For poor Julietta, for dear anxious Mamma, she knew herself the only hope.
So steadily she waved her handkerchief long after she had lost the responding flutter from the boat.
She was not crying now. She felt exalted. She pressed closer to the rail and stared out very solemnly over the blue and gold bay to beautiful Naples. . . . Suddenly her heart quickened. Vesuvius was moving. The far-off shores of Italy were slipping by. Above her the black smoke that had been coming faster and faster from the great funnels streamed backward like long banners.
With whatever emotion Jane Blair had received the startling demand upon her hospitality she rallied nobly to the family call. She left her daughter in the Adirondacks where they were summering and descended upon her husband in his New York office to rout him out to meet the girl with her.
"An infernal shame--that's what I call it!" Jim Blair grumbled, facing the steaming heat of the unholy customs shed. "It's an outrage--an imposition----"
"Oh, not all that, Jim! Lucy--that's the mother--and I used to visit like this when we were girls. It was done then," his wife replied with an air of equable amusement.
She added, "I rather think I did most of the visiting. I was awf'ly fond of Lucy."
"That's different. You'll have a total stranger on your hands. . . . Are you sure she speaks English?"
"Oh, dear yes, she speaks English--don't you remember her in Rome? She was the littlest one. All the children speak English, Lucy wrote, except Francisco who is 'very Italian,' which means he is a fascinating spendthrift like the father, I suppose. . . . I imagine," said Mrs. Blair, "that Lucy has not found life in a palace all a bed of roses."
"I remember the palace. . . . Warming pans!" said Mr. Blair grimly.
His ill-humor lasted until the first glimpse of Maria Angelina's slender figure, and the first glance of Maria Angelina's trustfully appealing eyes.
"Welcome to America," he said then very heartily, both his hands closing over the small fingers. "Welcome--_very_ welcome, my dear."
And though Maria Angelina never knew it and Cousin Jane Blair never told, that was Maria Angelina's first American triumph.
Some nine hours afterwards a stoutish gentleman in gray and a thinnish lady in beige and a fragile looking girl in white wound their way from the outer to the inner circle of tables next the dancing floor of the Vandevoort.