d the houses with a
look of one already lost to her world, and her eyes clung to the figures
of her family as if to relinquish the sight of them would dissolve them
from existence.

They were tragic, those following, imploring eyes, but they were not
wet. Maria understood it was too late to weep. It was necessary to go.
The magnitude of the sums already invested in her affair staggered her.
They were so many pledges, those sums!

But America was so desolately far.

She could not sleep, that last night. She lay in the big four-poster
where once heavy draperies had shut in the slumbers of dead and gone
Contessas, and she watched the square of moonlight travel over the
painted cherubs on the ceiling. There was always a lump in her throat to
be swallowed, and often the tears soaked into the big feather pillows,
but there were no sobs to rouse the household.

Julietta, beside her, slept very comfortably.

But the most terrible moment of all was that last look of Mamma and that
last clasp of her hands upon the deck of the steamer.

"You must tell me everything, little one," the Contessa Santonini kept
saying hurriedly. She was constrained and repetitious in the grip of
her emotion, as they stood together, just out of earshot of the Italian
consul's wife who was chaperoning the young girl upon her voyage.

"Write me all about the people you meet and what they say to you, and
what you do. Remember that I am still Mamma if I am across the ocean and
I shall be waiting to hear. . . . And remember that but few of your
ideas of America may be true. Americans are not all the types you have
read of or the tourists you have met. You must expect a great
difference. . . . I should be strange, myself, now in America."

Maria's quick sensitiveness divined a note of secret yearning.

"Yes, Mamma," she said obediently, tightening her clasp upon her
mother's hands.

"You must be on guard against mistakes, Maria Angelina," said the other
insistently--as if she had not said that a dozen times before! "Because
American girls do things it may be not be wise for you to do. You will
be of interest because you are different. Be very careful, my little
one."

"Yes, Mamma," said the girl again.

"As to your money--you understand it must last. There can be little to
pay when you are a guest. But send to Papa and me your accounts as I
have told you."

"Yes, Mamma."

"You will not let the American freedom turn your head. You will be
wi