Probably they would be married at once. Johnny was free and rich--and impatient. She did not suspect him of interest in a long wooing or betrothal. . . . And while she must appear to be in favor of a return home, first, and a marriage from her home, the American ceremony would cut many knots for her--save much expense at home. . . .
She saw herself proudly exhibiting Johnny, delighting in his youth, his blonde Americanism, his smartly cut clothes, his conqueror's assurance.
Meanwhile Maria Angelina was still standing there in the moonlight, like a little wraith of silver, smiling with absent eyes at Johnny's muttered words, withdrawing, in childish panic, from Johnny's close pressing ardor. She knew that if he persisted . . . but before her soft detachment, her half laughing evasiveness of his mood, he did not persist. He seemed oddly struggling with some withholding uncertainties of his own.
"Oh, well, if that's all you like me," said Johnny grumpily.
It was reprieve . . . reprieve to the irrevocable things. Her heart danced . . . and yet a piqued resentment pinched her.
She knew subtly that she could have overcome that irresolution. . . . But she was not going to make things too easy for him--her Santonini pride forbade!
"We must go back," she told him and exulted in his moodiness.
And for the rest of the evening his arm pressed her, his eyes smiled down significantly upon her, and when she confronted the great mirror again it was to glimpse a girl with darkly shining eyes and cheeks like scarlet poppies, a girl in white, like a bride, and with a bride's high pride and assured heart.
She slept, that night, composing the letter to dear Mamma.
The next morning was given to recovery from the dance. In the afternoon the Martins had planned a mountain climb. It was not a really bad mountain, at all, and the arrangement was to start in the late afternoon, have dinner upon the top, and descend by moonlight.
It was the plan of the younger inexhaustibles among the group, but in spite of faint protests from some of the elders all the Martin house-party was in line for the climb, and with the addition of the Blair party and several other couples from the Lodge, quite a procession was formed upon the path by the river.