se--Oh, I trust you, Maria Angelina, to be very wise!"

How wise Maria Angelina thought herself! She lifted a face that shone
with confidence and understanding and for all her quivering lips she
smiled.

"My baby!" said the mother suddenly in English and took that face
between her hands and kissed it.

"You will be careful," she began again abruptly, and then stopped.

Too late for more cautions. And the child was so _sage_.

But it was such a little figure that stood there, such young eyes that
smiled so confidently into hers. . . . And America was a long, long way
off.

The bugles were blowing for visitors to be away. Just one more hurried
kiss and hasty clasp.

An overwhelming fright seized upon the girl as the mother went down the
ship's ladder into the small boat that put out so quickly for the shore.

Suppose she should fail them! After all she was _not_ so wise--and not
so very pretty. And she had no experience--none!

The sun, dancing on the bright waves, hurt Maria Angelina's eyes. She
had to shut them, they watered so foolishly. And something in her young
breast wanted to cry after that boat, "Take me back--take me back to my
home," but something else in her forbade and would have died of shame
before it uttered such weakness.

For poor Julietta, for dear anxious Mamma, she knew herself the only
hope.

So steadily she waved her handkerchief long after she had lost the
responding flutter from the boat.

She was not crying now. She felt exalted. She pressed closer to the rail
and stared out very solemnly over the blue and gold bay to beautiful
Naples. . . . Suddenly her heart quickened. Vesuvius was moving. The
far-off shores of Italy were slipping by. Above her the black smoke that
had been coming faster and faster from the great funnels streamed
backward like long banners.

Maria Angelina was on her way.

CHAPTER II

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

With whatever emotion Jane Blair had received the startling demand upon
her hospitality she rallied nobly to the family call. She left her
daughter in the Adirondacks where they were summering and descended upon
her husband in his New York office to rout him out to meet the girl with
her.

"An infernal shame--that's what I call it!" Jim Blair grumbled, facing
the steaming heat of the unholy customs shed. "It's an outrage--an
imposition----"

"Oh, not all that, Jim! Lucy--that's the mother--and I used to visit
like this when we were girls. It w