall 
And I knew she was true as I lifted my face 
And saw her press down her rich robe to its place 
With a hand white and small as a babe's with a doll, 
And her feet--why, her feet, in the white shining sand, 
Were so small they might nest in my one brawny hand.  
Then she pushed back her hair with a round hand that shone
And flashed in the light with a white starry stone.

IX.

Then, my love she was rich.  My love she was fair.
Was she pure as the snow on the Alps over there?
She was gorgeous with wealth, "Thank God, she has bread,"
I said to myself.  Then I humbled my head
In gratitude.  Then I questioned me where
Was her palace? her parents?  What name did she bear?
What mortal on earth came nearest her heart?
Who touched the small hand till it thrilled to a smart?
'Twas her day to be young.  She was proud, she was fair.
Was she pure as the snow on the Alps over there?

X.

Now she turned, reached a hand; then a tall gondolier
That had leaned on his oar, like a long lifted spear,
Shot sudden and swift and all silently
And drew to her side as she turned from the tide. . .
It was odd, such a thing, and I counted it queer
That a princess like this, whether virgin or bride,
Should abide thus apart, and should bathe in that sea;
And I shook back my hair, and so unsatisfied.
Then I fluttered the doves that were perched close about,
As I strode up and down in dismay and in doubt.

XI.

Then she stood in the boat on the borders of night
As a goddess might stand on that far wonder land
Of eternal sweet life, which men have named Death.
I turned to the sea and I caught at my breath,
As she drew from the boat through her white baby hand
Her vestment of purple imperial, and white.
Then the gondola shot! swift, sharp from the shore.
There was never the sound of a song or of oar
But the doves hurried home in white clouds to Saint Mark,
And the lion loomed high o'er the sea in the dark.

XII.

Then I cried, "Quick!  Follow her.  Follow her.  Fast!
Come!  Thrice double fare if you follow her true
To her own palace door."  There was plashing of oar
And rattle of rowlock. . . .  I sat leaning low
Looking far in the dark, looking out as we sped
With my soul all alert, bending down, leaning low.
But only the oaths of the men as we passed
When we jostled them sharp as we sudden shot thro'
The watery town.  Then a deep, distant roar--
The rattle of rowlock, the rush of the oar.

XIII.

Then an oath.  Then a prayer!  Then a gust that made rents
Through the yellow sailed fishers.  Then suddenly
Came sharp forked fire!  Then far thunder fell
Like the great first gun!  Ah, then there was route
Of ships like the breaking of regiments
And shouts as if hurled from an upper hell.
Then tempest!  It lifted, it spun us about,
Then shot us ahead through the hills of the sea
As if a great arrow shot shoreward in wars--
Then heaven split open till we saw the blown stars.

XIV.

On!  On!  Through the foam, through the storm, through the town,
She was gone.  She was lost in the wilderness
Of palaces lifting their marbles of snow.
I stood in my gondola.  Up and all down
I pushed through the surge of the salt-flood street
Above me, below. . .  Twas only the beat
Of the sea's sad heart. . .  Then I heard below
The water-rat building, but nothing but that;
Not even the sea bird screaming distress,
As she lost her way in that wilderness.

XV.

I listened all night.  I caught at each sound;
I clutched and I caught as a man that drown'd. . . .
Only the sullen low growl of the sea
Far out the flood street at the edge of the ships.
Only the billow slow licking his lips,
Like a dog that lay crouching there watching for me;
Growling and showing white teeth all the night,
Reaching his neck and as ready to bite--
Only the waves with their salt flood tears
Fawning white stones of a thousand years.

XVI.

Only the birds in the wilderness
Of column and dome and of glittering spire
That thrust to heaven and held the fire
Of the thunder still:  The bird's distress
As he struck his wings in that wilderness,
On marbles that speak and thrill and inspire. . .
The night below and the night above;
The water-rat building, the startled white dove,
The wide-winged, dolorous sea bird's call
The water-rat building, but that was all.

XVII.

Lo! pushing the darkness from pillar to post,
The morning came silent and gray like a ghost
Slow up the canal.  I leaned from the prow
And listened.  Not even the bird in distress
Screaming above through the wilderness;
Not even the stealthy old water-rat now.
Only the bell in the fisherman's tower
Slow tolling a-sea and telling the hour
To kneel to their sweet Santa Barbara
For tawny fishers a-sea and pray.

     *     *     *     *     *     *

XVIII.

My dream it is ended, the curtain withdrawn.
The night that lay hard on the breast of earth,
Deep and heavy as a horrid nightmare,
Moves by, and I look to the rosy dawn. . . . .  
I shall leave you here, with a leader fair;
One gentle, with faith and fear of her worth.
She shall lead you on through that Italy
That the gods have loved; and may it be
A light-hearted hour that, hand in hand,
You wander the warm and the careless love-land.

XIX.

By the windy waters of the Michigan
She invokes the gods. . . .  Be it bright or dim,
Who does his endeavor as best he can
Does bravely, indeed.  The rest is with Him.
Let a new star dance in the Occident
Till it shakes through the gossamer floors of God
And shines, o'er Chicago. . .  The Orient
Is hoar with glories.  Let Illini sod
Bear glory as well as the gleaming grain,
And engines smoking along her plain.


JOAQUIN MILLER.

CHICAGO, NOV., 1875. 



MAE MADDEN.


CHAPTER I.

SCENE.  Deck of an ocean steamer.
Characters.  Mrs. Jerrold, matron and chaperon in general.
Edith Jerrold, her daughter.
Albert Madden, a young man on study intent.
Eric, his brother, on pleasure bent.
Norman Mann, cousin of the Jerrolds, old classmate of the Maddens.
Mae Madden, sister of the brothers and leading lady.


"It's something like dying, I do declare," said Mae, and as she 
spoke a suspicious-looking drop slid softly across her cheek, down 
over the deck-railing, to join its original briny fellows in the 
deep below.

"What is like dying?" asked Eric.

"Why, leaving the only world you know.  There, you see, papa and 
mamma are fast fading away, and here we are traveling off at the 
rate of ever so many miles an hour."

"Knots, Mae; do be nautical at sea."

"Away from everything and everybody we know.  I do really think it 
is like dying,--don't you, Mr. Mann?"  Mae turned abruptly and 
faced the young man by her side.

"People aren't apt to die in batches or by the half-dozen,' he 
replied, coolly.  "If you were all by yourself, it would be more 
like it, I suppose, but you are taking quite a slice of your own 
world along with you, and really--"

"And really pity is the very last article I have any use for.  You 
are right.  I was only sorry for the moment.  'Eastward Ho' is a 
very happy cry.  How differently we shall all take Europe," she 
continued, in a moment.  "There is Albert, I honestly believe he 
will live in his Baedeker just because he can see no further than 
the covers of a book.  You need not laugh, for it is a fact that 
people confined for years to a room can't see beyond its limits 
when they are taken out into broader space, and I don't see why it 
shouldn't be the same with a man who lives in his books as Albert 
does."

"He sees the world in his books," said Mr. Mann, with a little 
spirit.

"He gets a microscopic view of it, yes," replied Mae, 
grandiloquently, "and Edith--"

"Always sees just what he does," suggested Eric maliciously.

"Now, boys," said Miss Mae, assuming suddenly a mighty patronage, 
"I will not have you hit at Albert and Edith in this way.  It will 
be very annoying to them.  They have a right to act just as 
absurdly as they choose.  We none of us know how people who are 
falling in love would act."

No, the boys agreed this was quite true.

"And I really do suppose they are falling in love, don't you?" 
queried Mae.

Yes, they did both believe it.

Just here, up came the two subjects of conversation, looking, it 
must be confessed, as much like one subject as any man and wife.

"What are you talking of?" asked Edith, "Madame Tussaud or a French 
salad?  No matter how trivial the topic, I am sure it has a foreign 
flavor."

"There you are mistaken," replied the frank Eric, "we were 
discussing you two people, in the most homelike kind of a way."

At this Edith blushed, Albert frowned, Mae scowled at Eric, who 
opened his eyes amazedly, Norman Mann looked over the deck railing 
and laughed, the wind blew, the sailors heave-ho-ed near by, and 
there was a grand tableau vivant for a few seconds.

"O, come," cried Mae, "suppose we stop looking like a set of 
illustrations for a phrenological journal, expressive of the 
various emotions.  I was only speculating on the different sights 
we should see in the same places.  Confess, now, Albert.  Won't 
your eyes be forever hunting out old musty, dusty volumes?  Will 
not books be your first pleasures in the sight-seeing line?"

"O, no, pictures," cried Edith.

"That is as you say," Mae demurely agreed.  "Pictures and books for 
you two at any rate."

"And churches."

"For your mother, yes, and beer-gardens for Eric, and amphitheatres 
and battle fields for Mr. Mann."

"And for yourself?"

"The blue, blue bay of Naples, a grove of oranges, moonlight and a 
boat if it please you."

"By the way," suggested Albert, "about our plans; we really should 
begin to agitate the matter at once."

"Yes, to do our fighting on shipboard.  Let us agree to hoist the 
white flag the day we sight land, else we shall settle down into a 
regular War of the Roses and never decide," laughed Norman.

"As there are six minds," continued Albert, "there will have to be 
some giving up."

"Why do you look at me?" enquired Mae.  "I am the very most 
unselfish person in the world.  I'll settle down anywhere for the 
winter, provided only that it is not in Rome."

"But that is the very place," cried Edith, and Albert, and Mrs. 
Jerrold from her camp-chair.

"O, how dreadful!  The only way to prevent it will be for us to 
stand firm, boys, and make it a tie."

"But Norman is especially eager to go to Rome," said Edith, "and 
that makes us four strong at once in favor of that city."

"But is not Rome a fearful mixture of dead Caesar's bones and dirty 
beggars?  And mustn't one carry hundreds of dates at one's finger-
tips to appreciate this, and that, and the other?  Is it not all 
tremendously and overwhelmingly historical, and don't you have to 
keep exerting your mind and thinking and remembering?  I would 
rather go down to Southern Italy and look at lazzaroni lie on stone 
walls, in red cloaks, as they do in pictures, and not be obliged to 
topple off the common Italian to pile the gray stone with old 
memories of some great dead man.  Everything is ghostly in Rome.  
Now, there must be some excitement in Southern Italy.  There's 
Vesuvius, and she isn't dead--like Nero--but a living demon, that 
may erupt any night, and give you a little red grave by the sea for 
your share."

"She's not nearly through yet," laughed Edith, as Mae paused for 
breath.

"I'm only afraid," said Mae, "that after I had been down there a 
week, I should forget English, buy a contadina costume, marry a 
child of the sun, and run away from this big world with its puzzles 
and lessons, and rights and wrongs.  Imagine me in my doorway as 
you passed in your travelling carriage, hot and tired on your way--
say to Sorrento.  I would dress my beautiful Italian all up in 
scarlet flowers and wreathe his big hat and kiss his brown eyes and 
take his brown hand, and then we would run along by the bay and 
laugh at you stiff, grand world's folks as we skipped past you."

"We shall know where to look for you, if ever you do disappear," 
said Norman Mann.

"But, my dear Mae," added Albert, "though this is amusing, it is 
utterly useless."

"Amusing things always are," said Mae.

"The question is, shall we or shall we not go to Rome for the 
winter?"

"Certainly, by all means, and if I don't like it, I'll run away to 
Sorrento," and Mae shook her sunny head and twinkled her eyes in a 
fascinating sort of way, that made Eric feel a proud brotherly 
pleasure in this saucy young woman, and that gave Norman Mann a 
sort of feeling he had had a good deal of late, a feeling hard to 
define, though we have all known it, a delicious concoction of 
pleasure and pain.  His eyes were fixed on Mae, now.  "What is it?" 
she asked.  "You will like Rome, I am sure."  "No, I never like 
what I think I shall not."

"It might save some trouble, then, if I ask you now if you expect 
to like me," said he, in a lower tone.  "Why certainly, I do like 
you very much," she replied, honestly.  "What a stupid question," 
he thinks, vexedly.  "Why did I tell him I liked him?" she thinks, 
blushingly.  So the waves of anxiety and doubt begin to swell in 
these two hearts as the outside waves beat with a truer sea-motion 
momently against the steamer's side.

Between days of sea-sickness come delightful intervals of calm sea 
and fresh breezes, when the party fly to the hurricane deck to get 
the very quintessence of life on the ocean wave.  One morning Mrs. 
Jerrold and Edith were sitting there alone, with rugs and all sorts 
of head devices in soft wools and flannels, and books and a basket 
of fruit.  The matron of the party was a tall, fine-looking woman, 
a good type of genuine New England stock softened by city breeding.  
New Englanders are so many propositions from Euclid, full of right 
angles and straight lines, but easy living and the dressmaker's art 
combine to turn the corners gently.  Edith was like her mother, but 
softened by a touch of warm Dutch blood.  She was tall, almost 
stately, with a good deal of American style, which at that time 
happened to be straight and slender.  She was naturally reserved, 
but four years of boarding-school life had enriched her store of 
adjectives and her amount of endearing gush-power, and she had at 
least six girl friends to whom she sent weekly epistles of some 
half-dozen sheets in length, beginning, each one of them, with "My 
dearest ----" and ending "Your devoted Edith."

As Edith and her mother quietly read, and ate grapes, and lolled in 
a delightfully feminine way, voices were heard,--Mae's and 
Norman's.  They were in the middle of a conversation.  "Yes," Mae 
was saying, "you do away with individuality altogether nowadays, 
with your dreadful classifications.  It is all the same from 
daffodils up to women."

"How do we classify women, pray?"

"In the mind of man," began Mae, as if she were reading, "there are 
three classes of women; the giddy butterflies, the busy bees, and 
the woman's righters.  The first are pretty and silly; the second, 
plain and useful; the third, mannish and odious.  The first wear 
long trailing dresses and smile at you while waltzing, the second 
wear aprons and give you apple-dumplings, and the third want your 
manly prerogatives, your dress-coat, your money, and your vote.  
Flirt with the giddy butterflies, your first love was one.  First 
loves always are.  Marry the busy bee.  Your mother was a busy bee.  
Mothers always are.  And keep on the other side of the street from 
the woman s righter as long as you can.  Alas! your daughter will 
be one."

"Well, isn't there any classifying on the other side?  Aren't there 
horsemen and sporting men and booky men, in the feminine mind?"

"Perhaps so.  There certainly are the fops, and nowadays this 
terrible army of reformers and radicals, of whom my brother Albert 
here is the best known example."

"What is it?" asked Albert, looking up abstractedly from his book, 
for he and Eric had sauntered up the stairs too, by this time.

"They are the creatures," continued Mae, "who scorn joys and idle 
pleasures.  They deal with the good of the many and the problems of 
the universe, and step solemnly along to that dirge known as the 
March of Progress.  And what do they get for it all?  Something 
like this.  Put down your book, I'm going to prophesy," and Mae 
backed resolutely up against the railing and held her floating 
scarfs and veils in a bunch at her throat, while she prophesied in 
this way:

"Behold me, direct lineal descendant of Albert Madden, speaking to 
my children in the year 1995: 'What, children, want amusement?  
Want to see the magic lantern to note the effects of light?  Alas! 
how frivolous.  Listen, children, to the achievements of your great 
ancestor, as reported by the Encyclopedia.  "A. Madden--promoter of 
civilization and progress, chiefly known by his excellent theory 
entitled The Number of Cells in a Human Brain compared to the 
Working Powers of Man, and that remarkable essay, headed by this 
formula: Given--10,000,000 laboring men, to find the number of 
loaves of bread in the world."  Here, children, take these works.  
Progressimus, you may have the theory, while Civilizationica reads 
the essay.  Then change about.  Ponder them well, and while we walk 
to the Museum later, tell me their errors.  Then I will show you 
the preserved ears of the first man found in Boshland by P. T. 
Barnum, jr.'  Oh, bosh," said Mae suddenly, letting fly her 
streamers, "what a dry set of locusts you nineteenth century 
leaders are.  You are devouring our green land, and some of us 
butterflies would like to turn our yellow wings into solid shields 
against you, if we could.  There, I've made a goose of myself again 
on the old subject.  Edith, there's the lunch bell.  Take me down 
before I say another word."  Exeunt feminines all.

"Where did the child pick up all that?" queried Albert.

"'All that' is in the air just now," answered Norman.  "It is a 
natural reaction of a strong physical nature against the 
utilitarian views of the day.  Miss Mae is a type of--"

"O, nonsense, what prigs you are," interrupted Eric, "Mae is jolly.  
Do stop your reasoning about her.  If you are bound to be a potato 
yourself to help save the masses from starvation, don't grumble 
because she grew a flower.  Come, let us go to lunch too."

Conversation was not always of this sort.  One evening, not long 
after, there was a moon, and Edith and Albert were missing.  Eric 
was following a blue-eyed girl along the deck, and Mae and Norman 
wandered off by themselves up to this same hurricane deck again.  
The moonlight was wonderful.  It touched little groups here and 
there and fell full on the face of a woman in the steerage, who sat 
with her arms crossed on her knee and her face set eastward.  She 
was singing, and her voice rose clearly above the puff of the 
engine and the jabber below.  There was a chorus to the song, in 
which rough men and tired looking women joined.  The song was about 
home, and once in a while the girl unclasped her arms and passed 
her hands over her eyes.  Mae and Norman Mann looked at her 
silently.  "I suppose we don't know when we make pictures," said 
Mae.  "Don't we?" asked Norman pointedly.  Mae looked very 
reprovingly out from her white wraps at him, but he smiled back 
composedly and admiringly, and drew her hand a trifle closer in his 
arm.  And saucy Mae began to feel in that sort of purring mood 
women come to when they drop the bristling, ready-for-fight air 
with which they start on an acquaintance.  Perhaps, if the steamer 
had been a sailing-vessel, there would have been no story to tell 
about Mae Madden, for a long line of evenings, and girls singing 
songs, and hurricane decks by moonlight, are dangerous things.  But 
the vessel was a fast steamer, and was swiftly nearing land again.



CHAPTER II.


ROME, February, 18--.

MY DEAR MAMMA:--Yes, it is Rome, mamma, and everybody is impressed.  
The boys talk of emperors all the time; Edith is wild over Madonnas 
and saints, and Mrs. Jerrold runs from Paul's house to Paul's walks 
and Paul's drives and Paul's stand at the prisoner's bar, and reads 
the Acts through five times a day, in the most religious and 
Romanistic spirit.  No one could make more fuss over a patron 
saint, I am sure.  For my part, I feel as if I were in the most 
terrible ghost story.  The old Romans are all around me.  
Underneath the street noises, I seem to hear cries, and in the air 
I half see a constant flashing of swords and scars and blood, and I 
can't even put my foot on the Roman pavement without wondering 
which dead Caesar my saucy Burt boot No. 2 is walking over.  I 
shouldn't mind trampling old Caligula, but I don't like the thought 
on general principles.  I feel all out of place, so modern and 
fixed up and flimsy.  If I could get into old picturesque clothes 
and out of the English-speaking quarter, I should not be so 
oppressed and might worship Rome.  But I seriously think I shall 
die if I stay here much longer.  There's a spirit-malaria that eats 
into my life.  I feel as if all the volumes of Roman history bound 
in heavy vellum, that papa has in his study, were laid right on top 
of my little heart, so that every time it beats, it thumps against 
them, and I assure you, mamma, its worse than dyspepsia.  If I 
could only get out on a New England hillside, where there were no 
graves more important than those of grasshoppers and butterflies!  
What should I do when I got there?  Take off my hat, and scream for 
joy, and feel free and glad to be in a fresh country, with rich, 
warm, untainted earth and young life.

But all this is nonsense, mamma, and I shouldn't be writing it, if 
I hadn't just come from the catacombs of St. Calixtus.  To think of 
Albert's insisting upon going there the very first thing!  But so 
he did, and so we went, and talked solemnly about the Appian Way, 
and saw everybody's tombs and ashes, and quoted poetry, until I 
stuck a pin in Albert's arm and sang Yankee Doodle, to keep from 
crying.  Then, oh, how shocked they looked.  Even Mr. Mann seemed 
ashamed of me.  When we reached the place, we each took a candle 
and the guide led the way down into the bowels of the earth.  
Mamma, they are very unpleasant.  There were two German youths 
along, and green lizards crawled all over.  They winked at me.  The 
way grew so narrow that we had to walk one by one through lines of 
wall perforated with holes for dead bodies.  Once in a while we 
would come to a small chapel, for miserable variety's sake, and be 
told to admire some very old, very wretched painting.  Jonah and 
the whale were represented in a double-barreled miracle picture.  
Not only was the whale about to swallow Jonah, but he was only as 
large as a good-sized brook trout, while Jonah towered away above 
him like a Goliath.  I found myself wondering if the guide had 
convulsions, and, if he should have one now, and die, how many days 
would pass before we should eat each other.  And would they take me 
first, because I am youngest and plumpest?  Albert would make good 
soup bones, and Eric's shoulder serve as a delicious fore-quarter.  
And by the time we came to the top again, I was all ready to cry.  
And then, mamma, I did an awful thing.  Mr. Mann exclaimed: "Why, 
Miss Mae, how frightened you look.  You are quite white."  And I 
answered very sharply: "What a disagreeable man you are.  I'm not 
frightened at all."  I said it in a dreadful tone, and how his face 
changed.  He looked so strangely.  Everybody was still but Albert, 
and he said, "Why, Mae, you are very rude to Mr. Mann."  Even then 
I didn't apologize.  So here we are at sword's points, and all the 
rest sympathizing with my foe, who is only on the defensive.  Why 
am I such a belligerent?  I can't conceive where I got my nature, 
unless from that very disagreeable dear old grandpapa of papa's, 
who fought the whole world all his life.  But how egotistic I am, 
even to my mother.  Of course you want to know how we are lodged 
and clothed and fed.  We have taken apartments, as I presume Albert 
wrote you, on the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino, quite near the 
Costanzi hotel, which is in the height of the fashion as a hotel; 
near too, which is better, to Mr. Story's studio and the old 
Barberini palace and the Barberini square and fountains.  Off 
behind, is that terrible church of the Cappucini, with its cemetery 
underneath of bones and skulls and such horrors.  I like the 
apartments very much, principally because I have made three staunch 
friends and one good enemy, in the kitchen.  The padrona,--she's 
the woman who keeps the house, and serves us, too, in this case--
though Mrs. Jerrold has a maid to wait on the table and care for 
our rooms--well, the padrona is my first friend.  Her cousin, a 
handsome southern Italian, is here on a visit, and she is not only 
my friend, but my instructress.  She tells me lovely stories about 
her home and the peasants and their life, while I sit on the floor 
with Giovanni,--friend number three and eldest son of the padrona,--
and even Roberto, my enemy, the crying baby of three years, hushes 
his naughty mouth to listen to Lisetta, for that is the cousin's 
name.  I am so glad I studied Italian as hard as I did for my 
music, for it comes very easily to me now, and already I slip the 
pretty words from my halting tongue much more smoothly and quickly 
than you would imagine I could.  Mrs. Jerrold isn't quite 
satisfied, and would prefer the Costanzi, only she doesn't believe 
in letting us girls stay at large hotels.  She and Edith are 
shocked at my kitchen tastes, so that I generally creep off quietly 
and say nothing about it.  It is strange for me to have to keep 
anything secret, but I am learning how.

As for our clothes, O, mamma, Edith is ravishing in a deep blue-
black silk, with a curly, wavy sort of fringe on it, and odd 
loopings here and there where you don't expect to find them.  What 
can't a Parisian dressmaker do?  They have such a wonderful idea of 
appropriateness, it seems to me.  Now, at home you know we girls 
always wear the same sort of thing, but Madame H---- says no, 
Edith, and I should dress very differently; and now Edith's clothes 
all have a flow, and sweep, and grace about them, and her silks 
rustle in a stately way as she walks, while my dresses haven't any 
trimming to speak of, but are cut in a clinging, square sort of 
way, with jackets, and here and there a buckle, that makes me feel 
half the time as if I were playing soldier in a lady-like fashion.  
But what a budget this is.  How shocked the people here would be.  
They take travel so solemnly, mamma, and treat Baedeker, like the 
Bible,--and here am I crushing down Rome, and raising Paris on top 
of it.  Indeed, I can't help it, for Paris is utterly intoxicating.  
It takes away your moral nature and adds it all into your powers of 
enjoyment.  Well, good-bye, my dear, and keep writing me tremendous 
letters, won't you; for I do love you dearly.

Your loving daughter,

MAE.


Mae felt a great deal better when she had finished the letter, and, 
like a volatile girl as she was, buttoned her Burt boots and Paris 
gloves, singing gaily a dash from Trovatore in a very light-hearted 
manner.

"Why, you look like a different girl," cried Eric, as she entered 
the parlor, where he and Mr. Mann were sitting.  "Mrs. Jerrold, 
Edith, and Albert have gone on in a carriage, and you are left to 
my tender care; will you ride or walk?"

"How can you ask?  My feet are quite wild.  No wonder I am a 
different girl.  Are we not going to the Pincian hill to look at 
the live world and people?  I have just unlocked the stop-gates and 
let the blood bound in my veins as it wants to."

"It has been taking the cinque-pace, I should say from your long 
face to-day."

"O, it has only been trying to keep step with the march of the 
ages, or some such stately tread, but it was hard work, and now the 
dear life of me hops, skips and jumps, like this," and Mae seized 
her brother and danced across the room, stopping very near Mr. 
Mann, who stood with his back to them, drumming on the window pane.  
She looked at him quizzically and half raised her eyebrows.

Eric shook his head, and said aloud in his outspoken way: "You owe 
him an apology, Mae, for this morning's rudeness."

Mr. Mann turned quickly.  "I am surprised, Eric.  Let your sister 
find out for herself when she is rude."

"Bless me," cried Eric, "what is the row?"

Mae looked determined.  "Are you going to the Pincian with us?" she 
asked.

"No, I am going to stay home."

"Well, good-bye, then.  Come, Eric."  The door closed behind them.

Mr. Mann stood by the window and watched them walk away.  Mae, with 
her eager, restless, fresh life showing out in every motion; Eric, 
with his boy-man air and his student swing and happy-go-lucky toss 
of his head.  Mr. Mann smiled and then he sighed.  "That's a good 
boy, so square and fair and merry--and a queer girl," he added.  
"Rome isn't the place for her.  She must get away, though why I 
should take care for her, or worry about her, little vixen.  I 
don't see."  Still he smiled as one would over a very winning, very 
wicked child, and shortly after took his hat and went to the 
Pincio, after all.

Meantime, the brother and sister had walked gaily along, passed the 
Spanish Steps, and were on the Pincian hill.  Here, Mae was indeed 
happy.  The fine equipages and dark, rich beauty of the Italians 
delighted her, and she and Eric found a shaded bench, and watched 
the carriages drive round and round, and criticised, and admired, 
and laughed like two idle children.  They bought some flowers, and 
Mae sat pulling them to pieces, when they caught sight, down the 
pathway, of two approaching Piedmontese officers.

"O," cried Mae, and dropped her flowers, and clasped her hands, and 
sprang to her feet, "O, Eric, are they gods or men?"

The Piedmontese officer is godlike.  He must be of a certain 
imposing height to obtain his position, and his luxurious yellow 
moustaches and blue black eyes, enriched and intensified by 
southern blood, give him a strange fascination.  The cold, manly 
beauty and strength of a northern blonde meet with the heat and 
lithe grace of the more supple southerner to produce this paragon.  
There is a combination of half-indolent elegance and sensuous 
langour, with a fire, a verve, a nobility, that puts him at the 
very head of masculine beauty.  Add to the charms of his physique, 
the jauntiest, most bewitching of uniforms, the clinking spurs, the 
shining buttons, the jacket following every line of his figure, and 
no wonder maidens' hearts seek him out always and young pulses beat 
quicker at his approach.

Mae's admiration was simply rapturous.  Utterly regardless of the 
pretty picture she herself made, of her vivid coloring and 
sparkling beauty, she stood among her dropped flowers until the two 
pairs of eyes were fixed upon her.  Then she became suddenly aware 
of her attitude and with quick feminine cunning endeavored to 
transfer her admiration to some beautiful horses cantering by, 
exclaiming in Italian, that the officers might surely understand 
she was thinking only of the fine animals: "O, what wonderful 
horses!"

The foreign pronunciation, Eric's amusement, Mae's confusion, were 
not lost upon the men.  Their curiosity was piqued, their eyes and 
pride gratified.  They sauntered leisurely past, only to turn a 
corner and quicken their steps again toward the bench where Eric 
and Mae were seated.  They found the brother and sister just 
arising, and followed them slowly.

An Italian is quick to detect secrets.  The two had not proceeded 
far before one said to the other; "Eh, Luigi, we are not the only 
interested party."

Luigi looked slowly around and saw a crowd of Italian loungers 
gazing at the little stranger with their softly-bold black eyes 
full of admiration.  He shrugged his shoulders slightly.  "Bah, 
they gaze in that way at all womankind.  See, now they are watching 
the next one," and as he spoke, the boys turned with one accord to 
stare at a young Italian girl, who pressed closer to the side of 
her hook-nosed old duenna:

"It is not those loungers that I noticed," replied the other.  Look 
there," and he waved his hand lightly toward the left, where, under 
a large-leafed tree, gazing apparently in idleness, stood a young 
man.

"Ah," said Luigi, still incredulous, "he sees nothing but Rome; he 
is fresh from over the seas."

"No, no, watch his eyes," replied the other.

They were assuredly fixed, with a keen searching glance, on a 
little form before them, and as Eric and Mae suddenly turned to the 
left, the stranger, half carelessly, but very quickly, crossed to 
another path, from which he could watch them, but be, in his turn, 
unobserved.

"Jealous," laughed Luigi, shrugging his shoulders again.  "Her 
lover, probably."

"No," replied Bero, "but he may be some time."  Then after a 
moment's pause, "Good evening," he said carelessly.  "I am going to 
say my prayers at vespers.  I've been a sorry scamp of late."

Luigi laughed disdainfully and lightly.  "You want to get rid of 
me?  Well, be it so.  I don't want to lose my heart over a little 
foreigner.  I have other game.  However, Lillia shall not know of 
it.  Addio, Bero."  So Luigi went off the other way, and Bero, with 
a flushed face, followed Mae at a distance, and kept an eye on the 
stranger, flattering himself that he was quite unnoticed by those 
sharp, keen eyes.  He was mistaken, Norman Mann had seen the 
officers before they saw him, had watched their footsteps, and had 
a pretty clear idea of the whole affair.

Mae walked on happily, chatting with Eric, and with that vague, 
delightful feeling of something exciting in the air.  She knew 
there was an officer behind her, because she had heard the clicking 
spurs, but she only guessed that he might be one of the two who had 
passed--the taller, perhaps,--which, of course, he was.  She had, 
moreover, in some mysterious way, caught sight of a figure 
resembling Norman Mann, trying, she thought, to avoid her.  Her 
spirits rose with the half-mystery, and she grew brighter and 
prettier and more magnetic to the two followers as she tossed her 
shoulders slightly and now and then half-turned her sunny head.

As for Eric, he was totally unconscious of any secrets.  He fancied 
himself and his pretty, nice, little sister all alone by their very 
selves, and he went so far as to expatiate on the vastness of the 
world, and how in this crowd there was no other life that bordered 
or touched on theirs.

To which Mae replied: "You don't know; you may fall in love with 
one of these very Italian girls, or my future husband may be 
walking behind me now."  When she had said this, she flushed 
scarlet and was very much ashamed of herself in her heart.

"We must go home now," Eric replied, quite disdaining such 
sybilistic remarks.  So they left the hill and went down the Steps 
in the rich afternoon light, and so homewards.  Of course the 
Italian and Mr. Mann still followed them; Norman on the other side 
of the street, the Italian in a slyer, less conspicuous manner, by 
taking side streets, or the next parallel pavement, and appearing 
only at every corner in the distance.  He appeared, however, close 
at hand, as Mae and Eric turned into their lodgings.  His eyes met 
Mae's.  She blushed involuntarily as she recognized him, and at 
once, in that moment, there was an invisible half-acquaintance 
established between the two.  If they should ever meet again, they 
would remember each other.

Mae crept off to the kitchen that evening, to beg for another of 
Lisetta's stories, and quite forgot her walk, the officer, and 
Norman Mann while she listened to the


STORY OF TALILA.


Talila was a young girl, destined to be a nun.  She was a naughty 
little girl and would make wry faces at the thought, and wish she 
could be a man, a soldier or sailor, instead of being a woman and a 
nun; and as she grew older she would dance all the time, and didn't 
say her prayers very much, and was so bad that the priest sent for 
her to see him.  He told her how wicked she was, and that, too, 
when she was to be the bride of the church; but she said the church 
had many, many brides, and she would rather be the bride of 
Giovanni; and that she loved red-cheeked babies better than beads, 
and songs were nicer than prayers.  Should she sing him such a 
pretty, gay one she knew?  And the priest could hardly keep from 
laughing at the bright-eyed, naughty, naughty Talila.  But he said: 
"If Giovanni does not want to marry you, will you then become the 
bride of the church?"  And Talila laughed aloud and tossed her 
head.  "Giovanni longs to marry me, Father," she said, "I know that 
already."  But the Father sent for Giovanni and gave him money if 
he would say he did not want to marry Talila.  At first he would 
not say so, but the Father showed him a purse all full of silver, 
which Talila's mother had brought him, for it was she who had vowed 
Talila should be a nun.  Then the Father said: "This is yours if 
you say as I wish, and if not, you shall be cursed forever, and all 
your children shall be cursed, because you have married the bride 
of the church."  Then Giovanni crossed himself and took the bag of 
silver, and the priest sent for Talila, and she heard her Giovanni 
say he didn't want to marry her--she had better be a nun; and she 
threw up her brown arms and screamed aloud, and fell down as if 
dead.  And afterwards she was very ill, and when she grew better 
she had forgotten everything and was only a little child, and she 
loves little children, and is ever with them, but she calls them 
all Giovanni.  They play together by the bay through the long day, 
and at night she takes them to their mothers, and goes alone to her 
home.  But alas! she never tells her beads, or prays a prayer, and 
sorry things are said of her--that God gave her up because she left 
Him.  But the children all love her, and she loves them.



CHAPTER III.


Edith and Mae had a quarrel one morning.  Mae's tongue was sharp, 
but although she breezed quickly, she calmed again very soon.  The 
latter fact availed her little this time, for Edith maintained a 
cold displeasure that would not be melted by any bright speeches or 
frank apologies.  "Edith," said little Miss Mae, quite humbly for 
her, as she put on her hat, and drew on her gloves, "Edith, aren't 
you going out with me?"  "What for?" asked that young person 
indifferently.

"Why--for fun, and to make up.  Haven't you forgiven me yet?"

Edith did not reply directly.  "I am going out with mamma to buy 
our dominoes for the Carnival, and to see our balcony.  Albert has 
engaged one for us, on the corner of the Corso and Santa Maria e 
Jesu.  I suppose you can go too.  There will be an extra seat.  
We'll come home by the Pincian Hill."

"Thank you," said Mae, "but I will get Eric and go for a tramp," 
and she left the room with compressed lips and flushed cheeks.  In 
the hall were Albert, Eric and Norman, talking busily.  "Where are 
you going Eric, mayn't I go too, please?"  "I'm sorry Mae, but this 
is an entirely masculine affair--five-button gloves and parasols 
are out of the question."

"O, Ric, I am half lonely."  Mae laughed a little hysterically.  At 
that moment she caught Mr. Mann's eyes, full of sympathy.  "But 
goodbye," she added, and opened the door, "I'm going."

"Alone?" asked Norman, involuntarily.

"Yes, alone," replied Mae.  "Have you any objections, boys?"  Eric 
and Albert were talking busily and did not hear her.  Norman Mann 
held open the door for her to pass out, and smiled as she thanked 
him.  She smiled back.  She came very near saying, "I'm sorry I was 
rude the other day, forgive me," and he came very near saying, "May 
I go with you, Miss Mae?"  But they neither of them spoke, and 
Norman closed the door with a sigh, and Mae walked away with a 
sigh.  It was only a little morning's experience, sharp words, 
misunderstandings; but the child was young, far from home and her 
mother, and it seemed hard to her.  She was in a very wild mood, a 
very hard mood, and yet all ready to be softened by a kind, 
sympathetic word, so nearly do extremes of emotion meet.

"There's no one to care a pin about me," said she to herself, "not 
a pin.  I have a great mind to go and take the veil or drown myself 
in the Tiber.  Then they would be bound to search for me, and 
convent vows and Tiber mud hold one fast.  No, I won't, I'll go and 
sit in the Pincian gardens and talk Italian with the very first 
person I meet and forget all about myself.  I wish Mr. Mann 
wouldn't pity me.  Dear me, here I am remembering these forlorn 
people again.  I wish I could see mamma and home this morning,--the 
dear old library.  Why the house is shut up and mamma's south.  I 
forgot that, and here am I all alone.  It is like being dead.  
There, I have dropped a tear on my tie and spoiled it!  Besides, if 
one is dead, there comes Heaven.  Why shouldn't I play dead, and 
make my own Heaven?"  Here Mae seated herself, for she was on the 
Pincio by this time, and looked off at the view, at that wonderful 
view of St. Peter's, the Tiber, all the domes and rising ruins and 
afar the campagna.  "I wouldn't make my Heaven here," thought this 
dreadful Mae, "not if it is beautiful.  I'd not stay here a single 
other day.  Bah no!" and she shook her irreverent little fist right 
down at the Eternal City.

At this moment, a small beggar, who had been pleading unnoticed at 
her side, was lifted from his feet by a powerful hand, and a shower 
of soft Italian imprecations fell on Mae's ear.  She sprang up 
quickly, "No, no," she cried in Italian, "how dare you hurt a 
harmless boy?"  She lifted her face full toward that of the man who 
had inspired her wrath, and her eyes met those of the Piedmontese 
officer.  She blushed scarlet.

"Pardon, a thousand pardons," began he.  "It was for your sake, 
Signorina.  I saw you shake your hand that he should leave you, and 
I fancied that the little scamp was troubling the foreign lady."

Mae laughed frankly, although she was greatly confused.  The 
officer and the beggar boy behind him waited expectantly.  "I shook 
my hand at my thoughts," she explained.  "I did not see the boy.  
Forgive me, Signor, for my hasty words."

The officer enjoyed her confusion quietly.  He threw a handful of 
small coin at the beggar, and bade him go.  Then he turned again to 
Mae.  "I am sorry, Signorina, that your thoughts are sad.  I should 
think they would all be like sweet smiles."  He said this with an 
indescribable delicacy and gallantry, as if he half feared to speak 
to her, but his sympathy must needs express itself.

Mae was, as we have seen, in a reckless, wild mood.  She did not 
realize what she was doing.  She had just broken down all barriers 
in her mind, was dead to her old life, and ready to plan for 
Heaven.  And here before her stood a wonderful, sympathizing, new 
friend, who spoke in a strange tongue, lived in a strange land was 
as far removed from her old-time people and society as an 
inhabitant of Saturn, or an angel.  She accepted him under her 
excitement, as she would have accepted them.  No waiting for an 
introduction, no formal getting-acquainted talk, no reserve.  She 
looked into the devoted, interested eyes above her, and said 
frankly:

"I was feeling all alone, and I hate Rome.  I thought I would like 
to play I was dead, and plan out a Heaven for myself.  It should 
not be in Rome.  And then I suppose I shook my fist."

"Where would your Heaven be?" asked the Piedmontese, falling 
quickly, with ready southern sympathy, into her mood.  Mae seated 
herself on the bench and made room for him at her side.

"Where should it be?" she repeated.  "Down among the children of 
the sun, all out in the rich orange fields, by the blue Bay of 
Naples, I think, with Vesuvius near by, and Capri; yes, it would be 
in Sorrento that I should find my heaven."

The officer smiled under his long moustaches.  "For three days,--at 
a hotel, Signorina."

"No, no; with the peasants.  I am tired and sick of books, and 
people, and reasons.  Shall I give you a day of my Heaven?"

Bero smiled and bent slightly forward and rested his hand lightly 
on the stick of her parasol, which lay between them.  "Go on," he 
said.

"I would fill my apron with sweet flowers and golden fruit--great 
oranges, and those fragrant, delicious tiny mandarins--and I would 
get a crowd of little Italians about me, all a-babbling their 
pretty, pretty tongue, and I would go down to the bay and get in an 
anchored boat, and lie there all the morning, catching the sunlight 
in my eyes, trimming the brown babies and the boat with flowers, 
looking off at the water and the clouds, tossing the pretty fruit, 
and laughing, and playing, and enjoying.  Later, there'd be a run 
on the beach, and a ride on a donkey, and a dance, with delirious 
music and frolic.  And then the moon and quiet,--and I would steal 
away from the crowd, and take a little boat, and float and drift--"

"Alone?" asked Bero, softly.  "Surely, you wouldn't condemn a 
mountaineer's yellow moustache, or a soldier's spurs and sword, if 
at heart he was really a child of the sun also?  May I share your 
day of Heaven?  It would be paradise for me, too."  All this in the 
same soft, deferential manner.

"Well, well,' half laughed, half sighed Mae.  "All this is a dream, 
unless, indeed, I go home with Lisetta."

"Who is Lisetta?"

"Our padrona's cousin.  She is here on a visit.  She lives within a 
mile of Sorrento, on the coast.  She goes home at the end of 
Carnival.  Oh, how I do long for Carnival," continued Mae, frankly 
and confidentially.  "Don't you?  I am like a child over it, I am 
trying already to persuade Eric--that is my brother--to take me 
down on the Corso the last night, for the Mocoletti.  It would be 
much better fun than staying on our balcony."

"Where is your balcony?" asked Bero, stroking his long moustaches.

"It is on the corner of Maria e Jesu, and if I ever see you coming 
by, I shall be tempted to pepper your pretty uniform.  How 
beautiful it is!"

"Yes," replied Bero, again gazing proudly down at his lithe figure, 
in its well-fitting clothes, "but I would be willing to be showered 
with confetti daily to see you.  How shall I know you?  What is to 
be the color of your domino?"  And he bent forward, hitting his 
spurs against the paving stones, flashing his deep eyes, and half 
reaching out his hand, in that same tender, respectful way.

Mae saw the sunlight strike his hair; she half heard his deep 
breath; and, like a flood, there suddenly swept over her the 
knowledge that this new friend, this sympathizing soul, was an 
unknown man, and that she was a girl.  What had she done?  What 
could she do?  Confusion and embarrassment suddenly overtook her.  
She bent her eyes away from those other eyes, that were growing 
bolder and more tender in their gaze.  "I--I--" she began, and just 
at this very inauspicious moment, while she sat there, flushed, by 
the stranger's side, the clatter of swiftly-approaching wheels 
sounded, and a carriage turned the corner, containing Mrs. Jerrold, 
Edith, Albert, and Norman Mann.  They all saw her.

Mae laughed.  It was such a dreadful situation that it was funny, 
and she laughed again.  "Those are my friends," she said, in a low 
voice.  "We can walk away," replied the officer, and turned his 
face in the opposite direction.  "It is too late; and, besides, why 
should we?"  And Mae looked full in his face, then turned to the 
carriage, which was close upon them.

"How do you all do?" she cried, gleefully and bravely.  "Isn't 
there room for me in there?  Mrs. Jerrold, I would like to 
introduce Signor--your name?"--she said, quite clearly, in Italian, 
turning to the officer.

"Bero," he replied.

"Signor Bero.  He was very kind, and saved me from--from a little 
beggar boy."

"You must have been in peril, indeed," remarked Mrs. Jerrold, 
bowing distantly to Bero, and beckoning the coachman, as Mae sprang 
into the carriage, to drive on.  "I am sorry to put you on the box, 
Norman," Mrs. Jerrold added, as Mae took the seat, in silence, that 
Mr. Mann had vacated for her, "and I hope Miss Mae is also."  But 
Mae didn't hear this.  She was plucking up courage in her heart, 
and assuming a saucy enough expression, that sat well on her bright 
face.  Indeed, she was a pretty picture, as she sat erect, with 
lips and nostrils a trifle distended, and her head a little in the 
air.  The Italian thought so, as he walked away, smiling softly, 
clicking his spurs and stroking his moustache; and Norman Mann 
thought so too, as he tapped his cane restlessly on the dash-board 
and scowled at the left ear of the off horse.  The party preserved 
an amazed and stiff silence, as they drove homeward.

"Eric," cried Norman, very late that same night.  "Do be sober, I 
have something to say to you about Miss Mae."

"Norman, old boy, how can a fellow of my make be sober when he has 
drunk four glasses of wine, waltzed fifteen times, and torn six 
flounces from a Paris dress?  Why, man, I am delirious, I am.  Tra, 
la, la, tra, la, la.  Oh, Norman, if you could have heard that 
waltz," and Eric seized his companion in his big arms and started 
about the room in a mad dance.  You are Miss Hopkins, Norman, you 
are.  Here goes--" but Norman struck out a bold stroke that nearly 
staggered Eric and broke loose.  "For Heaven's sake, Eric, stop 
this fooling; I want to speak to you earnestly."

"Evidently," replied Eric, with excited face, "forcibly also.  
Blows belong after words, not before," and the big boy tramped 
indignantly off to bed.

Norman Mann was in earnest truly, forcible also, for he opened his 
mouth to let out a very expressive word as Eric left the room.  It 
did him good seemingly, for he strode up and down more quietly.  At 
last he sat down and began to talk with himself.  "Norman Mann, 
you've got to do it all alone," he said.  "Albert and Edith and 
Aunt Martha are too vexed and shocked to do the little rebel any 
good.  Ric, oh, dear, Ric is a silly boy, God bless him, and here I 
am doomed to make that child hate me, and with no possible 
authority over her, or power, for that matter, trying to keep her 
from something terribly wild.  If they don't look out, she will 
break loose.  I know her well, and there's strong character under 
this storm a-top, if only some one could get at it.  Damn it."  
Norman grew forcible again.  "Why can't I keep my silly eyes away 
from her, and go off with the fellows.  You see," continued Norman, 
still addressing his patient double, "she is a rebel, and--pshaw, I 
dare say it is half my fancy, but I hate that long moustached 
officer.  I wish he would be summoned to the front and be shot.  O, 
I forgot, there's no war.  Well, then, I wish he would fall in love 
with any body but Mae.  It must be late.  Ric didn't leave that 
little party very early, I'm sure, but I can't sleep.  I'll get 
down my Sismondi and read awhile.  I wonder if that child is 
feeling badly now.  I half believe she is--but here's my book."

Yes, Mae was feeling badly, heart-brokenly, all alone in her room.  
After a long, harrowing talk with Mrs. Jerrold, at the close of 
which she had received commands never to go out alone in Rome, 
because it wasn't proper, she had been allowed to depart for her 
own room.  Here she closed the door leading into Mrs. Jerrold's and 
Edith's apartment, and opened her window wide, and held her head 
out in the night air--the poisonous Roman air.  The street was very 
quiet.  Now and then some late wayfarer passed under the light at 
the corner, but Mae had, on the whole, a desolate outlook--high, 
dark buildings opposite, and black clouds above, with only here and 
there a star peeping through.

She had taken down her long hair, thrown off her dress, and half 
wrapped herself in a shawl, out of which her bare arms stretched as 
she leaned on the deep window seat.  She looked like the first 
woman--of the Darwinian, not the Biblical, Creation.  There was a 
wild, half-hunted expression on her face that was like the set air 
of an animal brought suddenly to bay.  She thought in little jerks, 
quick sentences that were almost like the barking growls with which 
a beast lashes itself to greater fury.

"They treated me unfairly.  They had no right.  I shall choose my 
own friends.  How dare they accuse me of flirting?  I flirt, pah!  
I'd like to run away.  This stupid, stupid life!"  And so on till 
the sentences grew more human.  "I suppose Mr. Mann thinks I am 
horrid, but I don't care.  I wish I could see Eric, he wouldn't 
blame me so.  What a goose I am to mind anyway.  The Carnival is 
coming!  Even these old tombs must give way for ten whole riotous 
days.  I must make them madly merry days.  I wonder how I will look 
in my domino.  I suppose the pink one is mine."

So Miss Mae dried her eyes, picked her deshabille self from the 
window seat, turned up the light, slipped into her pink and white 
carnival attire, and walked to the window again.

"This is the Corso all full of people, and I'll pelt them merrily, 
so, and so, and so!"  She reached forth her bare, round arm into 
the darkness, and looked down, where, full under the street light, 
gazing up at her, stood the Piedmontese officer.

It was at that very moment that Norman Mann put down his Sismondi, 
and looked from his window also.



CHAPTER IV.


Mae met Mr. Mann at the breakfast table the next morning without 
the least embarrassment.  Indeed, the little flutter in her talk 
could easily be attributed to unusually high spirits and an excited 
and pleased fancy.  That was how Norman Mann translated it, of 
course.  Really, the flutter was a genuine stirring of her heart 
with inquietude, timidity and semi-repentance; but Mae couldn't say 
this, and it's only what one says out that can be reckoned on in 
this world.  So Norman Mann, who saw only the bright cheeks and 
eyes and restless quickening of an eager girl and did not see the 
palpitating feminine heart inside, was displeased and half-cold.

Could any one be long cold to Mae Madden?  She believed not.  She 
was quite accustomed to lightning-like white heats of anger in 
those with whom she came in contact, but coldness was out of her 
line.  Still she met the occasion well.  "Shall I give you some 
coffee?" she asked, pleasantly.  "We breakfast all alone, until 
Eric appears.  Mrs. Jerrold is not well, and Edith and Albert are 
off for Frascati."

"Poor child; how much alone she is," he thought to himself.

"I understand we all go to the play tonight?" queried Mae.

"The thought of Shakspeare dressed in Italian is not pleasant to 
me," said Mr. Mann, after a silence of a few minutes.

"I am quite longing to see him in his new clothes.  There is so 
much softness and beauty in Italian that I expect to gain new ideas 
from hearing the play robed in more flowing phrases.  Shakspeare 
certainly is for all the world."

"But Shakspeare's words are so strongly chosen that they are a 
great element in his great plays.  And a translation at best is 
something of a parody, especially a translation from a northern 
tongue, with its force and backbone, so to speak, into a southern, 
serpentine, gliding language.  You have heard the absurd rendering 
of that passage from Macbeth where the witches salute him with 
'Hail to thee, Macbeth!  Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!' into such 
French as 'Comment vous portez vous, Monsieur Macbeth; comment vous 
portez vous, Monsieur Thane de Cawdor!"  A translation must pass 
through the medium of another mind, and other minds like 
Shakspeare's are hard to find."

Norman spoke with so much reverence for Mae's greatest idol that 
her heart warmed and she smiled approval, though for argument's 
sake she remained on the other side.

"Isn't a translation more like an engraver's art, and aren't fine 
engravings to be sought and admired even when we know the great 
original in its glory of color?  Then all writing is only 
translation, not copying.  Shakspeare had to translate the tongues 
he found in stones, the books he found in brooks, with twenty-six 
little characters and his great mind, into what we all study, and 
love, and strive after.  But he had to use these twenty-six 
characters in certain hard, Anglo-Saxon forms and confine himself 
to them.  When he wanted to talk about


     "fen-sucked fogs,"


and such damp, shivery places, he is all right, but when he sings 
of 'love's light wings,' and all that nonsense, he is impeded; now 
open to him 'Italian, the language of angels'--you know the old 
rhyme--and see what a chance he has among the "liquid l's and bell-
voiced m's and crushed tz's."  To-night you will hear Desdemona 
call Othello 'Il mio marito,' in a way that will start the tears.  
What are the stiff English words to that?  'My husband!'  Husband 
is a very uneuphonious name, I think."

Norman Mann smiled.  "Another cup of coffee, if you please--not 
quite as sweet as the last," and he passed his cup.  "I believe 
there is always a charm in a novel word that has not been 
commonized by the crowd.  'Dear' means very little to us nowadays, 
because every school girl is every other school girl's 'dear,' and 
elderly ladies 'my dear' the world at large, in a pretty and 
benevolent way.  So with the words 'husband' and 'wife'; we hear 
them every day in commonest speech--'the coachman and his wife,' or 
'Sally Jones's husband,'--but I take it this is when we stand 
outside.  That wonderful little possessive pronoun MY has a great, 
thrilling power.  'My husband' will be as fine to your ears as 'il 
mio marito,' which has, after all, a slippery, uncertain sound; and 
as for 'my wife'--"

At that moment the coffee cup, which was on its way back, had 
reached the middle of the table, where by right it should have been 
met and guided by the steadier, masculine hand; Norman's hand was 
there in readiness, but instead of gently removing the cup from 
Mae's clasp, it folded itself involuntarily about the white, round 
wrist, as he paused on these last words.  Was it the little 
possessive pronoun that sent the sudden thrill through the 
unexpecting wrist?  At any rate it trembled; the cup, the saucer, 
the coffee, the spoon, followed a well known precedent, and "went 
to pieces all at once;" "all at once and nothing first just as 
bubbles do when they burst."  And so alas! did the conversation, 
and that burst a beautiful bubble Norman had just blown.

Damages were barely repaired when Eric entered the breakfast room 
with a petulant sort of face and flung himself into a chair.  "My! 
what a head I have on me this morning," he groaned.  "Soda water 
would be worth all the coffee in the world, Mae; I'll take it 
black, if you please.  How cosy you two look.  I always take too 
much of every thing at a party, from flirtation to--  O, Mae, you 
needn't look so sad.  I'm not the one in disgrace now.  Mrs. 
Jerrold, Edith and Albert are just piping mad at you, and as for 
Mann, here,--by the way," and Eric rubbed his forehead, as if 
trying to sharpen up a still sleepy memory, "I suppose you two have 
had it out by this time.  Norman sat up till ever so late to talk 
you over with me, Mae.  Do thank him for me; I am under the 
impression that I didn't do so last night."

Mae tapped her fourth finger, on which a small ring glistened, 
sharply against the cream jug.  "If I were every body's pet lamb or 
black sheep, I couldn't have more shepherd's crooks about me.  Have 
you joined the laudable band, Mr. Mann, and am I requested to thank 
you for that?"

"Not at all.  Perhaps your brother's remembrances of last night are 
not very distinct.  I certainly sat up for Sismondi's sake, not for 
yours."  And he really thought, for the moment, that he told the 
truth.

"I warn you," continued Mae, rising as she spoke, "that I have a 
tremendous retinue of mentors, and nurses, and governesses already.  
You had better content yourself with the fact that you have four 
proper traveling companions, and bear the disgrace of being shocked 
as best you may by one wild scrap of femininity who will have her 
own way in spite of you all."  Mae half laughed, but she was 
serious, and the boys both knew it.

"You flatter me," replied Norman, "I had aspired to no such 
position, but for your brother's sake, if not for your own, I 
wished to tell Eric that the Roman air at midnight was dangerous to 
your health.  I saw you had your window open."

"Did you look through the ceiling, pray?" Mae retorted from the 
door-way.  "Eric, ring if you want anything.  Rosetta is close at 
hand."

"I have put my foot in it this time," said Eric, clumsily.  "I am 
real sorry, Norman, old boy."

Norman did not feel like being pitied, and this remark of Eric's 
roused him.  He fairly ground his teeth and clenched his hands, but 
his big brown moustache and the tablecloth hid these outer 
manifestations of anger.  "Don't be a goose, Ric," he said.  "What 
possible difference can all this make to me?  Your sister is young 
and quick."

Now, it was Eric's turn to wince.  Was he giving this fellow the 
impression that he thought his sister's opinions would affect him?  
Horrible suspicion!  Boys always fancy everybody in love with their 
sister.  He must cure that at once.  "Of course," he replied 
quickly, "I know you and Mae never agree, that you barely stand 
each other.  But I didn't know but you would prefer to be on good 
terms with her, for all that."

"Miss Mae can choose the terms on which we meet.  I shall be 
content whatever her decision.  What are your plans for the day?"

Lounging Eric straightened himself at once.  "I was a perfect fool 
last night," he confessed.  "and I must rely on you, old fellow, to 
help me out.  I made engagements for two weeks ahead with Miss 
Hopkins and Miss Rae.  At any rate, I'm booked for the play to-
night.  Now, I can't take two girls very well.  That is, I can, but 
I thought you might like a show.  You may have your choice of the 
two.  Miss Rae, by the way, says she's wild to know you; thought 
you were the most provoking man she ever saw; and that you were--
nonsensical idea--engaged to Mae.  All because you wouldn't look at 
her the other day when she passed you two, But you can go with Miss 
Hopkins, if you prefer."

"Are they pretty?" asked Norman, apparently warming to the task, 
"and bright?"

"I should say they were.  Miss Hopkins has gorgeous great eyes,--
but Miss Rae is more your style.  Still, you may have your choice."

"Silly boy; you're afraid to death that I shall choose Miss 
Hopkins.  Well, if they are not over stupid and flirtatious--"

"Stupid!  Oh, no,"--Eric scouted that idea--"and flirtatious, 
perhaps.  Miss Hopkins rolls her eyes a good deal, but then she has 
a frankness, a winning way."

"Well," laughed Norman, "you're such a transparent, susceptible 
infant-in-arms that I'll go with you."

"As shepherd," suggested Eric, "as long as Mae won't have you.  But 
come, we must go down and call on these people.  It won't do at all 
for you to appear suddenly this evening, and say, 'I'll relieve my 
friend here of one of you.'"

"Oh, what a bore.  Is that necessary?  Won't a card or a box of 
Stillman's bon-bons do them?  Well, if it must be, come along, 
then."




CHAPTER V.


It was evening, and the brilliantly lighted theatre was crowded to 
overflowing.  Of course there were English who scowled at the 
Americans, and Americans who smiled on every one and ate candy 
while Othello writhed in jealous rage, and a scattering of Germans 
with spectacles and a row of double-barrelled field glasses glued 
over them, and Frenchmen with impudent eyes and elegant gloves, and 
a general filling in of Italians, with the glitter here and there 
of nobility, and still oftener of bright uniforms.  Finally there 
was a modicum of true gentry, and these not of any particular 
nation or class.  It is pleasant to name our party immediately 
after referring to these goodly folks.  They had a fine box, and 
although their ranks were thinned by the loss of two cavaliers, 
nobody seemed to care.  Albert and Edith were perfectly happy side 
by side, and Mrs. Jerrold was well contented to observe her 
daughter's smile as Albert spoke to her, and the look of manly 
protection in his eyes, as his gaze met Edith's.

As for Mae, she had that delicious feminine pride which is as good 
a stimulant as success to women--in emergencies.  And to-night was 
an emergency to this small, excitable, young thing.  Her eyes were 
very dark from the expansion of the pupil.  They possessed a rare 
charm, caught from a trick the eyelids had of drooping slowly and 
then suddenly and unexpectedly lifting to reveal the wide, bright 
depths, that half-concealed, half-revealed power, which is so 
tantalizing.  Mae was dressed in this same spirit to-night, and she 
was dimly conscious of it.  The masses of tulle that floated from 
her opera hat to her chin and down on her shoulders, revealed only 
here and there a glimpse of rich brown hair, or of white throat.  
Her cheeks were scarlet, her lips a-quiver with excitement and 
pleasure.  She formed a pretty contrast to Edith, who sat by her 
side.  Miss Jerrold leaned back in her chair quietly, composedly.  
She fanned herself in long sweeps, looked pleased, contented, but 
in no wise displaced or surprised--thoroughly well-bred and at 
home.  She might have had a private rehearsal of Othello in her own 
dramatic hall the evening before, from her air and mien.  Mae, on 
the contrary, was alert, on the qui vive, as interested as a child 
in each newcomer, and, after the curtain rose, in every tableau.

Such a woman can not fail to attract attention, as long as she is 
herself unconscious.  The world grows blase so speedily that it 
enjoys all the more thoroughly the sight of freshness, verve, 
life,--that is, the male portion of the world.  Women's great 
desire, as a rule, is to appear entirely at ease, city-bred, high-
bred, used to all things, surprised by none.

So there were a great many glasses turned toward Mae that evening.  
Very probably the young women in the next box accepted a share of 
these glances as their own, and, in a crowd where the French and 
Italian elements predominate, or largely enter, they could not have 
been far wrong.  Every girl or woman who pretends to any possible 
charm is quite sure of her share of admiration from these 
susceptible beings.  The young ladies of the next box had that 
indescribable New York air, which extends from the carefully 
brushed eyebrows quite to the curves of the wrist and hand.  Praise 
Parisian modes all you will, but for genuine style, a New York 
girl, softened a trifle by commonsense or good taste, leads the 
world--certainly if she is abroad.  For there she soon finds it 
impossible to go to the extremes that American air seems to rush 
her into.  Three months, or perhaps, if she is observant, three 
days in Paris, teach her that the very biggest buttons, or the very 
largest paniers, or the very flaringest hats are not for her, or 
any lady, and by stepping back to size number two, she does not 
detract from her style, while she does add to her lady-likeness.

These two girls, it may be surmised, were no other than Miss 
Hopkins and Miss Rae, whom chance or fate or bungling Eric Madden, 
who bought the tickets, had seated side by side with the Maddens 
and Jerrolds.  It was bothersome, when Norman and Eric had played 
truant at any rate, but there was no help for it; so after a little 
Eric introduced them all round, and the two parties apparently 
merged into one, or broke up into four, for tete-a-tetes soon 
began.  It was a little hard that three girls should have each a 
devoted servant, and that only one, and that one, Mae, should be 
obliged to receive her care from the chaperon; but so it was.

Nevertheless, Mae bore herself proudly.  She was seated next Miss 
Rae, separated only by the nominal barrier of a little railing, 
while just beyond sat Norman, his chair turned toward the two 
girls.  The stranger insisted on drawing Mae into the conversation, 
partly for curiosity's sake, to watch her odd face and manners, 
partly from that genuine generosity that comes to the most selfish 
of women, when she is satisfied with her position.  It is pleasant 
to pity, to be generous; and Miss Rae, having the man, could afford 
to share him now and then, when it pleased her, with the lonely 
girl by her side.  But Miss Rae's tactics did not work.  Mae 
replied pleasantly when addressed, but returned speedily and 
eagerly to Mrs. Jerrold or a survey of the house, with the frank 
happiness of a child.  She was all the more fascinating to the 
admiring eyes that watched her, because she sat alone, electrified 
by the inspiration and magnetism from within, and did not need the 
stimulus of another voice close by her side, breathing compliments 
and flattery, to brighten her eyes and call the blushes to her 
cheeks.  Norman Mann saw the eyes fixed on her, and they vexed him.  
At the same time, he liked her the better on that very account.

And at last the curtain rose.

It was just as Desdemona assures her father of her love for 
Othello, that Mae became conscious of a riveted gaze--of a 
presence.  Lifting her eyes, and widening them, she looked over to 
the opposite side of the house, and there, of course, was the 
Piedmontese officer again, handsomer, more brilliant than ever, 
with a grateful, soft look of recognition in his eyes.

Mae was out of harmony with all her friends.  She was proud and 
lonely.  The man's pleased, softened look touched her heart 
strangely.  There was almost a choke in her throat, there were 
almost tears in her eyes, and there was a free, glad, welcoming 
smile on her lips.

Norman Mann saw it and followed it, and caught the officer 
receiving it, and thought "She's a wild coquette."

And Mae knew what he saw and what he thought.

Then a strange spirit entered the girl.  Here was a man who vexed 
her, who piqued her, and who was rude, for Mae secretly thought it 
was rude to neglect Mrs. Jerrold, as the boys did that evening, and 
yet who was vexed and piqued in his turn, if she did what he didn't 
like and looked at another man.

And then here was the other man.  Mae looked down at him.

Bless us! who is to blame a young woman for forgetting everything 
but the "other man" when he is a godlike Piedmontese officer, with 
strong soft cheek and throat, and Italian eyes, and yellow 
moustaches, and spurs and buttons that click and shine in a 
maddening sort of way?

Of course, in reality, everybody is to blame her, we among the very 
virtuous first.  In this particular case, however, we have facts, 
not morals, to deal with.  Mae did see Norman Mann talking 
delightedly to a pretty girl, and she did see the officer gazing at 
her rapturously, and she quite forgot Othello, and gave back look 
for look, only more shy and less intense perhaps, and knew that 
Norman Mann was very angry and she and the officer very happy.  
What matter though the one should hate her, and the other love her, 
and she--

But, bother all things but the delirious present moment.  Never 
fear consequences.  There were bright lights, and brilliant people, 
the hum of many voices, the flash of many eyes, and a half secret 
between her, this little creature up in the box, and the very 
handsomest man of them all.

So while Othello fell about the stage, and ground out tremendous 
curses, Mae half shivered and glanced tremblingly toward Bero, and 
Bero gazed back protectingly and grandly.  Once, when Desdemona 
cried out thrillingly, "Othello, il mio marito," Mae looked at 
Norman involuntarily and caught a half flash of his eye, but he 
turned back quickly to his companion and Mae's glance wandered on 
to Bero and rested there as the wild voice cried out again, "il mio 
marito, il mio marito."

So the evening slid on.  Mae smiled and smiled and opened and half 
closed her eyes, and Norman invited Miss Rae to go to church with 
him, and to drive with him, and to walk with him, and to go to the 
galleries with him, "until, Susie Hopkins, if you will believe it, 
I fairly thought he would drop on his knees and ask me to go 
through life with him, right then and there."  So Miss Rae confided 
to Susie Hopkins after the victorious night, in the silence of a 
fourth-story Costanzi bedroom.

Susie Hopkins was putting her hair up on crimping-pins, but she 
paused long enough to say:  "Well, Jack Durkee had better hurry 
himself and his ring along, then."

"O, he's coming as quickly as ever he can," laughed Miss Rae, 
whereat she proceeded to place a large letter and a picture under 
the left-hand pillow, crimped her hair, cold-creamed her lips, and 
laid her down to pleasant dreams of--Jack.



CHAPTER VI.


Mae was very much ashamed of herself the next morning.  She had 
been restored in a measure to popular favor, through Eric, the day 
before.  Edith and Albert were home from Frascati, when Eric made 
his raid bravely on their forces combined with those of Mrs. 
Jerrold.  He advanced boldly.  "It's all nonsense, child, as she 
is," he said.  "It was natural enough, to talk with the man," for 
Mae had made a clean breast of her misdoings to him, to the extent 
of saying that they had chatted after the beggar left.  "Do forgive 
her, poor little proud tot, away across the sea from her mother.  
Albert, you're as hard as a rock, and that Edith has no spirit in 
her," he added, under his breath.  This remark made Albert white 
with rage.  Nevertheless, he put in a plea for his wayward, 
reckless little sister, with effect.  After a few more remarks from 
Mrs. Jerrold, Mae came out of the ordeal; was treated naturally, 
and, as we have seen, accompanied Mrs. Jerrold to the play the 
night before.

Now, it was the next day.  Mrs. Jerrold breakfasted in her own room 
again, and spent the hours in writing home letters full of the 
Peter and Paul reminiscences and quotations.  Norman and Eric left 
for the Costanzi, and Albert and Edith, armed with books, and note-
books, and the small camp-stools, again started away together.  
This last 'again' was getting to be accepted quite as a matter of 
course.  Everybody knew what it meant.  They always invited the 
rest of the company to go with them, and were especially urgent, 
this morning, that Mae should accompany them.

"Why, with mamma in her room you will be lonely," suggested Edith, 
"and you can't go out by yourself."

Mae winced inwardly at this, but replied pleasantly: "I have 
letters to write also, and I'm not in the mood to-day for pictures, 
and the cold, chilling galleries filled with the damp breath of the 
ages."

So Edith and Albert, nothing loth, having discharged their duty, 
started off.  These two have as yet appeared only in the 
background, and may have assumed a half-priggish air in opposition 
and contrast to Mae.  They really, however, were very interesting 
young people.  Albert with a strong desire in his heart--or was it 
in his head?--to aid the world, and Edith with a clear self-
possession and New England shrewdness that helped and pleased him.  
Their travels were enriching them both.  Edith was trying to draw 
the soul from all the great pictures and some of the lesser ones, 
and Albert was waking, through her influence, to the world of art.  
This morning they were on their way to the Transfiguration to study 
the scornful sister.  They were taking the picture bit by bit, 
color by color, face by face.  There are advantages in this 
analytical study, yet there is a chance of losing the spirit of the 
whole.  So Mae thought and said: "I know that sister now, Edith, 
better than you ever will."  This was while she was looping up her 
friend's dress here, and pulling out a fold there, in that 
destructive way girls have of beautifying each other.  "See here!"

And down sank Miss Mae on her knees, with her lips curved, and her 
hands stretched out imploringly, half-mockingly.  No need of words 
to say:  "Save my brother, behold him.  Ah, you cannot do it, your 
power is boast.  Yet, save him, pray."

"A little more yellow in my hair, some pearls and a pink gown, and 
you might have the sister to study in a living model, Edith," 
laughed Mae, arising.

Edith and Albert were both struck by Mae's dramatic force, and they 
talked of her as they drove to the Vatican.  "I wish I understood 
her better," said Edith.  "I cannot feel as if travel were doing 
her good.  She is changing so; she was always odd, but then she was 
always happy.  Now she has her moods, and there is a look in her 
eye I am afraid of.  It is almost savage.  You would think the 
beauty in Rome would delight her nature, for she craves beauty and 
poetry in everything.  I don't believe the theatre is good for her.  
Albert, suppose we give up our tickets for Thursday night."

"But you want particularly to see that play, Edith."

"I can easily give it up for Mae's sake.  It would be cruel to go 
without her, and I think excitement is bad for her."

"You are very generous, Edith, and right, too, I dare say.  I wish 
my little sister could see pleasure and duty through your steadier, 
clearer eyes."

Then the steady, clear eyes dropped suddenly, and the two forgot 
all about Mae, and rolled contentedly off, behind the limping 
Italian horse.  And the red-cheeked vetturino with the flower in 
his button-hole, whistled a love-song, and thought of his Piametta, 
I suppose.

Meantime, Mae, left to herself, grew penitent and reckless by 
turns, blushed alternately with shame and with quick pulse-beats, 
as she remembered Norman Mann's face, or the officer's smile.  She 
wondered where he lived, and whether she would see him soon again.  
Poor child!  She was really innocent, and only dimly surmised how 
he would haunt her hereafter.  Would he look well in citizen's 
clothes?  How would Norman Mann seem in his uniform?  She wished 
she had a jacket cut like his.  And so on in an indolent way.  But 
penitence was getting the better of her, and after vainly trying to 
read or write, she settled herself down for a cry.  To think that 
she, Mae Madden, could have acted so absurdly.  She never would 
forgive herself, never.  Then she cried some more, a good deal 
more.

About four in the afternoon a very bright sunbeam peeped through 
her closed blinds, and she brushed away her tears, and peace came 
back to her small heart, and she felt like a New England valley 
after a shower, very fresh and clean, and goodly,--just a trifle 
subdued, however.

She would go to church.  She had heard that there was lovely music 
at vespers, in the little church at the foot of Capo le Case.  St. 
Andrea delle Frate, was it?  It wasn't very far away.  She could 
say her prayers and repent entirely and wholly.  So she dressed 
rapidly, singing the familiar old Te Deum joyously all the while, 
and off she started.

The air was cool and clear and delicious and the street-scenes were 
pretty.  Mae took in everything before her as she left the house, 
from the Barberini fountain to the groups of models at the corner 
of the Square and the Via Felice; but she did not see, at some 
distance behind her, on the opposite side of the street, the sudden 
start of a motionless figure as she left the house, or know that it 
straightened itself and moved along as she did, turning on to the 
pretty Via Sistina, so down the hill at Capo le Case, to the church 
below.

She was early for vespers, and there was only the music singing in 
her own happy little heart as she entered the quiet place.  The 
contrast between the spot, with its shrines and symbols and aids to 
faith, and all that she had associated with religion, conspired to 
separate her from herself and her past, and left her a bit of 
breathing, worshiping life, praising the great Giver of Life.  She 
fell on her knees in an exalted, jubilate spirit.  She was more 
like a Praise-the-Lord psalm of David than like a young girl of the 
nineteenth century.

And yet close behind her, a little to the left, was Bero on his 
knees too, at his pater nosters.

By and by the music began.  It was music beyond description; those 
wonderful male voices, the chorus of young boys, and then suddenly, 
the organ and some one wild falsetto carrying the great Latin soul-
laden words up higher.

All this while Mae's head was bent low and her heart was a-praying.

All this while Bero was on his knees also, but his eyes were on 
Mae.

The music ceased; the prayers were ended.  Mae heard indistinctly 
the sweep of trailing skirts, the sound of footsteps on the marble 
floor, the noise of voices as the people went away, but still she 
did not move.  The selah pause had come after the psalm.

When she did rise, and turn, and start to go, her eyes fell on the 
kneeling form.  She tried to pass quickly without recognition, but 
he reached out his hand.

"This is a church," said Mae; "my prayers are sacred; do not 
disturb me."

He held his rosary toward her, with the cross at the end tightly 
clasped in his hand.  "My prayers are here, too," he said.  "Oh, 
Signorina, give me one little prayer, one of your little prayers."

He knelt before her in the quiet, dim, half light, his hands 
clasped, and an intense earnestness in his easily moved Italian 
soul, that floated up to his face.  It looked like beautiful 
penitence and faith to Mae.  Here was a soul in sympathy with hers, 
one which met her harmoniously in every mood, slid into her dreams 
and wild wishes, sparkled with her enjoyment, and now knelt as she 
knelt, and asked for one of her prayers.

She stood a minute irresolute.  Then she smiled down on him a full, 
rich smile, and said in English: "God bless you,"  The next moment 
she was gone.

Bero made no movement to follow her, but remained quietly on his 
knees, his head bowed low.

       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

"I looked in at St. Andrea's, at vespers," said that dear, bungling 
fellow, Eric, at dinner that night, "and saw you Mae, but you were 
so busy with your prayers I came away."  There was a pause, and Mae 
knew that people looked at her.

"Yes, I was there; the music was wonderful."

"Mae," asked Mrs.  Jerrold, "Do you have to go to a Roman Catholic 
Church to say your prayers?"  For Mrs. Jerrold was a Puritan of the 
Puritans, and had breathed in the shorter catechism and the 
doctrine of election with the mountain air and sea-salt of her 
childhood.  Possibly the two former had had as much to do as the 
latter with her angularity and severe strength.

"Indeed," cried Mae, impulsively, "I wish I could always enter a 
church to say my prayers.  There is so much to help one there."

"Is there any danger of your becoming a Romanist?" enquired Mrs. 
Jerrold, pushing the matter further.

"I wish there were a chance of my becoming anything half as good, 
but I am afraid there isn't.  Still, I turn with an occasional 
loyal heart-beat to the great Mother Church, that the rest of you 
have all run away from."  "Yes, you have," Mae shook her head 
decidedly at Edith.  "She may be a cruel mother.  I know you all 
think she's like the old woman who lived in a shoe, and that she 
whips her children and sends them supperless to bed, and gives them 
a stone for bread, but she's the mother of all of us, 
notwithstanding."

"What a dreadful mixture of Mother Goose and Holy Bible," exclaimed 
Eric, laughingly, while Mae cooled off, and Mrs. Jerrold stared 
amazedly, wondering how to take this tirade.  She concluded at last 
that it would be better to let it pass as one of Mae's 
extravagances, so she ended the conversation by saying: "I hope, 
Eric, you will wait for your sister, if you see her alone, at 
church.  It is not the thing for her to go by herself."

"No," added Albert, "we shall have to buy a chain for you soon."

"If you do," said Mae quietly, "I'll slip it."  And not another 
prayer did she say that night.



CHAPTER VII.


It was the first day of Carnival.  The determination to enjoy 
herself was so strong in Mae, that her face fairly shone with her 
"good time coming."  She popped her head out of the doorway, and 
flung a big handful of confetti right at Eric, but he dodged, and 
Norman Mann caught it in his face.  Then, seeing a try-to-be-
dignified look creeping upon Mae, he seized the golden moment, 
gathered up such remnants of confetti as were tangled in his hair 
and whiskers, and flung them back again, shouting: "Long live King 
Pasquino!  So his reign has begun, has it?"

"Yes; King Pasquino is lord, now, for ten whole days," and she 
slowly edged her right hand about, to take aim again at Norman.  He 
saw her, and frustrated the attempt by catching it and emptying the 
contents out upon the floor.  The little white balls rolled off to 
the corners and the little hand fell slowly by Mae's side.  "Why 
not go down to the Corso, you and I, and see the beginning of the 
fun?" suggested Norman.

"Come along," cried Mae, "you, too, Eric," and the three started 
off like veritable children, in a delightful, familiar, old-time 
way.  Arrived at their loggia, they found an old woman employed in 
filling, with confetti, a long line of boxes, fastened to the 
balustrade of the balcony.  Little shovels, also, were provided, 
for dealing out the tiny missals of war upon the heads below.  
There were masks in waiting, some to be tied on, while others 
terminated in a handle, by a skilful use of which they could be 
made as effective as a Spanish lady's fan.  Mae chose one of these 
latter.

The Corso was alive with vendors of small bouquets and bon-bons and 
little flying birds tied in live agony to round yellow oranges.  
The fruit in turn was fastened to a long pole and so thrust up to 
the balconies as a tempting bait.  If bought, the birds and flowers 
were tossed together into the streets to a passing friend.  As Mae 
was gazing rapturously over the balcony, laughing at the few 
stragglers hurrying to the Piazza del Popolo, admiring the bannered 
balconies and gay streamers, several of these little birds were 
thrust up to her face, some of them peeping piteously and flapping 
their poor wings.  She put up her hands and caught the oranges, 
one--two--three--four.  In a moment she had freed the fluttering 
birds and tossed the fruit back into the street.  "Pay them, Eric," 
she cried indignantly; "Why, what is this?" for one of the little 
creatures, after vainly flapping its wings, had fallen on the 
balcony.  Mae picked it up.  It half opened its eyes at her and 
then lay still in her hands.

"It is dead," said Mae, quietly, going up to Norman.  "Oh! Mr. 
Mann, I thought Carnival meant real fun, not cruelty.  Isn't there 
anywhere in this big world where we can get free from such dreadful 
things?  Well!" she added, impatiently, as Norman paused.

"Give a slow fellow who likes the world better than you do, time to 
apologize for it," replied Norman, as familiarly as Eric would have 
done.  The tone pleased Mae.  She looked up and laughed lightly.  
"At any rate," suggested he, "let's forget the cruelty now and take 
the fun.  Three of them are safe and very likely this scrap," and 
he touched the dead bird in her hand, "is flying to rejoin his 
brothers in hunting-grounds that are stocked with angle-worms, and 
such game.  We are to have a good time to-day, you and I."

At this moment Eric rushed up.  "Say, Mann," he cried, "here they 
come.  They have taken the balcony just opposite, after all.  And 
Miss Hopkins looks perfectly in a white veil.  And oh! here are the 
rest of our own party."

Mae lifted her eyes to the opposite side of the street, but they 
did not fall to the level of the Hopkins-Rae party, being stopped 
by something above.  At a high, fourth-story window, beyond the 
circle of flying fun and frolic, confetti and flowers, Mae saw a 
wonderful woman's face, a face with great dark eyes and raven hair.  
A heavily-figured white lace veil was pulled low over her brow, and 
fell in folds against her cheeks.  Her skin was white, the scarlet 
of her face concentrating in her lips.

There was a strange consonance between the creamy heavy lace and 
its flowing intertwined figures, and the face it encircled.  A 
mystery, a grace, a subtle charm, that had the effect of a vivid 
dream, in its combination of clearness and unreality.  There was 
life, with smothered passion and pride and pain in it, Mae was 
sure.  So near to her that her voice could have arched the little 
distance easily, and yet so far away from her life and all that 
touched it.

A gentleman attending the lady whispered to her.  She bent her eyes 
on Mae, and met her glance with a smile, and Mae smiled rapturously 
back.

Mae had been looking for Bero all that afternoon.  She felt sure he 
would be there, and very soon she saw him among a crowd of officers 
sauntering slowly down the Corso.  He looked up at the window 
opposite.  The veiled lady leaned slightly forward and bowed and 
waved her white hand.  Bero bowed.  So did the other officers.

Norman Mann and Eric excused themselves long enough to dash over to 
welcome their friends and then stayed on for a little chat.  These 
young women were quite gorgeous in opera cloaks and tiny, nearly 
invisible, American flags tucked through their belts.  They tossed 
confetti down on every one's heads, and shouted--a little over-
enthusiastically, but one can pardon even gush if it is only 
genuine.  That was the question in this case.

The horse race came; and Mae went fairly wild.  When it was over, 
every body prepared to go home.  King Pasquino had virtually 
abdicated in favor of the Dinner Kings.  Mae unclasped her tightly 
strained hands, clambered down from a chair she had perched herself 
on, smiled a good-bye at the veiled lady, and came away.  She rode 
home quietly with a big bouquet of exquisite blue violets in her 
hand.  There was a rose on top and a fringe of maiden's hair at the 
edge, and the bouquet was flung from Bero's own hand up at the side 
window on the quiet Jesu e Maria, when everyone else but Mae was 
out on the Corso balcony.

"It is dreadful to grow old," said Mae, breaking silence, as the 
carriage clattered over the stony streets.

"My dear," expostulated Edith, "you surely don't call yourself old.  
What do you mean?"

"I fancied I could take the Carnival as a child takes a big bonbon 
and just think with a smack of the lips, 'My! how good this is.'  
But here I am, wondering what my candy is made of all the time, and 
forgetting, except at odd moments, to enjoy myself for trying to 
separate false from true, and gold from gilt.  Still, what is the 
use of this stuff now!  I'll remember that horse race, for there I 
did forget myself and everything but motion.  How I would like to 
be a horse!"  And the volatile Mae seized the stems of her bouquet 
for whip and bridle and gave a little inelegant expressive click-
click to her lips as if she were spurring that imaginary steed 
herself.

Norman smiled.  "We can't keep children for ever, even--"

"The silliest of us?"

"Even the freshest and blithest."

"O, dear, that is like a moral to a Sunday-school book," said Mae; 
"don't be goody-goody to-night."

"What bad thing shall I do to please your majesty, my lady 
Pasquino?"

"Waltz," said Mae.  So, after dinner, Edith and Eric sang, and 
Norman and Mae took to the poetry of motion as ducks take to water, 
and outdanced the singers.

"Thank you," said Mae, smiling up at him.  "This has done me good."  
She pushed the brown hair back from her forehead and drew some deep 
breaths and leaned back in her chair, still tapping her eager, 
half-tired foot against the floor, while Norman fanned her with his 
handkerchief.

This time Bero and the strange, veiled lady and Miss Hopkins and 
every other confusing thought floated off, and left them quite 
happy for--well--say for ten minutes.

And ten minutes consecutive enjoyment is worth waiting for, old and 
cynical people say.

       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning brought back all her troubles, with variations and 
complications, on account of some more misunderstood words.

"I think," said Mae, as she paused to blot the tenth page of a home 
letter.  "that likes and dislikes are very similar, don't you, 
Edith?"  Then, as Edith did not reply, she glanced up, and saw that 
her friend's chair was occupied by Norman Mann.  He looked up also 
and smiled.

"I am not Edith, you see, but I am interested in your theory all 
the same.  Only, as I am a man, I shall require you to show up your 
reasons."

"Well, I find that people who affect me very intensely either way, 
I always feel intuitively acquainted with.  I know what they will 
think and how they will act under given conditions, and I believe 
we are driven into friendship or strong dislikes more by the force 
of circumstances than by--"

"Elective affinities or any of that nonsense," suggested Norman 
Mann.

"Yes," said Mae, nodding her head, and repeating her original 
statement under another form, as a sort of conclusion and proof to 
the conversation.  "Yes, a natural acquaintance may develop into 
your best friend or your worst foe."  She started on page number 
eleven of her letter, dipping her pen deep into the ink-stand and 
giving such a particular flourish to her right arm, as to nearly 
upset the bouquet of flowers at her side.  It was Bero's gift.  
Norman Mann put out his hand to save it.  His fingers fell in among 
the soft flowers and touched something stiff.  It felt like a 
little roll of paper.  Indignantly and surprisedly he pulled it 
out.  "What is this?" he cried.

Mae sprang forward, her cheeks aflame.  "It is mine," she said.

"Did you put it here?" asked Norman.

"No."

"Then how do you know it is yours?  Is not this a carnival bouquet.  
idly tossed from the street to the balcony?"

Mae straightened to her utmost height which wasn't lofty then and 
said hastily: "Mr. Mann, this is utterly absurd, and more.  I am 
not a child, and if I catch an idly flung bouquet that holds idle 
secrets, I surely have a right to them."  She laughed hurriedly.  
"Come, give me my note,--some Italian babble, I dare say."

Norman looked at her for a minute with a struggle in his heart and 
a flash of half scorn, Mae thought, on his face.  What was he 
thinking?

That the child was in danger.  He had no doubt in his own mind now 
that the flowers and the note came from Bero and that Mae knew it.  
He held the paper crushed in his hand, while he looked at her.

"I presume you will never forgive me," he said, "but I must warn 
you, not as a mentor or even as a friend," noticing her annoyed 
air, "but as one soul is bound to warn another soul, seeing it in 
danger.  Take care of yourself, and there!"  And taking the crushed 
note between his two hands, he deliberately tore it asunder and 
threw the halves on the table before her.

"And there, and there, and there!" cried Mae, tearing the fragments 
impetuously, and scattering the sudden little snow flakes before 
him.  Then, with a look of supreme contempt, she left the room.

Norman looked down on the white heap that lay peacefully at his 
feet.  "I am a fool," he thought.

"Little Mae Madden, little Mae Madden, I am so sorry for you," 
repeated that excited bit of womankind to herself in the silence of 
her own room.  "What won't they drive you to yet?  How dreadful 
they think you are?  And only last night we thought things were all 
coming around beautifully!"

And she looked at herself pityingly in the glass.  A mirror is a 
dangerous thing for a woman who has come to pity herself.  She sees 
the possibilities of her face too clearly.  And Mae, looking into 
the mirror then, realized to an extent she never had before, that 
her eyes and mouth might be powerful friends to herself and foes to 
Norman Mann, if she so desired.  And to-day she did so desire, and 
went down to the Carnival with as reckless and dangerous a spirit 
as good King Pasquino could have asked.

The details of this day were very like those of the last.  Norman 
and Eric vibrated between the Madden and Hopkins balconies; the 
crowd was great; confetti and flowers filled the air; and up above 
it all, circled by her crown of misty, heavy lace-work, shone out 
the beautiful, wonderful face of the strange lady.  She dropped 
smiles from under her long black lashes and from the corners of the 
rare, sweet mouth over the heads of the idlers to Mae, who looked 
up to catch them.  There was a resting, almost saving influence, 
Mae's excited soul believed, in the strange face; and her eyes 
sought it constantly.  She had been quite oblivious to the friends 
about this beautiful stranger, but once, as her eyes sought the 
Italian's, she saw her arise with a sudden flash of light on her 
face, and hold out a white hand.  A head bent over it, and as it 
lifted itself slowly, Mae saw once more the well-known features of 
the Signor Bero.

She looked down toward the street quickly and a sharp pain filled 
her heart.

She had lost her only friend in Rome, so the silly girl said to 
herself.  If he knew that wonderful woman, and if she flashed those 
weary, great eyes for him, how could he see or think of any other?  
Moreover, it was very vexatious to have him there.  If she smiled 
up at the girl, Bero might think she was watching him, trying to 
attract his notice.  So Mae appeared very careless and played she 
did not see him at all, at all.  Yet she could not resist looking 
up now and then for one of the rare smiles.  They seemed like very 
far between "nows and thens" to Mae, averaging possibly a distance 
of four minutes apart.  But that is as one counts time by steady 
clock-ticks, and not by heart-beats.

Meanwhile, what could she do with her eyes?  They would wander once 
in a while over to the opposite balcony, at just such moments as 
when Norman Mann was picking up Miss Rae's fan and receiving her 
thanks for it from under her drooped eyelids, or choosing a flower 
for himself, "the very, very prettiest, Mr. Mann," before she threw 
the rest to the winds and the passing gallants.

As Mae grew reckless her eyes grew bright.  There were few passers-
by who were not attracted by the flash of those eyes.  The sailor 
lads, as they trundled past in their ship on wheels, left the 
barrels of lime from which they had been pelting the pleasure-
seekers to throw whole handfuls of flowers up to the Jesu e Maria 
balcony; a set of hale young Englishmen picked out their prettiest 
bonbons for the same purpose; and one elderly, pompous man, who 
drove unmasked and with staring opera glasses up and down the 
Corso, quite showered her with bouquets, which he threw so poorly, 
and with such a shaky old hand, that the street gamins caught them 
all except such as he craftily flung so that they might assuredly 
tumble back to the carriage again.  And Mae, though she had felt 
the pleased gaze of a good many eyes before, had never quite put 
its meaning plainly to herself.  She was apt, on such occasions, to 
feel high-spirited, excited, joyous, but now she realized well that 
she was being admired, and she led on for victory ardently.

She tossed back little sprays of flowers, or quiet bonbons, or now 
and then mischievously let drop a sprinkling of confetti balls 
through her half-closed fingers.  To do this she drooped her hand 
low over among the balcony trimmings, following the soft shower 
with her eyes, as some straight soldier would wipe the tiny minie 
balls from his face and glance up to see where they came from.  If 
he looked up once, he never failed to look again, and generally 
darted around the nearest corner to return with his offering, in 
the shape of flowers or other pretty carnival nonsense.  Mae rather 
satisfied her conscience, which was tolerably fast asleep for the 
time being, at any rate, with the fact that she didn't smile at 
these strangers--she only looked!

Her pleasure was heightened by the knowledge that she was watched.  
If she glanced across quickly, Miss Rae's eyes were invariably 
fixed on her and Norman Mann would be gazing in the opposite 
direction in the most suspicious manner.  From above her strange 
friend leaned over admiringly and once, as Mae looked joyously 
upwards, clapped her white hands softly together, while beyond her 
a tall figure stood motionless, Mae had pretended not to see Bero 
yet, but as the Italian applauded her in this gentle manner, her 
eyes sought his involuntarily.  He was gazing very fixedly and 
rapturously down on her, without any apparent thought of the 
beautiful girl by his side.  After that, Mae looked up often, in a 
glad, childlike way, for spite of this first lesson in wholesale 
coquetry, and the new conflict of emotions within her mind, she was 
enjoying herself with the utter abandon of her glad nature.

Toward the close of the afternoon, the Italian was suddenly 
surrounded by a great mass of flowers, over which she waved her 
hand caressingly and pointed down at Mae.  "For you," the gesture 
seemed to say.  The veiled lady appeared to summon several of her 
friends, for a number of gentlemen left the other window and its 
group of girls, and began the difficult task of attempting to toss 
the bouquets from their height down to Mae.  This was rendered the 
more difficult as the Madden balcony was covered, and the best 
shots succeeded in landing their trophies on this awning, where 
they were speedily captured and drawn in by the occupants of the 
next flat, an ogre of an old woman and her hook-nosed daughter, who 
wore an ugly green dress and was otherwise unattractive.

The entire Madden party became interested and stood looking on with 
the most encouraging smiles.  The very last bouquet was vainly 
thrown, however, and gathered in by the ogre, when Bero suddenly 
appeared, a little behind the party in the window.  The flowers in 
his hand were of the same specimens as those he had given Mae the 
day before, although different in arrangement.  He lifted the 
bouquet quickly to his lips, so quickly that perhaps only Mae 
understood the motion, and flung it lightly forward.  Mae leaned 
over the balcony, reaching out her eager hands, and caught it in 
her very finger tips.  The party above bowed and applauded, as she 
raised the flowers triumphantly to her face.

So the second day of the Carnival was a success, till they turned 
their backs on the Corso.  In the carriage Mrs. Jerrold spoke 
gently but firmly to Mae.  "Be a little more careful, dear; don't 
let your spirits carry you quite away during these mad days."  Mae 
smiled, but was silent.

"What a strangely beautiful girl that was in the gallery opposite," 
Edith said, a moment later.  "I wonder if she is engaged to that 
superb man; I fancied I had seen him before.  Why, Mae, what in the 
world are you blushing at?"  For Mae's face was scarlet.  "Why, 
nothing," replied Mae, redder yet; "nothing at all.  What do you 
mean?"

The same thought occurred to Edith and Albert.  The officer was 
Mae's chance acquaintance.  They both looked grave, and Albert 
remarked:  "It is as well to be careful before getting up too 
sudden an acquaintance with your Italian girl.  Take care of your 
eyes."

"Has it come to this?" cried Mae, half jestingly, half bitterly.  
"Are nor my very eyes my own?  I shall feel, Albert, as if you were 
trying to bind me in that chain you threatened," and Mae started: 
her fingers had felt another scrap of paper among the flowers, but 
she did not drop it from the carriage, as her first impulse was; 
she held it tight and close in her warm right hand until she was 
fairly at home and safe in her own room.  Then she opened and read 
in an Italian hand, "To my little Queen of the Carnival."

Could he have written that as he stood by the wonderful veiled 
lady, with her white mysterious beauty, with the purple shadows 
about her dark eyes, while she--and Mae looked in her glass again.  
What did she see?  Certainly a different picture, but a picture for 
all that.  Life and color and youth, a-tremble and a-quiver in 
every quick movement of her face, in the sudden lifting of the 
eyelids, the swift turn of the lips, the litheness and carelessness 
of every motion; above and beyond all, the picture possessed that 
rare quality which some artist has declared to be the highest 
beauty, that picturesque charm which shines from within, that 
magnetic flash and quiver which comes and goes "ere one can say it 
lightens."

The veiled lady's face was stranger, more mysterious, to an 
artistic or an imaginative mind; but youth, and intense life, and 
endless variety usually carry the day with a man's captious heart, 
and so Bero called Mae


     "My little Queen of the Carnival."



CHAPTER VIII.


Mae's good times were greatly dimmed after this by the thought that 
she was watched.  The bouquets which came daily from Bero troubled 
her also not a little.  They were invariably formed of the same 
flowers, and might easily attract Edith's attention and possible 
suspicion.  So she stayed home from the Corso one day not long 
after, when she was in a particularly Corso-Carnival mood.  She 
wandered helplessly about, restless and full of desire to be down 
at the balcony with the rest.  And such a strange thing is the 
human heart, that it was Norman Mann's face she saw before her 
constantly, and she found Miss Rae's little twinkling sort of eyes 
far more haunting than those of her veiled friend.

The rich life in Mae's blood was surging in her veins and must be 
let off in some way.  If she had had her music and a piano she 
might have thrown her soul into some great flood-waves of harmony.  
The Farnesina frescoes of Cupid and Psyche over across the Tiber 
would have helped her, but here she was alone, and so she did what 
so many "fervent souls" do--scribbled her heart out in a colorful, 
barbarous rhyme.  Mae had ordinarily too good sense for this, too 
deep a reverence for that world of poetry, at the threshold of 
which one should bow the knee, and loose the shoe from his foot, 
and tread softly.  She didn't care for this to-day.  She plunged 
boldly in, wrote her verse, copied it, sent it to a Roman English 
paper, and heard from it again two days later, in the following 
way.

The entire party were breakfasting together, when Albert suddenly 
looked up from his paper and laughed.  "Look here," he cried.  
"Here is another of those dreadful imitators of the Pre-Raphaelite 
school.  Hear this from a so-called poem in the morning's journal:


     'The gorgeous brown reds
      Of the full-throated creatures of song.'"


"I don't see anything bad in that," said Eric, helping himself to 
another muffin.  "What is the matter with you?"

"Matter enough," returned Albert.  "Because their masters, 
sometimes, daub on colors with their full palettes and strong 
brushes, this feeble herd tag after them and flounder around in 
color and passion in a way that is sickening."

"Go on," shouted Eric, "he is our own brother, Mae, after all, you 
see.  Fancy my Lord Utilitarian turning to break a lance in defence 
of beauty.  Edith, you and the picture-galleries are to blame for 
this."

Mae had been paying great attention to her rolls and coffee, and 
very little apparently to the conversation, but she spoke eagerly 
now.  "Their masters do not daub.  They do hold palettes full of 
the strongest, richest colors, and dare lay them, in vivid flecks, 
on their canvas.  They do not care if they may offend some modern 
cultivated eyes, used only to the invisible blues and shadowy 
greens and that host of cold, lifeless, toneless grays, of refined 
conventional art.  They know well enough that their satisfying reds 
and browns and golds of rich, free nature will go to the beating 
hearts of some of us."

Mae had a way of dashing into conversation abruptly, and the Madden 
family had been brought up on argument and table-talk.  So the rest 
of the party ate their breakfast placidly enough.  "Mae's right," 
said Eric, a trifle grandly, "only, to change the figure of speech 
for one better fitted for the occasion, they may satiate, though 
they never starve you.  But they are wonderfully fine, sometimes.  
O, bother, I never can quote, but there is something about 'I will 
go back to the great sweet mother."'

"Or this," suggested Mae,


    "'And to me thou art matchless and fair
      As the tawny sweet twilight, with blended 
      Sunlight and red stars in her hair.'"


"I love my masters," continued this young enthusiast, "because they 
fling all rules aside, and cry out as they choose.  It is their 
very heart's blood and the lusty wine of life that they give you, 
not just a scrap of 'rosemary for remembrance' and a soothing herb-
tea made from the flowers of fancy they have culled from those much 
travestied, abominable fields of thought."

"And this from a lover of Wordsworth, who holds the 'Daffodils' and 
'Lucy' as her chief jewels, and quotes the 'Immortality' 
perpetually!" cried Eric.  "If any body ever wandered up and down 
those same fields of thought, by more intricate, labyrinthine 
passages and byways, I'd like to know of him.  Talk about soothing 
herbs, bless me, it's hot catnip-tea, good and strong, that he 
serves up in half of his strings about--"

"O, Eric, hush," cried Mae, "I am afraid for you with such words on 
your lips.  Think of Ananias."

"Before you children go wandering off on one of your poet fights," 
broke in Albert, "let me take you to task, Mae, for stealing; that 
lusty wine you talked of just now is in the poem (?) I hold in my 
hand."

"Do read it to us," said Edith, "and let us judge for ourselves."  
So Albert began:


ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY.


 "Far away the mountains rise, purpling and joyous, 
Through the half mist of the warm pulsing day, while nigh
  At hand gay birds hang swinging and floating 
And waving betwixt earth and sky,
  Ringing out from ripe throats
  A sensuous trickling of notes,
That fall through the trees,
Till caught by the soft-rocking breeze
    They are borne to the ears of the maiden.

  Her eyes wander after the sound,
And glimpses she catches along
  Through green broad-leaved shadows, 
Through sunbeams gold-strong,
Of the gorgeous brown reds of the full-throated creatures of song.
  One hand on her brown bosom rests,
Rising and falling with every heart-beat 
  Of the delicate, slow-swelling breasts.

  A lily, proud, all color of amber and wine,
  Waves peerless there, by right divine 
Queen o'er the moment and place.
  As the wind bends her coaxingly,
  Brushes softly the maiden's white hand-- 
That falls with an idle grace,
  Listlessly closed at her side-- 
  With a rippling touch, such as the tide,
Rising, leaves on a summer day,
On the quiet shore of some peaceful bay.

There she stands in the heavily-bladed grass, 
  Under the trumpet-vine,
Drinking long, deep, intoxicate draughts 
  Of Nature's lusty, live wine.
There he sees her as he approaches;
  Then pauses, as full on his ear
  There swells, on a sudden, loud and clear, 
    A wonderful burst of song.

  A mad delicious glory; a rainbow rhythm of life, 
  Strong and young and free, a burst of the senses all astrife,
    Each one fighting to be first,
  While above, beyond them all,
  Loud a woman's heart makes call."


"Now, fire ahead," said Eric, "get your stones ready.  Mrs. 
Jerrold, pray begin; let us put down this young parrot with her 
'lusty, live wine.'"

"Her?" exclaimed Edith.  "Him, you mean."

"Not a bit of it; a woman wrote that, didn't she?"

Eric was very confident.  Norman agreed with him, and he glanced at 
Mae to discover her opinion.  There was a look of secret amusement 
in her face, and a dim suspicion entered his mind, which decided 
him to watch her closely.

"Well," said Mrs. Jerrold, "I will be lenient.  You children may 
throw all the stones.  It is not poetry to my taste.  There's no 
metre to it, and I should certainly be sorry to think a woman wrote 
it."

"Why?" asked Mae, quickly, almost commandingly.  Norman glanced at 
her.  There was a tiny rosebud on each cheek.

"Because," replied Mrs. Jerrold, "it is too--too what, Edith?"

"Physical, perhaps," suggested Edith.

"It is a satyr-like sort of writing," suggested Norman.

"I should advise this person," said Edith--

"To keep still?" interrupted Eric.

"No, to go to work; that is what he or she needs."

"That is odd advice," said Mae; "suppose she--or he--is young, 
doesn't know what to do, is a traveler, like ourselves, for 
instance."

"There are plenty of benevolent schemes in Rome, I am sure," said 
Edith, a trifle sanctimoniously.

"And there's study," said Albert, "art or history.  Think what a 
chance for studying them one has here.  Yes, Edith is right--work 
or study, and a general shutting up of the fancy is what this mind 
needs."

"I disagree with you entirely," said Norman with energy.  "She 
needs play, relaxation, freedom."  Then he was sorry he had said 
it; Mae's eyes sparkled so.

"She needs," said Eric, pushing back his chair, "to be married.  
She is in love.  That's what's the matter.  Read those two last 
lines, Albert:


    'While above, beyond them all,
     Loud a woman's heart makes call.'


"Don't you see?"

"O, wise young man," laughed Edith.  But Mae arose.  The scarlet 
buds in her cheeks flamed into full-blown roses.  "There speaks the 
man," she cried passionately, "and pray doesn't a woman's heart 
ever call for anything but love--aren't life and liberty more than 
all the love in the world?  Oh!" and she stopped abruptly.

"Well, we have wasted more time than is worth while over this 
young, wild gosling," laughed Albert.  "Let us hope she will take 
our advice."

Mae shook her head involuntarily.  There was a smile on Norman 
Mann's lips.

"Here's health and happiness to the poor child at any rate," he 
said.

"He pities me," thought Mae, "and I hate him."  But then she didn't 
at all.

Mae wandered off to the kitchen, as usual, that day, for another of 
Lisetta's stories.  The Italian, with her glibness of tongue and 
ready fund of anecdote, was transformed in her imaginative mind 
into a veritable improvisatore.  Talila was not by any means the 
only heroine of the little tales.  Mae had made the acquaintance of 
many youths and maidens, and to-day Lisetta, after thinking over 
her list of important personages, chose the Madre Ilkana as the 
heroine of the occasion.  Mae had already heard one or two amusing 
incidents connected with this old mother.  "I am sure she has a 
cousin in America," she asserted to-day, before Lisetta began, "for 
I know her well.  She knits all the time, and is as bony as a ledge 
of rocks, and her eyes are as sharp as her knitting-needles, and 
her words are the sharpest of all.  Her name is Miss Mary Ann 
Rogers.  Is she like the Madre Ilkana?"

Lisetta shook her head.  "No, no, Signorina, La Madre is as plump 
and round as a loaf of bread, and as soft as the butter on it.  She 
has five double chins that she shakes all the while, but then she 
has stiff bristles, like a man's, growing on them, and her 
knitting-needles and her words are all sharp as la Signora Maria 
Anne R-o-o-g-eers, I doubt not.  But her eyes!  Why, Signorina, she 
has the evil eye!"  This Lisetta said in a whisper, while Giovanni 
shrugged his shoulders bravely, and little Roberto cuddled closer 
to Mae.

"Yes," continued Lisetta, "and so no one knows exactly about her 
eyes, not daring to look directly into them, but as nearly as I can 
make out they are black, and have a soft veil over them, so that 
you would think at first they were just about to cry, when 
suddenly, fires creep up and burn out the drops, and leave her hot 
and angry and scorching.

"She must be terrible," cried Mae, with a sudden shrinking.

"She IS terrible," replied Lisetta, "but then she is very clever.  
You will see if she is not clever when you hear the story I shall 
now tell you," and Lisetta laughed, and showed her own one double 
chin, with its two little round dimples.  Then she smoothed down 
her peasant apron, bade Giovanni leave off pinching Roberto, and 
commenced.

"The government hates the banditti," began Lisetta, wisely, "and 
indeed it should," and she looked gravely at Giovanni, "for they 
are very wild men, who live reckless bad lives, and steal, and are 
quite dreadful.  But we poor, we do not hate them as the government 
does, because they are good to us, and do not war with us, and 
sometimes those we love join them--a brother or a cousin, perhaps"--
and Lisetta's black eyes filled, and her lip quivered.  "As for 
the Madre, she loved them all, and said they were all relations.

"At this time of which I speak, the soldiers were chasing and 
hunting the banditti very hard, and they had been compelled to hide 
for their lives up among the mountains.  There they would have 
died, had it not been for the peasants, who supplied them with 
food.  Small parties of the bandits would come out for it.  There 
were two very powerful men of the banditti, who were skirmishing 
about in this way, not far from the Madre Ilkana's, when they saw 
two soldiers, in advance of their company, approaching them.  The 
banditti were not afraid for themselves, but they wanted to get 
back to their friends with the bread and meat, so instead of 
fighting, they fled to the Madre.  She took them in, and bade them 
be sure they were safe with her.  But the soldiers had caught sight 
of them, and they stopped at every house and enquired and searched 
for them; and so, soon they came to the Madre Ilkana's.  They 
charged her in the name of the government to give up the banditti 
in her house.  The Madre kept on with her knitting, and told them 
there were only her two sons in the house, and mothers never gave 
up their sons to any one.

"'Ha!' laughed one of the soldiers,' mothers must give up their 
children to King Death, and it is He who wants your bad boys.'  
Upon which, the Madre arose and cursed them.  Curses are common 
with us, Signorina, but not La Madre's curses.  She talked of their 
mothers to them, and of their sons, and of the Holy Virgin and 
child, and she cursed them in the name of all these, if they dared 
steal her children from her.  They should take them over her old 
dead body, she swore, though her knitting-needles and her eyes were 
her only weapons, and then she turned her eyes full upon them, with 
the evil spirit leering and laughing out of them, and the soldiers, 
one of whom was an officer, fell on their knees and shook like 
leaves, and prayed her to forgive them; saying that they were sure 
her boys were good sons, and no banditti.  And while they knelt 
crouching there, La Madre knocked on the floor and in rushed the 
banditti, armed with great knives.  They caught and bound the two 
soldiers, and took away their weapons, and jumped on their horses, 
and fled.

"La Madre took her knitting again, and sat down quietly by the side 
of the bound men, until a half hour later some twelve more soldiers 
cantered up.  As they rode by, all the people came to their 
doorways, and the soldiers stopped and asked if they had seen two 
horsemen.  Then La Madre gathered up her knitting and went quietly 
out into the crowd.  She made a low bow to the man with the biggest 
feather in his cap, and she told him her story.  'I have two sons,' 
she said, 'whom I love so well.'  Then she told how the soldiers 
mistook her sons for banditti, and tried to take them from her in 
her own house.  'Though I am old, I have a good life among my 
friends and neighbors here, and I fought a while in my own mind 
before I said to my sons: Go, my boys, your mother will die for 
you.  But I did it.  I bade them bind the soldiers and steal away.  
Then I sat guarding the men till you came.  You will find them safe 
in my little house there.  Now, take me to prison--kill me, but 
look in my eyes first, and then, whoever lays a hand on me, take La 
Madre Ilkana's curse.'

"And the people all swore that there were two snakes coiled up in 
La Madre's eyes then, and they hissed, and struck out with their 
fiery tongues, and the crowd fell on their knees, and the neighbors 
all set up a great shout of 'La Madre Ilkana,' so that they quite 
drowned the voice of the man with the big feather."

"Is that all?" asked Mae, as Lisetta paused.  "What did the 
soldiers do?"

"O, they hired a passing carriage to take the men whose horses were 
stolen back to Castellamare, and they all cantered off, without 
saying a word to La Madre, and when they had turned a corner of the 
road, she began to laugh.  O, how she laughed!  All the people 
laughed with her, and the children crowed and the dogs barked, for 
the rest of that whole day.

"And a neighbor who passed La Madre's at midnight, said she was 
laughing out loud then."



CHAPTER IX.


"Signorina."  Mae was passing down the long hall when she heard the 
whisper.  She turned and saw Lisetta, with shining eyes and pink 
cheeks, standing at her side.  Her pretty plump shoulders were only 
half covered, and the array of colors about her transformed her 
into a sort of personified rainbow.  This was Lisetta's Carnival 
attire, and very proud she was of it.

"Why, Lisetta, what do you want, and what makes you so happy?" 
called Mae.

"O, Signorina, the cousins are here,--and others,--all in mask.  
They fill Maria's rooms quite full.  It is very gay out there, and 
they all want to see you, Signorina.  I have told them how well you 
speak Italian and how you love Italy, and to-night, they say, you 
shall be one of us.  So come."  All this while Lisetta had been 
leading Mae swiftly down the corridor, until as she said these last 
words, she reached and pushed open the door.  A great shout of 
laughter greeted Mae's ear, and a pretty picture met her eyes--
gaily decked youths and maidens clapping their hands and chattering 
brightly, while the padrona was just entering the opposite doorway, 
bearing two flasks of native wine, and some glasses.

"'Tis genuine Orvieto," she called out, and this raised another 
shout.  Then she caught sight of Mae and bowed low towards her.  
"Here is the little foreign lady," she cried, and a dozen pairs of 
big black eyes were turned eagerly and warmly on Mae.  She bowed 
and smiled at them, and said in pleading tones, "O, pray do not 
call me the 'little foreign lady' now.  Play I am as good an 
Italian as my heart could wish I were."

This speech was received with new applause, and the padrona handed 
around the glasses saying:  "We must drink first to the health of 
our new Italian.  May she never leave us."

"Yes, yes," called Lisetta, lifting high her glass.  "Yes, yes," 
cried all, and Mae drank as heartily as any of them.  Then she 
shook her head and gazed very scornfully down on her dark, stylish 
clothes.  "I am not thoroughly Italian yet," she cried.  "Here, and 
here, and here," cried one and another, proffering bits of their 
own gay costumes, and in a moment Mae had received all sorts of 
tributes--a string of red beads from one, a long sash from another, 
a big-balled stiletto from a third, so that she was able from the 
gleanings to trim herself up into at least a grotesque and un-
American Carnival figure.  Then the Italians with their soft 
tongues began to flatter her.

"How lovely the Signorina would look in a contadina costume--the 
home costume," said Lisetta gravely.  "It is so beautiful, is it 
not?"  And then those two or three privileged ones, who had seen 
Lisetta's home, went into ecstasies over its many charms.  Lisetta, 
next to the Signorina, was the heroine of the occasion.  She was 
from a distance, was handsome and clever, and the padrona gave 
glowing accounts of her full purse, and two pretty donkeys, and 
house by the sea.

They had a very gay time.  Such singing, and then dancing and 
frolicking, and such a feline softness in all their gaiety.  None 
of the German or Saxon bullying, and barking and showing of teeth; 
in no wise a game of dogs, which always ends in a fight; but a 
truly kittenish play, with sharp claws safely tucked out of sight 
behind the very softest paws, and a rich, gentle curve of motion, 
inexpressibly witching to our little northern maiden, who was fast 
losing her head amid it all.  Mae did not reflect that felines are 
treacherous.  She only drew a quick, mental picture of the parlor 
on the other side of the hall, which she compared to this gay 
scene.  Mrs. Jerrold filling in dull row after row of her elaborate 
sofa cushion, which was bought in all its gorgeousness of floss 
fawn's head and bead eyes, Edith and Albert hard at work over their 
note books, or reading up for the sights of to-morrow, Mr.  Mann 
with his open book also, all quiet and studious.  Eric, alone, 
might be softly whistling, or writing an invitation to Miss Hopkins 
to climb up St. Peter's dome with him, or to visit the tomb of 
Cecilia Metella, or the Corso, as the case might be, while here--

As Mae reached this point in her musings, the Italians were forming 
for a dance, so she sprang up to join them.  Two or three peasants 
from the country south had wandered up with the world to Rome, for 
Carnival time, then for Lent.  They had brought with them their 
pipes and zitterns.  In the mornings they made short pilgrimages, 
playing in front of the shrines about the city, or roaming out on 
the campagna to some quiet church.  In the evening time they 
wandered up the stone stairways of the great houses, and paused on 
the landings before the different homes.  If all was still they 
passed on, but if there was noise, laughter, sound of voices, they 
laid aside their penitential manner, and struck into dance music, 
flashing their velvety eyes, and striking pretty attitudes, aided 
greatly by their Alpine hats and sheep-skins and scarlet-banded 
stockings.

Three of these peasants had appeared at the padrona's doorway, by a 
sort of magic.  They bowed and smiled, and commenced to play.  
Every one sprang up.  "Dance," cried they all, and flew for their 
partners.  Mae found herself in the midst of the crowd, and having 
the most willing and nimble of feet, she soon toned and coaxed the 
fashionable waltz on which she had started into accord with the 
more elastic footsteps of her companion.  There was something in 
the serpentine, winding and unwinding motion, the coaxingness of 
the steps, that was deliciously intoxicating to Mae.  The color 
came to her cheeks, the smile played around her lips, and when she 
paused to breathe, she found the Italians showing their white 
teeth, and clapping their brown hands in her honor, while the 
tallest musician gazed at her from the dark doorway, with the rapt 
reverence he gave to all things beautiful and thrilling.  She was a 
new song to him.

"The Signorina is the veriest Italian of us all," cried Lisetta.

"She honors our Italy," called Mae's last partner.

"Her feet are those of a chamois," said one from the north.

"Nay, she flies," replied another.

They all spoke in their earnest manner, and the praises, that fall 
in fulsome flattery in English, were delicate and stimulating as 
they slid in soft Italian from their full, red lips.  Mae tossed 
her head carelessly, but she sipped the praises and found them 
sweet.

"Now for the Tarantella," said the padrona, so Lisetta shook her 
tambourine wildly, and the very prettiest girl of them all, and a 
big, brown boy (happy fellow!) began that coquettish bit of 
witchery.  The pretty girl tripped around and around and wreathed 
her arms over her head, and the boy knelt appealingly and sprang up 
passionately again and again, until the clock struck ten, and the 
party broke up.  Mae shook hands with a new friend.  He was a 
stone-cutter, and was soon to be married, and he poured out all his 
plans and hopes into her sympathetic ears, and told of his pretty 
bride to be, and of her dowry.  Mae, in turn, sent her love to the 
happy bride, and took a charm from her watch-chain to go with it, a 
tiny silver boat, and she sent it with a hope that some day they 
might both sail over to America.  At which the bridegroom shook his 
head very decidedly, and kissed Mae's hand and bowed himself out.  
Then, after she had disrobed her of her borrowed plumes, all the 
others kissed her hand and bowed themselves out, and Roberto and 
Giovanni awaked, and got up from the corner, and stood on their 
heads and hallooed as loud as ever they pleased, and the evening 
was over, and Lisetta and the padrona and the boys and Mae were 
alone.

"Oh, oh, oh," cried Mae, "how perfectly perfect.  Do you always 
have such good times as this?"

"At home, yes," replied Lisetta, folding her hands and smiling.  
"We have many a play-day on the bay of Naples."  Then she roused 
herself:  "Good night, Signorina," she said, "keep your ears open."

Mae had barely reached her room when she appreciated Lisetta's last 
words.  She heard music in the street below.  She raised her 
window; Eric and Norman lifted the parlor window at the same 
moment, "Come in here," they cried.  So in she ran, took a place 
between them, and they silently listened to the maskers' serenade.  
The musicians sang at first the gayest of tunes, but suddenly, by 
some subtile impulse, they changed to quieter minor airs, and sang 
songs full of tears and passion and love and tenderness.  Then they 
silently turned to go.  Norman Mann touched Mae on the shoulder.  
He handed her a bunch of Carnival flowers.  They were Bero's, but 
she flung them unhesitatingly into the street, leaning far out to 
watch the singers catch them and separate them in the moonlight.  
They called out loud their thanks--their "Grazie, grazie," as sweet 
as any lily just broken from its stem--and as they turned to go Mae 
saw that each one was decked with a sprig from the bouquet, pulled 
through his button-hole or the riband of his hat.

Only the tallest musician, who walked somewhat apart, carried his 
flower tightly clasped in his hand, and now and again he raised it 
to his lips.  He probably dreamed over it that night, and played 
his dream out in a gentle, wistful, minor adoration before the 
Madonna at the Quattro Fontane the next morning.

O, the dreams and poems and songs without words that drop into our 
lives from the sudden flash of stranger eyes, or the accidental 
touch of an unknown hand, or the tender warmth of a swift smile!  
And if our eyes, our touch, our smiles may only have floated off in 
like manner--as dreams and poems and melody--to give added rhythm 
and harmony to other lives.

Mae drew a long sigh, one of those delightful, contented sighs, 
with a smile wrapped up in it.  "I am glad you are so happy," said 
Norman Mann, smiling down at her.  When Norman spoke like that Mae 
felt only, O, so very content.  She quite forgot all grudges 
against him; she would have liked just at that moment to have the 
world stand quite still.  This was very different from the ordinary 
Mae.  Usually she longed that it might go faster, and would put her 
pink and white ear quite close to the brown earth to hear if it 
were turning as swiftly as ever it could.  "I like it to hurry, 
hurry, hurry," said eager, restless Mae.  "I love to live quickly 
and see what's coming next."

But Mae was not in that mood to-night.  She leaned out of the 
window all untroubled.  If the sun could stand still off behind the 
world--as he is now--and the moon could stand still right before 
us--as she is now--and we could stay right here, we three.  Why, 
no, Eric has gone in and is walking up and down nervously.  Thus 
Mae thought, and was quiet.  "What are you thinking about?" asked 
Norman.  She told him naturally, with her eyes on his until she 
reached the words "and we."  Then her eyes fell, and she paused.

"Yes," replied Norman, "I have the same feeling," and there was a 
great deal more on the very tippest tip of his tongue.  But Mae 
turned her face from him slightly; the moon stole softly behind the 
flimsiest little cloud that any one could have seen through, and he 
paused, silly fellow.  These slight withdrawals, that should have 
urged him on, deceived him.  He stopped, and then he remembered 
Mae's past doings, her recklessness, her waywardness.  It was not 
time yet to speak what he had in his heart to say, and what 
quivered on his tongue.  So he only asked abruptly: "You will go 
with me to-morrow night for one of your gayest frolics, will you 
not?  We will go down on the Corso for all the Mocoletti fun.  I am 
very anxious to be in another of your good times."

"O, would you like it?" said Mae; "I am so glad.  I should delight 
in it.  It will be almost too good."  She stopped abruptly again, 
and gave him a quick, soft glance, just as the moon rode 
triumphantly out from behind the filmy, flimsy veil, and shone full 
down on her eyes and hair.  It fell on a bright, round, glistening 
ball, tucked in among some half curls behind her ear.  "What is 
that?" asked Norman.

"That"--Mae put up her hand and drew it out--"that is my stiletto.  
I forgot to give it back to Lisetta.  It is pretty, isn't it?"

Norman took the long needle from her hand and looked at it.  "It is 
not as pretty as the flowered stiletto.  Why didn't you get one of 
those?"

"Why, do you not know that those are not worn by free maidens?  
They are one of the added glories of a matron.  I like my round, 
smooth ball a great deal better.  It means liberty."  And she 
plunged the steel tremulously back into her hair.

"We had better go in now; this night air is bad for you."  The moon 
blazed scornfully down on Norman Mann as he said this.  She had had 
a wide experience, and had rarely seen such a stupid, cowardly 
fellow, so she thought.  Yet, after all, Norman only acted in self-
defense.  Here was a girl by his side who gloried, as it seemed to 
him, in her freedom, and that being so, he must get away as soon as 
possible from that window, that moon, and that little girl.

"Well, Norman," cried Eric, advancing eagerly as they turned from 
the window, "when do you really suppose it will come off?"

"Suppose what will come off?" inquired Mae.

"O, I forgot you were here.  Well, don't tell any one else.  Norman 
is to fight a duel."

"To fight a duel--and be killed?" gasped Mae.

"You have but a poor opinion of my powers," laughed Norman, 
"although the German looked a veteran duellist from his scars.  His 
face was fairly embroidered or fancy-worked with red lines.  A sort 
of hem in his nose, and tucks and seams all over his cheeks.  
Notice my knowledge in this line, Miss Mae.  You ought to be 
ashamed, Eric, to have spoken of it."

"Isn't it all a joke?" asked Mae, pushing her head out of the 
window again, to hide the sudden white terror in her face.  "I 
didn't suppose Americans fought duels when they were off 
pleasuring."  This sentence Mae meant to pass as a gay, light, easy 
speech, to prove that Norman Mann and a duel were not such a very 
dreadful combination to her feminine mind.

"NO, it is no joke, but dead earnest," replied Eric.  "I am to be 
his second, and you must keep it a great secret, Mae, till it is 
all over."

"All over!"--a sudden vision of Norman lying white and motionless 
with a deep wound across his soft, brown temple.  Mae closed her 
eyes.  "I suppose I might as well tell you about it," said Norman, 
"now that this stupid Eric has let out about the affair, although 
it may never come to anything.  I was dining to-night at a little 
restaurant on the Felice, a quiet, homelike place, which a good 
many artists, and especially women, frequent.  There is a queer, 
crazy little American, who thinks herself a painter, and is a 
harmless lunatic, who is a regular guest at this restaurant.  
Everybody smiles at her absurdities, but is ready enough to be kind 
to the poor old creature.  To-night, however, I was hardly seated 
when in came a party of Germans, all in mask and Carnival costume.  
One of them was arrayed in exact imitation of this old lady.  He 
had on a peaked bonnet and long, black gloves, with dangling 
fingers, such as she invariably wears.  These he waved around 
mockingly and seating himself opposite her, he followed her every 
motion.  The ladies at the same table rose and went away.  Then up 
gets this big ruffian and sits down on the edge of the old lady's 
chair.  I could stand it no longer, but jumping in front of him, 
showered down all the heavy talk I knew in German, Italian and 
French, subsiding at last into my mother tongue, with her 
appropriate epithets.  Having sense enough left to know that he 
could not reap the full benefit of English, I pulled out my card, 
wrote my address on it, and threw it on the table, and I rather 
think that was understood.  There's no country that I have heard of 
where men don't know what "we'll fight this out, means."  Norman 
was striding up and down the room now almost as restlessly as Eric 
had done, but he seated himself again as Mae asked for the rest.

"The rest is very simple, Miss Mae--mere business.  I turned to go 
away, and one of his friends approached me to ask for the name of 
my second.  I gave Eric's here.  He bowed and said:  'He shall hear 
from me this evening, and I came home.  The evening has advanced to 
midnight, but not a word yet.  No, it is not quite eleven, I see."

"You'll have the choice of weapons if they challenge you," said 
Eric; "you'll take pistols, I suppose?  Just think of my living to 
really assist in a 'pistols-and-coffee-for-two' affair!"

"I daresay it will be coffee for two, served separately, and with 
no thought of pistols.  I don't really believe it will come to 
anything.  There are ways of getting out of it," said Norman, 
lighting a cigarette.

"Will you refuse to fight?" asked Mae, and her heart, which had 
been white with fear for Norman the second before, flashed now with 
quick, red scorn.  Even the Huguenot maiden would, after all, have 
despised her lover if he had quietly allowed her to tie the white 
handkerchief to his arm.  Believe it, she loved him far, far better 
as she clung to him, pressed closely to his warm, living heart, 
because she realized in an agony that his honor was strong enough 
to burst even the tender bonds of her dear love, and that he would 
break from her round arms to rush into that ghostly, ghastly death-
embrace on the morrow, at the dreadful knell of St. Bartholomew 
bells.

Suppose he had yielded.  Suppose we saw him in the picture standing 
quietly, unresistingly, as her soft fingers bound the white badge, 
that meant protection and life, to his arm.  Would not she, as well 
as he, have known that it was a badge of cowardice, and that he 
wore a heart as white?

And afterwards, would she have loved the living man, breathing in 
air heavy with the hearts' life of his brothers and friends, as she 
worshiped the dead man, whose cold body rested forever down deep in 
mother earth's brown, soft bosom, but whose very life of life 
swelled the great throng of heroes and martyrs who have closed 
their own eyes upon life's pictures, that those pictures might 
shine clearer and brighter to other eyes?

If the man had yielded, and the picture showed him thus, would we 
see the Huguenot lovers adorning half the houses of the land?  Most 
often they are found in that particular corner of the home 
belonging to some maiden--that sacred room of her own, where she 
prays her prayers, and lives her most secret life.  I have often 
wondered at the many girls who hang that especial picture over 
their fire-places.  It must be a case of unconscious ideality.  
They realize that love must be so subject to honor that heart-
strings would break for the sake of that honor, if need be, even 
though the harmonious love-song of two hearts is hushed; and what 
is the love-song of any two beings compared to a life-song of honor 
for the world--those wonderful life-songs that we all know?  One of 
them sings itself so loudly to me now, over ages of romance and 
history, that I must let my simple story wait and give way to it 
for a minute.

There was a man who lived once.  If God did not create him, Homer 
did.  The Oracle told him that the first man who put foot on the 
Trojan shores would die.  He knew this before he started on his 
voyage for Greece.  He left a wife and home behind him, whom he 
dearly loved.  I wonder if he used to pace the deck of the rich 
barge, and listen to the men chatting around him, and smile as they 
planned of returning, proud and victorious, to their homes and 
their wives.

All the while under his smile he knew he was to die, not in the 
glory of fight, although his sword swung sharp and bright at his 
side, in any thrilling fashion, to be sung of and wept of by his 
fellows.

All the while the heavy barge sailed on, and at last land came in 
sight.  I wonder if his heart was full when he saw it?  Did he 
remember his wife and his home?  Did he feel his life strong within 
him, and eager as a battle-horse, as he neared the land where wars 
were to be fought, and glories won?

All the while his heart was firm.  He stood the very foremost of 
them all, as they drifted quite in to the green, green shore.  
Around him men talked and laughed, and the sun shone.  He may have 
laid his hand commandingly on some youthful shoulders and pushed 
back the eager boy who longed to bound first into this new world.  
He may have saved him thus from death for life.  We do not know.

All we do know is, that with his own brave feet he marched ahead of 
them all, solemnly, smilingly, with the oracle in his heart.  From 
the vessel to the green, green shore--such a little step.  He leaps 
from the Grecian barge to the Trojan land, alive.  Does he turn to 
look at his comrades and off eastwards, beyond homewards, with a 
great thrill before he falls dead?  We do not know.

All we do know is, that WE thrill now as we see him leaping to his 
death, even over this gap of ages, through these shadows of 
unreality.

We have left Mae flashing scorn at Norman for a long while, a much 
longer while than she really needed for her flash, for Norman's 
angry start, violent exclamation, and indignant glance convinced 
her of her mistake before he answered her.

"I refuse to fight--I--Great--I beg your pardon, Miss Mae, but of 
course I'll fight.  I only hope the fellow isn't such a craven as 
to let it blow over.  However, I strongly suspect policy and his 
friends will keep him from it.  For my part, I would like to break 
my lance for the poor woman.  Any good blow struck for the fair 
thing, helps old Mother earth a bit, I suppose."

"That's your idea of life?" queried Eric, rather gravely.  "My 
efforts are all to push Eric Madden on his way a bit."

"And I haven't any idea; I just live," said Mae, "like a black and 
tan dog.  I wish I were one.  Then the only disagreeable part of 
me, my conscience, would be out of the way.  But what has all this 
to do with the duel?"  "That has something to do with it, I fancy," 
said Eric, rising and leaving the room hastily, as the bell rang.  
"No, stay where you are.  I'll receive him in the little salon."  
Mae rose and walked to the fireside, and looked down on the two 
small logs of wet wood that sizzled on the fire-dogs.  The faint, 
red flame that flickered around them, looked sullen and revengeful, 
she thought, as she watched the feeble blaze intently.  It seemed 
hours since Eric had left the room.  What was Norman thinking?  
What was the stranger saying out in the little salon?  No, no, she 
would not think thus.  She would repeat something to quiet herself-
-poetry--what should it be?  Ah, here is Eric.

It was Eric.  His face was flushed.  His lip curled.  "Coward! 
craven!" he exclaimed, "Coward, craven."

"Well, tell us about it," said Norman, coolly, but a wave of color 
rushed over his face.

"O, palaver and stuff.  Somebody's dreadfully ill--dying, I 
believe, and that somebody is wife, or mother, or son to this brute 
you challenged.  He's got to go, the coward.  If you are ever in 
his vicinity again, and send him your card, he will understand it 
and meet you at such place and with such weapons as you prefer.  
Bah--too thin!" and Eric concluded with this emphatic statement.

Mae leaned her head against her two clasped hands which rested on 
the mantel-piece.  How strangely everything looked; even the dim 
fire had a sort of aureole about it, as her eyes rested there 
again; but when one looks through tears, all things are haloed 
mistily.  Norman turned and looked at Mae, as Eric walked 
impatiently about.  She did not move or speak.  He walked to her 
side, and stood looking down at her.  The faint mist in her left 
eye was forming into a bright, clear globe as large as any April 
raindrop.  Mae knew this, and knew it would fall, unless she put up 
her hand and brushed it away, and that would be worse.  The color 
rose to her cheeks as she waited the dreadful moment.  She was 
perfectly still, her hands clasped before her, her head bent, as 
the crystal drop gathered all the mist and halo in its full, round 
embrace, and pattered down upon the third finger of her left hand--
her wedding-ring finger--and lay there, clear and sparkling as a 
diamond!

Norman Mann stooped and laid his hand over it.  "You are glad, 
then!"  "I should be sorry to have you die," said Mae, but her 
dimples and blushes and drooping eye-lids said, oh, a great deal 
more.  "Good night," she fluttered, and ran off.



CHAPTER X.


Mae dreamed happy dreams that night, and awoke with a smile on her 
lips.  She dressed with the greatest care, put a touch of the color 
Norman liked at her throat, and fastened a charm he had given her 
to her bracelet.  Still, she loitered on her way to the breakfast-
room, and when she seated herself at the table, a sudden 
embarrassment made her keep her eyes on her plate, or talk to Eric, 
or Edith, or any one but Norman.  Yet she was perfectly conscious 
of his every word and motion.  She knew he only took two cups of 
coffee instead of three, and that he helped her to mandarins--a 
fruit of which she was very fond--five times, so that she had a 
plate heaping with golden untouched balls before her.  After 
breakfast, she felt a great desire to run away, so she asked Eric 
to take her to the Capitol, and leave her there for a time.  "I 
want to see something solid this morning, that has lasted a long 
while, and the marbles will do me good."

Yes, Eric would take her at once.  Would she go and get her hat?  
She went for it, and scolded herself all the time for running away 
when she wanted to stay home.  Yet, after all, who dares put out 
one's hand to grasp the moon when at last it approaches?  No woman, 
at any rate.

There was a malicious sort of teasing pleasure in running away from 
Norman, mingled with a shrinking modesty; and, besides, he knew the 
way to the Capitol, if he chose to follow, and knew she was to be 
there alone.  So, on the whole, Mae went off with a blissful heart.

As she sat down in that celebrated room, immortalized by the 
Gladiator, the Faun and the Antinous, scales seemed to fall from 
her eyes and a weight from her heart.  Life meant something more 
than the mere play she delighted in, or the labor she despised.  
She took it in in this way.  She realized, first of all, the 
enduringness of the marbles.  They had stood, they will stand, for 
thousands of years.  What have stood?  What will stand?  Idle 
blocks of stone, without form or meaning, or simply three beautiful 
shapes?  No; three souls, thinks Mae, three real people, and she 
looks at the abiding faun, freedom and joy of the Satyr, the 
continual sentimental sadness of the Antinous, and the perpetual 
brave death-struggle of the Gladiator.  They are living on now, and 
touching our hearts.  Their mute lips open other eloquent mouths to 
speak for them.  Hawthorne and Byron tell us what the Faun's soul, 
what the Gladiator's soul, look from the white marbles to us, and 
the world daily repeats the story the Antinous whispers in his 
bent, beautiful head, the vanitas vanitatum that our own hearts 
whisper, when we drop earnest life for voluptuous pleasures.

The Faun may smile, although life is only one long play-day in 
green fields and woods, because he is a Faun.  The man must sigh, 
when he has drained his wine-cups and laughed his heartiest laugh, 
and wakes to another morning, because he is a man.  The cry of 
humanity echoes in our souls.  We cannot stifle it; we may hush it, 
and follow our idle joys, but the day comes when we bend our head 
with Antinous and Solomon and the rest of them, and sigh out our 
vanitas, vanitas also, in the great weary chorus.

No need, alas! for a Hawthorne, or Byron, or even a Shakspeare to 
interpret what the Antinous says for us.  Our own hearts do it.

Mae caught the spirit of all this, as her eyes roamed out of the 
window on the Sabine hills, where woods and springs sang.  She saw 
the aqueducts bounding, even in their ruin, arch after arch, to the 
treasure house of the waters.  "They never can reach it, now," 
thinks she, "never.  Suppose they cannot, is not the spirit the 
same?"  And now Mae is ready for the sudden light that dawns on her 
soul.  She springs to her feet.  She is alone in the room with the 
marble men; and they are quiet; even the Gladiator bites back his 
last groan once more.

"The Eternal City," shouts Mae; "I know what it means at last.  Oh! 
Rome, Rome, I love you!" and she rests her hand on the windowsill, 
and looks out on Rome.  "Why, it is like a resurrection morn.  
Ruins?  Yes, it is all ruins, dry bones, and great dead in dust; 
but there is something more.  I only saw that graveyard part of it 
before; now, the spirit of the great men, and great deeds, and 
words, and thoughts, and prayers," cries Mae, exultantly.  "Why, 
they are here; not dead, like the rest, but alive, all around us.  
Oh! Rome, Rome, forgive me!"

Now, this might have seemed absurd to the custode, or some other 
people, if they had put their head in at the door just then.  But 
they didn't; and, really, it was not absurd.  I cannot believe that 
this small Mae Madden is the only being who has had a swift, 
brilliant awakening from the first surface, depressing thoughts of 
Rome--an awakening to the living spirits which float proudly over 
their vacant shells that lie below the old pavements.  Once you do 
feel the strong, rich Roman life about you, the decay, the ruin 
float off on the dust of the ages, before the glorified breath of 
proud matrons and stately warriors, who step over the centuries to 
walk by your side.  And the centuries have improved them,--have 
left their grandeur, and nobility, and bravery, and civilized them 
a bit.  They form into pageants for you, and fill the baths and the 
palaces, but never crowd the Coliseum for the dreadful contests, 
unless, maybe, for an occasional bull-fight--some great, horrid, 
big bull which would be killed at market to-morrow at any rate--and 
even that is as you please.  It is wonderful, truly, once we 
discern the spirits around us, to notice what a miraculous place 
Rome is; how the intervening years of purgatorial flames have 
turned old Nero himself into a fairly benevolent, soft old 
gentleman, even though his estates have crumbled to such an extent 
that he may put his golden palace into the head of his cane, which 
he always carries now, since his chariots have gone away.  Where 
are they?  Caligula has even made it up with his mother-in-law, and 
you reflect with joy on that fact, as the two flit by your mind's 
eye, hand in hand.  All this nonsense is for those of us who HAVE 
awakenings.  The rest of "our party" may sit at Spillman's and eat 
coffee-cakes and sip Lachrymae Christi, while we walk alone through 
the Coliseum, with the crowd of old heathen.  They stop, every one, 
at the iron cross in the middle, reared over their carnage and mad 
mirth, and press their lips to it now.  The centuries have done 
that.  We only, alas! stand gazing mournfully, doubtingly.  "Will 
you have another coffee-cake?" says some one, and we remember that 
we are at Spillman's also.  And, indeed, we might be more sensible 
to stay with our party always; eat cakes, drink wine, laugh at the 
old world, vaunt the new, read Baedeker and the Bible, say our 
orthodox Protestant prayers, with a special "Lead us not into 
Romanism" codicil, and go to bed, and dream of our own golden 
houses, Paris dresses, and fat letters of credit.

At any rate, Mae Madden was electrified by a great sudden sweep of 
love, a surging rush of reverence for Rome, and makes no doubt in 
her own mind, to this day, that the Faun laughed with her in her 
joy.  In this exalted frame of mind, she wandered down through the 
long halls.  She was passing from the room of the Caesars when she 
heard Norman's voice.  So he had come for her with Eric.  She had 
half fancied he would.  She paused to listen.  It was a ringing 
elastic voice, in no wise lagging in speech, with a certain 
measurement in its tones, as if he weighed his words and thoughts, 
and gave them out generously, pound for pound, a fair measure which 
our grandmother's recipes approved.  Mae smiled to herself.  "He 
has loved Rome always.  He caught the spirit of it long ago.  He 
will be glad to know I have found it also.  I wish"--and Mae sighed 
a scrap of a sigh, and looked down at the toe of her boot, with 
which she drew little semi-circles before her.

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.

"Why, Mae, what is the matter with you?  You seem to doubt every 
one and everything.  You know Norman is truth itself."  "Is he?" 
asked Mae, indifferently.

"I've seen for a long time," continued Eric, "that you two were not 
the friends you once were, but I don't understand this open 
dislike.  Doesn't it spoil your pleasure?  You don't seem to have 
the real old-fashioned good times, my little girl," and Eric pulled 
his clumsy dear hand through a twist of the brown hair caressingly.

"O, Eric," cried Mae, "that is like old times again," and a tear 
splattered down into the big hand.  "What, crying, Mae?"  "No, 
dear--that is, yes.  I believe I am a little bit homesick.  I wish 
I could go back behind my teens again.  Do you remember the summer 
that I was twelve--that summer up by the lake?  I wish you and I 
could paddle around in one of the old flat-bottomed tubs once more, 
don't you, Eric?  We'd go for lilies and fish for minnows--that is, 
we'd fish for perch and catch the minnows--and talk about when you 
should go to college and pull in the race, and I should wear a long 
dress and learn all the college tunes to sing with you and your 
Yale friends.  Do you remember, Eric?  And now, O dear me, you lost 
your race, and I hate my long gowns.  O--my--dear--brother--do you 
like it all as well as you thought you would?"

"Why, Mae, you poor little tot, you're sentimental--for you.  Yes, 
I like the future as well as I always did.  I never gave much for 
the present, at any rate."

"But I did, Eric; I always did, till just now, and now I hate it, 
and I'm afraid of the future, and I'd like to grow backwards, and 
instead, in a month, I'll have another birth-day, and go into those 
dreadful twenties."  Then Mae was quiet a moment.  "Eric, I was 
sentimental," she said, after a pause.  "Really, I do like the 
future very much.  I quite forgot how much for the moment."

"You're a strange child, indeed," replied Eric, the puzzled.  "Your 
words are like lightning.  I had just got melted down and ready to 
reply to your reminiscences by lots of others, and here you are all 
jolly and matter-of-fact again.  I was growing so dreadfully 
unselfish that I should have insisted on staying home with you this 
evening to cheer you up a bit."

"And give up the mocoletti!  Why, Eric!  I shouldn't have known how 
to take such an offer.  No, no, trot off and array yourself, and 
you may come back and say good-bye."

"I must say good-bye now, dear, for I dine at the Costanzi with the 
girls and their aunt."

"Now, just now, Eric?"

"Why yes, Mae.  You are getting blue again, aren't you?  Getting 
ready for Ash Wednesday to-morrow?"

"Oh, no, no, dear.  Kiss me, Eric, again.  You're a good, dear boy.  
No; I didn't cry that drop at all.  Good-bye; and to-morrow is Ash 
Wednesday.  But we don't sorrow or fast in Paradise, I suppose."



CHAPTER XI.


The Corso was all ablaze.  The whole world was there.  Under a 
balcony stood a party of peasants.  Of this group, two were 
somewhat aside.  One of these was tall, dark, a fair type of 
Southern Italian; the other small, agile and graceful, dressed in a 
fresh contadina costume, with her brown hair braided down her 
shoulders.  She seemed excited, and as the crowd pressed nearer she 
would draw back half-fearfully.  "Lisetta," she whispered, "I am 
spoiling your good time.  Talk to your friends; never mind me.  I 
will follow by your side, and soon I shall catch the spirit of it 
all, too."  Saying this, she stepped from under the balcony, held 
out her feeble little taper and joined in the cries around her, 
pausing to blow at any lowered bit of wax that came in her way.  It 
was maddening sport; her light was extinguished again and again, 
but she would plead to have it relit, and there was sure to be some 
tender-hearted, kindly knight at hand to help her.

She ran on quickly, fearlessly, gliding and creeping and sliding 
through the crowd, her hair flying, her eyes dancing.  Even in the 
dense throng many turned to look at her, and one tall man started 
suddenly from the shadow of a side street, where he had been 
standing motionless, and threw himself before the girl.  He put out 
his arm, grasped her tightly, and drew her a few feet into the 
shadow.  "Signorina!" he said.  "Hush, hush," she whispered then in 
colder tones.  "Let me go, Signor; you are mistaken.  You, do not 
know me.  He smiled quietly, holding her hands clasped in his.  "I 
do not know you, Signorina?  You do not know me.  Your face is the 
picture always before my eyes."

"Yes, yes, forgive me," she fluttered, "I was startled, and indeed 
I am no Signorina now, but one of your own country peasants.  I am 
with Lisetta.  Why, where is Lisetta?"

Where, indeed, was she?  There were hundreds of contadine in the 
great crowd surging by, but no Lisetta.  The little peasant wrung 
her hands quite free from the man's grasp.  "I must go home," she 
said.  "I don't want any more Carnival."

"No, no," said the officer, quietly, reassuringly.  "Get cool.  
Tell me how Lisetta looks and is dressed, and if we can not find 
her here, I will take you up to your friend's balcony."

"O, no, not there.  Anywhere else, but not there."

"Why not?" asked Bero.

"Because, because,--yes, I will tell you," said Mae, remembering 
her wrongs, and suddenly moved by the sympathy and softness of the 
great eyes above her,--"because they think I am home ill, and here 
I am, you see," and she laughed a little hurriedly,--"besides, I go 
away with Lisetta to-morrow morning,--hush, let no one hear,--to 
Sorrento.  You must never, never tell.  How do I look?  Will I make 
a good peasant, when once the dear sun has browned my hands and 
forehead, and I have grown Italianized?"  And she lifted her face, 
into which the saucy gaiety had returned, up to him temptingly.

His warm blood was kindled.  "You are a little child of the sun-god 
now," he exclaimed, passionately.  "May I share some of your days 
in heaven?  I am ordered to Naples tomorrow night; shall be only 
twelve hours behind you.  May I come on the day after to see you in 
your new home?"

"O, how delightful!  But, perhaps, my lord, our little cottage by 
the sea isn't grand enough for your spurs and buttons and glory.  
We are simple folks you know,--peasants all,--but our hearts, 
Signor, they are hospitable, and such as we have we will gladly 
give you.  What do you say to the bay of Naples, and oranges for 
our luncheon day after tomorrow?"  And Mae laughed lightly and 
joyously.  Her little burnt taper fell to the ground, and she 
clasped her hands together.  "What a happy thing life will be!"

"Will you live there and be a peasant forever?" asked Bero, leaning 
forward.  "There are villas by the sea, too, Signorina."

Mae didn't hear these last words.  Her heart had stood still on 
that "forever."  Live there forever, forever, and never see her 
mother or Eric, or,--or any one again!  "I hadn't thought of that," 
she said, "I hadn't thought of that."  She stood still with her 
hands clasped, thinking.  The officer at her side, looking down at 
her, was thinking also.  He was fighting a slight mental struggle, 
a sort of combat he was quite unused to.  Should he let the child 
go on in this wild freak?  He knew the cottage by the sea; the 
peasant home would be dreadful to her.  He knew that by that same 
day after to-morrow, life in lower Italy, with the dirty, coarse 
people about her would be a burden.  Yet he hesitated.  He fought 
the battle in this way: Should he not stand a better chance if he 
let her go?  He had his leave of absence for three weeks (this was 
true; "ordered to Naples," he had called it to Mae).  Three weeks 
away from his world, near this winsome, strange, magnetic little 
being, with the bay of Naples, and moonlight, and his own glories 
and her loveliness!  He couldn't give up this chance.  No, no.  He 
would surely see her in a few hours after her troubles began, and 
comfort her.  So he only smiled quietly down at her again, as she 
stood troubled by his side, and said: "Lisetta will seek you near 
your balcony if she knows where it is.  Don't be troubled."

"But where is my balcony?" asked Mae.

"Come here," said Bero, leading her slightly forward.  She looked 
up and saw the quiet side-window, where day after day the officer 
had flung her the sweet flowers when no one was looking.  "I know 
this place very well," he said meaningly.  Mae smiled a little 
cheerfully.  "You have beautiful taste," she replied, "I have never 
seen such exquisite bouquets before."

Bero stroked his moustaches complacently.  "You honor me, 
Signorina.  I hope you may receive many, many more beautiful 
flowers--from the same hand."  He whispered these last words, and 
Mae turned her head half uneasily.  She looked up at the balcony.  
How odd it was that there, but a few feet away, were Mrs. Jerrold, 
Edith, and Albert.  She fancied she could detect their voices, 
though she could not see them.  The Hopkins-Rae window was vacated.  
"The girls" were probably down on the Corso with Eric and Norman, 
and Mae drew a little nearer to Bero, and looked up half 
appealingly.  His eyes were fixed strangely on something or some 
one across the street.  Mae followed their gaze, and saw upon the 
opposite balcony the beautiful veiled lady.  She held in her hand a 
long rod tipped with a blazing taper.

"O, she is like a vestal virgin with her light, or a queen with a 
sceptre," cried Mae exultingly.

"She may be the vestal virgin, but the queen is by my side," said 
Bero earnestly.

Mae wished he would not talk in this way, and she tried to laugh it 
off.  "I have no sceptre or crown; I'm but a poor queen in my 
common garb."

"We'll have the coronation day after to-morrow," replied Bero, very 
earnestly still.

"Tell me about her," and Mae nodded her head toward the strange 
lady.  "There is little to tell," said Bero, in a quiet tone.  "Her 
brother is well known in Rome as an artist.  He lives there with 
his sister and an old duenna.  She wears this mysterious veil 
constantly, and some fanciful people see just as mysterious a cloud 
resting about her life.  I only know she is strange and beautiful, 
and that her name is Lillia."

Yet Bero had seen this woman almost daily for six months.  But he 
only knew she was strange and beautiful, and that her name was 
Lillia.

Mae had never spoken to the veiled stranger, yet if Bero had turned 
upon her and asked, "Who is she?" she would have replied: "I do not 
know her name or where she lives, but I know she struggles, and 
despairs, and smiles over all.  And I know her suffering comes from 
sorrow--not from sin."  But Mae did not say all this.  She only 
looked at the veiled lady.  Her vestal lamp had dropped for the 
moment, and she seemed to be gazing far away.  A fold of her heavy 
veil fell over her brow quite down to her great dark eyes.  They 
were unshaded, yet they too, seemed clouded for the moment.  "Her 
name is Lillia," said Mae, reassuringly to herself.  "Her name is 
Lillia.  I am sure she is like her name."  Bero smiled.  Just then 
Lisetta appeared.



CHAPTER XII.


Early the next morning, in the misty light, Lisetta and Mae, the 
latter still in her contadina costume, left the house quietly.  In 
an hour the train for Naples was to start, but Lisetta wanted to 
say her prayers in Rome on this Ash Wednesday.  They wandered into 
a little church, one of the many Roman churches, and knelt side by 
side, Lisetta with her beads and her penance, and Mae with her 
thoughts, which grew dreary enough before the peasant was ready to 
go.  Mae had already entrusted her money to Lisetta's keeping--some 
one hundred and fifty dollars, which she had gotten the day before 
from Albert to buy clothes with--and with her money she had also 
resigned all care.  She did not know therefore, until the train 
started, that their seats were in a third-class carriage.  Every 
one was hurrying on board, so Mae was obliged to jump in without a 
word, and accept her fate as best she could.  It was no very 
pleasant fate.  The van was dirty, crowded, garlic-scented.  Mae 
was plucky, however, and knew she was to find dirt and dreadful 
odors everywhere.  Two months of Rome had taught her that.  But it 
grew very dreadful in the close travelling-carriage.  There was an 
old woman at her side, with a deformed hand, and two soldiers 
opposite, who stared rudely at her, and made loud, unpleasant 
remarks; and having no books, and nothing to entertain herself 
with, she was forced to curl up in a corner, and try to sleep, 
which she could not do.

Poor child! it was a hard day.  Dull and dreary outside, and 
within, the sickening odors and people.  Back in Rome, what were 
they doing?  Had they found out that she had gone?  And Eric, how 
was he feeling?  No, no, she must not think of all this.  It 
belonged to the past.  Before her lay Sorrento, the bay of Naples, 
oranges, white clouds, and the children of the sun.  Mamma was 
south, too--if she were only going to her.  So the day dragged on, 
until with the evening they reached Naples.  They spent the night 
with a friend of Lisetta, who rented apartments to English and 
Americans.  Mae was fortunate, therefore, in securing an unlet 
bedroom that was comfortably furnished.  She enjoyed listening to 
Lisetta's stories of Rome and the Carnival; and after a quiet night 
in a clean bed, awoke tolerably happy and very eager for her first 
sight of the bay.  They took an early train out to Castellamare, 
and as they left the city, Mae wondered if Bero were just entering 
it.  But she soon forgot him and every one in the blue glories of 
the bay.

At Castellamare, Gaetano, Lisetta's husband, was awaiting them, 
with a malicious little donkey, tricked out gaily enough in tags of 
color and tinkling bells.  It was very quaint and delightful to get 
into the funny, low, rattling cart, and go jogging off, while the 
feminine sight-seers fanned themselves in the windows of the 
ladies' waiting-room, and grumbled, and the poor masculine 
travellers bartered in poor Italian, with their certain-to-conquer 
enemies, those triumphant swindlers, the drivers of the conveyances 
between Sorrento and Castellamare.

Then they began that wonderful ride along the coast.  The horrors 
of the day before rolled away like a mist as the donkey jogged 
along that miraculous drive.  Lisetta and Gaetano chattered 
together, and Mae sat very still, with her face to the sea, 
drinking in all the glory, as she had longed and planned.  Hope 
revived in her breast, pride had stood by her all the while, and 
here was glorious nature coming to her aid.  She was going swiftly 
to the orange groves and the children of the sun.  She should see 
Talila and brown babies and dancing, and at night a great, yellow 
moon would light up the whole scene.  So on and on they went, the 
travelling carriages dashing by them now and then, with their three 
donkeys abreast, and the driver cracking his whip, and the 
travellers oh-ing and ah-ing.

"That is the most picturesque peasant I have yet seen," said a 
gentle lady in brown to her husband, as they passed the humble 
little party.  "Yes, she is clean, and more like the ideal than the 
actual peasant, and I am very glad I have seen her."

Really, Mae was for the moment, at a quick glance, the ideal 
peasant.  Her hands lay in her lap, her face was toward the sea, 
and her attitude and features were all full of that glow of 
existence that peasant portraits possess.  She lived and moved and 
had her being as part of a great, warm, live picture.  If the lady 
in brown had not passed so quickly, however, she would have seen a 
something in Mae's face that spoiled her for a peasant, an 
earnestness in her admiration, a sharp intensity in her joy, that 
was very different from the languid content of a Southern Italian.  
Her movements were rather like those of the Northern squirrel, 
which climbs nimbly and frisks briskly, than like the sinuous, 
serpentine motions of the Southern creatures of the soil.  We are, 
after all, born where we belong, as a rule, and the rest of us soon 
belong where we are born.

After a time the donkey pattered along towards a little patch of 
houses on the shore.  They had already passed a half dozen of 
similar settlements.  Very dirty children ran about crying, ugly, 
old women knitted, mongrel dogs and cats barked and yelped and 
rolled in the mud.  Bits of orange-peel and old cabbage and other 
refuse food lay piled near the doors.  There were, to be sure, 
young girls with dark eyes, plaiting straw, and the very dirt heaps 
had a picturesque sort of air.  An artist might linger a moment to 
look, but never to enter.  Yet it was here that Mae must enter.  
This was her new home.  The neighbors came crowding about 
curiously, and she was hurried into the little hut that seemed as 
if it were carved roughly from some big garlic, probably by taking 
out the heart of it for dinner.  Mae hardly comprehended the 
situation at first, but when she began to realize that this was a 
substitute for sea breeze, and that the coarse clipped patois 
(which sounded worse in the mass than when it fell from Lisetta's 
lips alone) was in place of the flowing melody of speech she had 
longed for, she grew sick at heart.  The folly, the dreadfulness of 
what she had done, swept over her like a flood, and with it came 
dreadful fear.  She was helpless,--an outcast.  Pride would never 
let her go home.  She could go nowhere else.  They had her money, 
and here she must live and die.  She sat down in a sort of stupor, 
and paid no heed to the squabbling children who pulled at her gown, 
or the dogs who sniffed snappingly at the stranger.

Lisetta, busy with greetings and chattings, quite forgot her for a 
time, and was dismayed when she saw her sitting disconsolately by.  
"Come, Signorina," she cried, "go down to the bay.  Here is Talila; 
she will guide you."

Mae looked up quickly at that.  Talila, was she here?  A few feet 
from her she saw an uncouth woman, with that falling of the jaw 
most imbeciles possess, and a vacancy in her eyes.  She had her 
hand raised and was swearing at one of the children.  "Talila," 
repeated Mae, rubbing her eyes, and shivering, "but I thought 
Talila would be different.  You said she loved children, but this 
woman swears at them."

"O, dear, we all swear at them, but we love them; you shall see how 
they follow her.  Talila, off with you and your babies."  And the 
next moment there was a general scamper of brown children headed by 
this tall, vacant-looking woman.  "Take the lady to the sea," 
continued Lisetta.  And Mae arose, as if in a dream, and followed 
them.

The half-clad children of the sun ran before her as she had dreamed 
they would; flowers sprang up along the way, but she did not stop 
to pluck a single bud or turn to look at anything.  She wandered on 
in an awful sort of fright and came at length to the water's edge.  
Here there were row-boats lying at anchor, into which the children 
clambered.  Mae stepped into one of them and sat down in the stern, 
and looked about.  All was as she had planned.  Her day of heaven 
was here.  She tried to be brave.  O, she tried very hard.  She 
wanted to love and enjoy the sea, and think beautiful thoughts.  
She roused a little and stretched herself out to catch the sunbeams 
in her eyes, as she had said she would.  How warm they were.  An 
umbrella would be a luxury--and a book!  But these belonged to the 
world she had left so far behind her.  The dirty children babbled a 
strange tongue; the water around the boat, by the shore, was 
covered with a scum, and alas! alas! the land of her desire was 
farther off than ever.  Then she remembered that Norman Mann had 
once said: "If you ever do disappear I shall know where to look for 
you.  Would he think of it now?  Would he come for her?  If he had 
only come last night, and would drive by now to Sorrento.  He would 
be here soon if he had.  Would she call him loudly or shrink down 
in the boat and hide her face in her hands till she knew he was a 
long way past?  The rest of them would not know where to look for 
her.  They did not know anything about Lisetta, and she had 
promised not to tell even the padrona.  (Faithless Lisetta!)  But 
of course Norman wouldn't come for her, after what he had said at 
the Capitol.  That was what finally drove her away.  How unlike him 
it did seem to speak of her in that way to Eric.  She thought over 
his words, and as she did so she seemed to see her mistake, and 
grasp his meaning.

She sprang up in the boat.  "It was the other girl--Miss Rae--he 
was speaking of.  Oh, oh, oh--and now it is too late.  He will hate 
me always."

As she stood there, a carriage rolled by.  Some one looked out.  
"O, mamma," said a young voice in English, "look at that pretty 
little peasant," and a kid-gloved hand was stretched through the 
open window to spatter a shower of base coin toward her.  It was 
terrible!  The children sprang for it, and, fighting and laughing, 
ran homewards with the dreadful Talila.  The parti-colored 
picturesque dress had been a joy to Mae.  Now she longed to tear it 
off and die--die!  No, she was afraid to die.  She would have to 
live, and she didn't know how, and she laughed a bitter sort of 
laugh.

There was a sound of horses' feet again.  The road lay almost close 
to the shore just here.  A low exclamation, a vault from his horse, 
which was speedily cared for by a dozen boys near at hand, and 
before Mae knew it, the officer was beside her once more.

O, how beautiful it was to see some one from the world, fresh, and 
clean, and fair.  Mae gazed at him in delight, and sprang up 
warmly, holding out both her hot hands, "How is Heaven?" asked 
Bero, as he raised the white fingers to his lips.

"That is not the custom with us," said Mae, withdrawing her hand.

"But what is custom in Heaven?" he laughed.  "Can't we do as we 
please in our Heaven, Signorina?" 

"This isn't our Heaven, and I don't please.  O, how could you let 
me come to this dreadful place.  Did you know how awful it would 
be?"

"Shall I tell you why I said nothing?  Let me row you away from all 
this," and he began to untie the boat.

"When did you come?" asked Mae,

"I left Rome last night, reached Naples this morning, and here I am 
as soon as possible, Signorina."

Mae felt herself gradually yielding to the spell of this man's soft 
power.  She had grown strangely quiet and passive, and she folded 
her hands and looked off seawards in a not unhappy way.  She seemed 
to be some one else in a strange dream.

"Are you glad I came?" asked Bero, as he jumped into the boat and 
sat down opposite her.  Mae did not reply.  She had almost lost the 
power of speech.  She only smiled feebly and faintly.  Bero had 
never seen her thus before, but he realized dimly that it was he 
who had changed her, and the sense of his own power excited him the 
more.  He bent his proud head and flashed his beautiful eyes as he 
lifted the oars to the locks, and silently pulled out toward the 
bay.

As he rowed he gazed fixedly at her, and the frightened, puzzled 
child could not turn her eyes from his.  His look grew softer and 
tenderer, his head bent towards her, the oars moved slower and 
slower and at last stopped imperceptibly.  Still the man gazed 
passionately, claimingly, and the girl breathed harder and let her 
eyes rest on his, as if he had been a wondrous, charming serpent, 
and she a little, unresisting dove.  Then he spoke.

His words were so low, it seemed as if his eyes had found voice; 
his words were so caressing, it seemed as if they changed to kisses 
as they fell.  "Listen," he said, softly, and drew up his dripping 
oars and let the boat drift--"Listen.  This is not our Heaven, but 
I know a villa by the sea.  There are hills and woods about it; 
flowers, fruits, and in the day, sunshine, at night, moonlight and 
music; drives, and walks, and vines, and arbors.  Could you find 
there your Heaven--with me?  May I take you to my villa?"

When he ceased, his words dropped slowly into silence, and Mae 
still gazed at him.  She saw him come nearer to her, with his eyes 
fixed on hers; she saw his hand leave the oar and move slowly 
toward hers, but she was motionless, looking at the picture he had 
painted her of life--the cloudless days, moonlit nights--the villa 
by the sea--the glowing Piedmontese.  Her eyelids trembled, her 
pulse beat.

Could she take that villa for her home?  That man for her husband?  
She had half thought till now in soft luxurious Italian, but 'my 
home' and 'my husband' said themselves to her in her own mother 
tongue.  She gave a long shiver, and pulled her eyes from his.  It 
was like waking from a dream.  "No--oh, no; take me home," she 
gasped, and turned toward the shore, where, erect, with folded arms 
and head bared, stood Norman Mann.

The Italian bit his lip, and said something under his breath, but 
he took the oars and pulled ashore.  Mae turned her eyes downward 
and felt the color creep up, up into her cheeks.  It seemed 
eternity.  The boat was Charon's, and she was drifting to her fate.  
Norman Mann stood like a statue.  The wind moved his hair over his 
forehead, and once Mae saw him toss the unruly locks back in a 
familiar way he had.  She did not know why, but the tears half came 
to her eyes as he did it.  He stood as firm and hard and still as a 
New England rock, while the Italian swayed lithely as he pulled the 
oars, with the curve and motion of a sliding, slippery stream.

The boat came safely ashore.  The Piedmontese helped her to land, 
and the three stood silent; but Mae under all her shame felt 
content to be near Norman.  His voice broke the quiet, quick and 
clear.  "Are you married?" he asked.

"I! married!  What do you--what can he mean?"

"Why is this man here, then?"

Mae stood an instant so still that the heavy breaths of the two men 
were distinctly audible, the passionate boundings of Bero's pulse, 
the long, deep throbs of Norman's heart.  The officer stepped 
toward her.  Norman stood unmoved.  The Italian's eye wandered 
restlessly, his hand fell to his sword.  Norman's arms were folded, 
and his face set.

Mae looked at one, then at the other, perplexedly.  Then she 
understood.  Like lightning, a terrible temptation flashed into her 
mind.  The Italian loved her, would shield, protect, honor her.  
Norman must hate her, would always despise her.  Should she lift 
her little weak woman's hand and place it in the man's hand ready 
to claim it, or stand still and be crushed by that other hand 
there?

Ah! she could not do it.  She tried once.  She held out weakly her 
right hand toward Bero; but the left stretched itself involuntarily 
to Norman.  Then the two met in each other's pitiful clasp over her 
bent head, and with a low wailing cry she fell in a little heap on 
the sand.

When she opened her eyes, they were both bending over her.  "Take 
me home," she gasped to Norman.  He glared at the officer.  "Go!" 
he said.  Bero put his hand to his sword.  Mae sprang up.  "No," 
she said, gently, "no, my friend, for you have always been kind and 
friendly to me.  Pray go."  Bero was touched by this.  This little 
girl had taken only good from him, after all, sympathy and 
friendliness.  Norman was touched also with the same thought.  Then 
the officer smiled pleasantly.  He shrugged his shoulders slightly, 
regretfully, and bowed and rode away.  And so the clinking spurs 
and yellow moustaches and amorous eyes vanished from Mae's sight.

As he rode off he was somewhat sorrowful; but he took a picture 
from his pocket and looked at it.  "She'll be glad to welcome me 
back again," he said to himself, pleasantly, "and she belongs to my 
own land.  This little foreigner might have pined for her own home, 
by and by."  Then he sighed and shook his head.  "Alas! this little 
stranger will dance before you often, still!" and he touched his 
eyes; "but I will put you back in your place here, now."  This he 
said, looking at Lillia's picture and with his hand on his heart.



CHAPTER XIII.


Take me home," said Mae again imploringly.  "Not back there," as 
Norman drew her hand through his arm and started for the hut, "O 
no, not even for a minute."

"Sit here then," he replied quietly, "while I arrange it with the 
woman," and he walked quickly away.  Mae watched him till he 
entered the low doorway, in a sort of subdued, glorified happiness, 
that would break out over her shame and fear.  She was afraid he 
would hate her, at least she told herself so, but in reality, 
everything and everybody and every place were fast fading out of 
this eager little mind.  She and Norman were together, and she 
could not help being content.  There was a certain joy in her 
weakness and shame, though they were genuine and kept her hushed 
and silent.

Poor Lisetta was very much frightened, but told her story to this 
angry stranger with true Southern palaver.  She said the little 
lady loved Italy so, and wanted to be a peasant, and insisted she 
would run away quite by herself if Lisetta would not take her, and 
so she consented, knowing she could, through the padrona, send word 
to the friends.

"And the man?" asked Norman, impatiently.

"What man?  O, the officer.  He just rode down this morning for a 
morning call.  I never saw him before." 

A great weight, as large as the Piedmontese, fell from Norman's 
heart then, and he scattered money among the children recklessly 
and ordered up the donkey; and smiled on the amazed Lisetta all in 
the same breath, and went back to help Mae into the wagon with the 
lightest kind of a heart.  It was a strange ride they took back to 
Castellamare.  I think they both wished the world could stand still 
once more.  When they had arrived at the station they found the 
next train to Naples was not due for two hours.  Norman left Mae in 
the waiting-room for a time.  Through the window she watched 
Gaetano and the donkey start homeward, with a great sigh of relief.  
She had time while she was sitting to think, but her head was in 
too great a whirl.  She could only feel sorry and ashamed and meek 
and happy, all mixed together.  The sensation was odd.

"I have telegraphed Eric that we would start home by the next 
train, that you had only been off for a frolic.  I hope we can buy 
a waterproof or shawl and a hat in Naples for you?"

"Yes," said Mae, meekly, "I have my waterproof here.  I think I 
will put it on now, please," and she began nervously to untie the 
shawl strap.  Norman put her fingers gently aside, and unbuckled it 
for her.  He handed her the long deep-blue cloak, which she put 
tightly about her, drawing the hood over her head.  You look like a 
nun," said Norman, smiling.  "I wish I were one," replied Mae, with 
a choke in her throat.  She was growing very penitential and 
softened.

"What shall we do now?" asked Mr.  Mann.  "We have a long time to 
wait.  If you feel like walking, we can find a pleasanter spot than 
this."

"Go anywhere you please," replied Mae meekly.  "What is the matter 
with you?"--for Norman had a very amused expression in his brown 
eyes."

 "I hardly recognize you.  Not a trace of fight so far, and it must 
be two hours since we met."

"Don't," said Mae, with her eyes down, so of course he didn't, but 
the two just marched quietly along back on the Sorrento road 
towards some high rocks.  They sat down behind these, with their 
faces towards the sea, and were as thoroughly hidden from view, as 
if they had been quite alone in the world.

"I suppose they were frightened," asked Mae, "at home--at Rome, I 
mean."  "Dreadfully," replied Norman, trying to be sober, but with 
the glad ring in his voice still.  "Edith was for dragging the 
Tiber; she was sure you and the seven-branched candlestick lay side 
by side.  Mrs. Jerrold searched your trunks and read all your 
private papers, I am morally certain."  Then Norman stopped 
abruptly, and Mae drew the long stiletto from her hair nervously 
and played with it before she said, "And the boys?"  "Albert was 
very, very sad, but reasonably sure you would be found.  We all 
feared the Italian, but Albert worked carefully, and soon 
discovered that the officer was said to be engaged to a young girl 
with whom he had been seen the day after you left, and that gave 
him courage,"--then Norman stopped again abruptly.  "And Eric?"  
"Eric sat down with his face in his hands and cried, Miss Mae, and 
said, 'I've lost my sister, the very dearest little sister in the 
world.'"

"And you came and found me," said Mae, after a pause, wiping the 
tears from her eyes.  "Yes, thank God," said Norman.  He was sober 
enough now.  "Why did you do it?" asked Mae, "when I had been so 
naughty, and silly, and unkind?"  He came very near telling her the 
reason as she looked up at him, but he did not, for she dashed on, 
"O! Mr. Mann, I have been--"

"Don't confess to me, Miss Mae.  Leave all of this till you get 
home to your own, who have a right to your confessions and 
penitence.  Never mind what you have been, here you are, and as I 
have only one more handkerchief and your own looks as if it had 
been sea-bathing, you had better dry your eyes and be jolly for the 
next two hours."  This was a precarious speech, but Mae only 
laughed at it, and dried her eyes quickly.  "But I have one thing 
to say to you," she said, "and please mayn't I?"

"You may say anything you please to me, of course," replied this 
very magnanimous Norman.

"It is not about the miserable past or my doings, but it's about 
the future.  I've said good-bye to my dreams of life--the floating 
and waving and singing and dancing life that was like iced 
champagne.  I'd rather have cold water, thank you, sir, for a 
steady drink, morning, noon and night.  I'm going to be good, to 
read and study and grow restful,"--and Mae folded her hands and 
looked off toward the sea.  "She's a witching child," thought 
Norman.  Then she raised her head.  "I said it lightly because I 
felt it deeply," she added, as if in reply to his thought.  "I am 
going to grow, if I can, unselfish and sympathetic, and perhaps, 
who knows, wise, and any way good."

"There is no need of giving up your champagne entirely.  Give 
yourself a dinner party now and then o' holidays.  The world is 
full of color and beauty, and poetry you love.  All study is full 
of it--most of all it lives in humanity."

"Well," said Mae, "aren't you glad I'm going to change so?"

"I'm glad you're going to give your soul a chance.  Your body has 
been putting it down hard of late."

"It's but a weakling," said Mae, with a shake of her head, "and 
I've hardly heard its whimpers at all, but--O, Mr. Mann, if you 
could have seen Talila--she's dreadful."

"Who is Talila? and what has she to do with your soul?"

"O, she's one of those Sorrento people," replied Mae, as if she had 
lived there for years.  "I have so much to tell you: it will take--
"

"Years, I hope, dear."  The last word dropped without his noticing 
it, but Mae caught it and hid it in her heart.

"What made you think of coming for me?" she asked, after a pause, 
during which Norman had hummed a song as she had been writing her 
name on the sand.  They were quite on the shore and only a narrow 
stretch of beach separated them from the bay.  "You said if you 
ever came away, you would go to Sorrento, and I knew you had a 
friend in the kitchen who lived near Naples.  So I searched for her 
and the padrona, and, finding neither of them, set Giovanni a 
babbling, and learned that the woman Lisetta had left that morning 
for Sorrento.  I told the boys I had a mere suspicion that I would 
trace for them.  So off I came last night, and by stopping and 
enquiring at every settlement, at last discovered you."

"This is my birth-day; I am twenty years old," said Mae, "Why, what 
are you doing?"  For Norman had bent down to the sand also, and had 
drawn a queer little figure there.

"That is you when you were one year old," he laughed, "and you 
could only crow and kick your small feet, and smile now and then, 
and cry the rest of the time."

"That is about all I can do yet," said Mae.

"Here comes number two," and he drew his hand across the sand and 
smoothed the baby image away, leaving in its place a round, sturdy 
little creature, poised dangerously on one foot.  "You have walked 
alone, and you have called your father's name, and you're a 
wonderful child by this time."

"This is the three-year-old, white aprons and curls, please 
observe.  Now, you recite 'Dickery, dickery dock' and 'I want to be 
an angel,' and you have cut all your wisdom teeth."

"O, Mr. Mann, I haven't cut them yet.  Babies don't have them."

"Don't they?  Well, you have other teeth in their place, white and 
sharp--but by this time you are four years old."

"Ah, here I begin to remember.  You draw the pictures, and I'll 
describe myself.  Four years old!--let me see--I had a sled for 
Christmas, and I used to eat green apples.  That's all I can 
remember; and five and six years old were just the same."

"O, no, I'm sure you went to church for the first time somewhere 
along there; and isn't that a noteworthy event?  I suppose all your 
thoughts were of your button boots and your new parasol?"

"I behaved beautifully, I know; mamma says so; sat up like a lady, 
while you were sleeping, on that very same Sunday, off in some 
little country church, I suppose."

"I shouldn't wonder--sleeping in my brother's outgrown coat into 
the bargain, with the sleeves dangling over my little brown hands."

"It doesn't seem as if they could ever have been very little, does 
it, Mr. Mann?"

Mr. Mann unfolded five fingers and a thumb and surveyed them 
gravely for a moment.  "It is strange that this once measured three 
inches by two and couldn't hit out any better than your's could."

Mae had laid her hand on her knee and was looking at it also in the 
most serious manner.  Now she doubled it into a small but very 
pugnacious looking fist, which she shook most entrancingly before 
the very eyes of the young man by her side.  The eyes turned such a 
peculiar look upon her that she hastened to add: "Go on with your 
dissolving views.  It is number eight's turn next.  You are the 
showman, and I am interested spectator."

"You insist upon describing my pictures, so I think you are 
properly first assistant to the grand panorama.  Here's eight-year-
old.  Try your powers on her."

"Let me see.  O, then I read all the while, the 'Fairchild Family' 
and 'Anna Ross,' and I used to wear my hair in very smooth braids, 
I remember.  I was ever so good."

"Impossible; you must have forgotten," suggested Norman.  "You 
surely whispered in school and committed similar dreadful crimes.  
Poor little prig."

"No, don't," plead Mae; "please don't laugh at the little girl me.  
I love to think of her as so goody-goody.  Last night," and Mae 
lowered her voice, "I seemed to see little Mae Madden kneeling down 
in the old nursery in her woolly wrapper saying her prayers," and 
Mae brought up on the prayers very abruptly, and bent over toward 
the sand and began to draw hastily.  "Here comes nine-year-old Mae.  
Mr. Mann, you may do the describing."

"O, I suppose there were doll's parties, first valentines, and 
rides with Albert in his buggy, when you clung very tightly to the 
slight arm of the carriage and smiled very bravely up in his face.  
You must have been pretty then."

"No, I was dreadfully ugly.  I had broken out two teeth climbing a 
stone wall."

"You had stopped being good?"

"Yes, that only lasted a little bit of a time."

"Miss Mae, I'm sure you were never ugly, but naughty and silly, I 
dare say.  Kept a diary now, didn't you?"

"Yes, and went to sleep with Eliza Cooke's poems under my pillow 
every night, and my finger holding the book open at some such 
thrilling verse as this:


    'Say on that I'm over romantic
      In loving the wild and the free,
     But the waves of the dashing Atlantic, 
      The Alps and the eagle for me.'"


"Did you wear your hair plaited when you were ten years old?" 
enquired Norman, intensely busy with another drawing.

"O no; I didn't do anything when I was ten years old but get mad 
and make up with my two dearest friends."

"One of whom was your dearest friend one-half of the time and the 
other the rest of it, I suppose."

"Don't be satirical, sir.  I had a lover when I was eleven; I used 
to skate with him and write him little notes, folded very queerly."

"Why do you draw twelve and thirteen with their heads down?" asked 
Mae, after a moment.

"Because they read so much; everything they can get hold of, 
including, possibly, a very revised edition of 'Arabian Nights'?"

"Yes," laughed Mae, "and my first novel, 'Villette.'"

"You go to a play for the first time now," suggested Norman.  "How 
you clasp your hands and wink your eyes and bite your lips!  And 
next day, in front of your mother's pier-glass, how you scream 'O, 
my love,' and gasp and tumble over in a heap in your brown calico, 
as the grand lady did the night before, in her pink silk."

"Brown calico, indeed!  I never condescended to die in my own 
clothes, let me assure you.  The garret was overhauled, and had 
been since I was a mere baby, for effective, sweeping garments.  
Let us hurry along over fourteen and fifteen.  I was sentimental 
and tried to be so young-ladyish then.  I used to read history with 
Albert, and always put on both my gloves when I started out, and 
had great horror of girls who talked loud in the street.  I learned 
to make bread, and shirt bosoms, and such things."

"Well, here you are in a long dress, Miss Sweet Sixteen.  I 
remember you home from boarding school on a vacation."

"What did you think of me?" asked Mae, "didn't we have a nice time 
that summer?  O, how silly I was!"

She hurried on, because the eyes had given her that peculiar look 
again, which put her heart in a tremble.  "I did have a beautiful 
time at boarding school," she continued, "the darlingest principal 
and such girls."

"Then I suppose you wrote a salutatory in forlorn rhyme to end off 
with," laughed Norman, "and read it, all arrayed in white, in a 
trembling voice, and everybody applauded, and even old Judge 
Seymour admired it, while you were reading, with your pink cheeks 
and trembling hands and quivering voice."

"Abominable!  I didn't have the salutatory, and the girl who did, 
read a superb one, as strong and masculine--"

"Then the Judge went to sleep, I'm sure," declared Norman.

"Well," said Mae, "you are leaving out two years," for Norman had 
leaned back against the rock with his arms folded.

"By and by," said Norman, "we all come off to Europe, and some of 
us go through the heart-ache, don't we?"

"Yes," replied Mae, softly.

"But come out ahead one day at Sorrento, perhaps?" asked Norman.  
To which Mae made no direct reply.

"All the Mae Maddens have faded away," she said, looking down at 
the sand again.  "The tide is rising."  And she walked forward to 
the ripples of water, and then came slowly back and stood before 
Norman seriously.  He laughed.

"Why, Mr. Mann," said Mae, "I have been so very, very wicked."

The dreadful Mr. Mann only laughed again.

"You act as if it were all a joke.  I never saw you so merry 
before."

"I have never been as happy before in my life."

"Why?" asked Mae, in a low voice.

"Because I have found you," he answered earnestly, and before she 
knew it Mae was lifted in the strong, manly arms, her pink cheek 
close to Norman's brown one, and his lips on hers.  She leaned her 
face against his and clung tightly to him,

"O, Mr. Norman Mann," she said, "do you really want me as much--as 
I do you?"

And Norman, still holding her tightly, bent his hand, with hers 
clasped in it, to the sand, and after the Mae Madden, he wrote 
another name, so that it read:


    MAE MADDEN MANN.


Then he said a great many, many things, all beginning with that 
electric, wonderful little possessive pronoun "my," of which he had 
discoursed formerly, and he held her close all the while, and they 
missed the next train for Naples.

The gay peasant costume fell about the girl's round lithe form like 
the luxuriant skin of some richly marked animal; but out of her 
eyes looked a woman's tender, loving, earnest soul.  Norman Mann 
had saved her.



CHAPTER XIV.


Edith was quietly married to Albert at Easter time, in the English 
Chapel at Florence.  The event was hastened by the sudden 
appearance of Mae's parents, who set sail soon after hearing of the 
Sorrento escapade and the embryonic engagement, which awaited their 
sanction before being announced.  Everything was beautifully smooth 
at last.  Edith and Albert left the day of their marriage for 
Munich, and later, Mrs. Jerrold was to settle down with them at 
Tuebingen.  The rest of the party were to summer in Switzerland; 
then came fall, and then--what?

Norman thought he knew, and Mae said she thought he didn't, but 
this young woman was losing half her character for willfulness, and 
Norman was growing into a perfect tyrant, so far as his rights were 
concerned.  Easter is a season of marriages.  Mae read in a Roman 
paper the betrothal announcement of the Signor Bero and Signorina 
Lillia Taria.  "I would like to send them a real beautiful 
present," said she, and Norman did not say no.  So these two hunted 
all over Florence, and at length, in the studio of a certain not 
unknown Florentine, they discovered the very gift Mae desired--a 
picture of a young Italian soldier, bringing home his bride to his 
own people.  There was the aged mother, proud and happy, waiting to 
bid the dark-eyed girl welcome.  "She has a real 'old Nokomis' 
air," laughed Mae.  "I know she would have told her son not to seek 
'a stranger whom he knew not.'"  The distant olive-colored 
hillsides, the splashing fountain near at hand, each face, and even 
the thick strong sunshine seemed to bear a tiny stamp with Italy 
graven on it.  "The name of the picture is exactly right," said 
Mae.  Under the painting were these words: "Italia Our Home."

Norman would hardly have been human if he had not cast a quick 
glance at her as she stood thoughtfully before the picture.  Mae 
was almost as good as an Italian for involuntary posing.  She had 
made a tableau of herself now, with one hand at her eyes to shade 
them from the glare of the sun that fell fiercely through the 
window, her head half on one side, and a bit of drapery, of lace or 
soft silk, tight around her white throat.  She felt Norman's 
glance, and looked up quickly, and smiled and shook her head: "No, 
Italy is not my home, although I love it so well.  There is a 
certain wide old doorway not many miles from New York, and the 
hills around it, and the great river before it, and the people in 
it, all belong together, too.  That's where we belong, Norman, in 
America, our home," and Mae struck a grand final pose with her 
hands clasped ecstatically, and her eyes flashing in the true 
Goddess of Liberty style.

"Yes, I believe we do, Mae; I am almost anxious to get back and 
begin work in that young, eager country."

"And so am I," said Mae.

Norman laughed.  "To think of your coming down to work, you young 
butterfly."

"It is what we all have to come to, isn't it?--unless we go to that 
creature that finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.  I 
don't expect to come to stone-cutting or cattle-driving, but I do 
expect to settle down into a tolerable housewifely little woman, 
and--" 

"And look after me."

"Yes, I suppose so--and myself, and probably a sewing-class and the 
cook's lame son.  Heigh-ho-hum!  What a pity it is, that it is so 
uninteresting to be good."

"How do you know?"

"Don't be saucy.  I do know, perfectly well, that Mae Madden, 
naughty, idle, and silly, may be, after all, not so stupid; but get 
me good, industrious and wise, and it will take all of my time when 
I'm not asleep to keep so.  No, there'll be nothing to say about me 
any more.  I'll be as humdrum as--"

"As I am."

"You--why Norman, are you humdrum?"

"Of course I am, dreadfully humdrum.  If you and I were in a story-
book, you would have ten pages to my one, to keep the reader awake.  
But then, story-books aren't the end of life.  Suppose you, Mae 
Madden, have been odd, full of variety, ready to twist common 
occurrences into something startling and romantic, have you been 
happy?  Haven't you been restless and discontented?  Now, can't 
you, grown humdrum and good, be very happy and contented and 
joyful, even if the sun rises on just about the same Mondays and 
Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the year round?  You will not do for a 
story-book then, but won't you do better for life?  And, after all, 
a lively murderer is a great deal more sensational than you could 
ever be."

"Even when I ran away?"

"Yes.  Now, you see, I have been humdrum again, and half preached a 
sermon."

"All right, sir; so long as you take me for a text, you may preach 
as you want to, and by and by, I dare say, I shall agree with you."

"It would have been a great deal more interesting if you had 
married that Italian."

"How do you know I could have married that Italian, my lord?  He is 
going to marry a girl as much more beautiful than I am as--as Bero 
himself is than you--and yet I would rather have you.  And now, 
don't you dare look at me in that way.  I'll never say another nice 
thing to you if you do.  This artist will think we are--"

"Lovers, my dear.  And aren't we?"

        *       *       *       *       *       *       *


Ten days later Norman entered with a letter for Mae.  "Read it to 
me," she said, throwing back the blinds and leaning her elbows on 
the window-cushion.

"It is from Lillia.  Would you rather read it yourself?"  "O, no."  
So Norman read what Lillia had written in her pretty broken 
English:


"My DEAR MISS MAE:--Thank you of all my heart for your so lovely 
gift.  I have had so little home since long, long ago my mother 
died, and now I am to have one as the maid in the picture has.  We 
will marry the fifth day of May at five o'clock, and will wish you 
to be there.  Don't forget me.

LILLIA."


"Signor Bero has added a postscript, Mae, which you can translate 
better than I."  And Norman handed her the letter.  Mae translated 
it thus:


"Did you know all that the picture would say to me, Signorina?  
Receive my thanks for it, too, and believe I shall always live 
worthy of my Italy, my wife and friends that I see in the picture, 
and of another friend who lives so far away, whom I shall never see 
again, if I have such a friend.  Think of my beautiful Lillia on 
our wedding day.  We shall be married at St. Andrea's, at vesper 
time.

Bero."


"And this is the day," said Mae, dropping the note.

"And the very hour, allowing the bride and the sun a few minutes 
each," added Norman, glancing at the clock.

They gaze quietly out of the window of their lodgings on the Borgo 
Ognissante, but Mae sees far away beyond the Arno, into the church 
of St. Andrea,--music, and pomp, and beautiful ceremony, and before 
the altar, a woman in her bridal robes, with heavily figured lace 
falling over her black hair and white forehead, and against her 
soft cheeks and shoulders.  Her great brown eyes have thrown away 
the mist of sadness for a luminous wedding veil of joy, and she is 
Lillia, and by her side, erect, proud, glorious, with a lingering 
ray of light falling on his golden head, is her happy husband, 
Bero.  They stand before the altar of St. Andrea's.  "God bless 
you," says Mae aloud.  Then her gaze wanders back to the coral and 
mosaic shops below in the street, and up across to the opposite 
window, where a long-haired, brown-moustached, brown-eyed man 
leans, puffing smoke from his curved lips, and holding his 
cigarette in his slender fingers.  She meets his gaze now, as she 
has met it before.  "He is wondering what life will bring to these 
two young people, I fancy," says Mae.

"Our own wedding-day, Mae," Norman replies; and they both forget 
all about Lillia, and Bero, and the stranger, and suddenly leave 
the window.  The long-haired man puffs his cigar in a little 
loneliness, and wishes that wedding bells might ring for his empty 
heart too.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Mae Madden, by Mary Murdoch Mason

