Etext of Mae Madden
by Mary Murdoch Mason



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.  Li