ms!"

When the Count was annoyed he dealt directly with facts--a proceeding he
preferred to avoid at other moments.

Behind her curtains Maria drew a troubled breath. She, too, felt the
family responsibility for Julietta--dear Julietta, with her dumpy figure
and ugly face. Julietta was nineteen and now that Lucia was betrothed it
was Julietta's turn.

If only it could be known that Julietta had a pretty dot!

Maria stood motionless behind the curtains, her winged imagination
rushing to meet Julietta's future, fronting the indifference, the
neglect, the ridicule before which Julietta's sensitive, shamed spirit
would suffer and bleed. She could see her partnerless at balls, lugged
heavily about to teas and dinners, shrinking eagerly and hopelessly back
into the refuge of the paternal home. . . . Yet Julietta had once
whispered to her that she wanted to die if she could never marry and
have an armful of _bambinos_!

Maria Angelina's young heart contracted with sharp anxiety. Things were
in a bad way with her family indeed. There had always been
difficulties, for Papa was extravagant and ever since brother Francisco
had been in the army, he, too, had his debts, but Mamma had always
managed so wonderfully! But the war had made things very difficult, and
now peace had made them more difficult still. There had been one awful
time when it had looked as if the carriages and horses would have to go
and they would be reduced to sharing a barouche with some one else in
secret, proud distress--like the Manzios and the Benedettos who took
their airings alternately, each with a different crested door upon the
identical vehicle--but Mamma had overcome that crisis and the social
rite of the daily drive upon the Pincian had been sacredly preserved.
But apparently these settlements were too much, even for Mamma.

Then her name upon her mother's lips brought the eavesdropper to swift
attention.

It appeared that the Contessa had a plan.

Maria Angelina could go to visit Mamma's cousins in America. They were
rich--that is understood of Americans; even Mamma had once been rich
when she was a girl, Maria dimly remembered having heard--and they would
give Maria a chance to meet people. . . . Men did not ask settlements in
America. They earned great sums and could please themselves with a
pretty, penniless face. . . . And what was saved on Maria's dowry would
plump out Julietta's.

Thunderstruck, the Count objected. Maria was his fav