There was room for the two girls on the cushions of the silken couch that was rather broader than the ordinary chaise longue. Golden hair and dark hair mingled, after Lucia arranged the cushions and settled down herself with her head in the curve of Betty’s shoulder and neck. She possessed herself of Betty’s hand and said, “I hope you don’t mind these close quarters.”

“I’m as comfy as can be,” returned Betty, giving a squeeze to the slender hand.

“You are such a comfortable person, Betty Lee, and I don’t feel that you are ready to take up everything a girl says or does to criticize it. I’ve been envying Carolyn and Kathryn for seeing so much of you.”

“Why, Lucia!” cried Betty, very much surprised. “I have time for more than one or two friends!”

“I know it and that is why I want to talk to you about things. By the way, Grandmother called you Mary, I noticed. There was a young friend of Aunt Laura’s, when she was a girl, by that name—Uncle said. If Grandmother could go to sleep by ‘Willie’ and never wake up, except in heaven, it would be a blessing. I’m glad I thought of taking the dolls to her, though it might have started a good deal of trouble, too. But she usually takes everything sweetly. That’s the advantage of having a good disposition, I suppose, if you lose your mind.”

“I’m afraid it might not make any difference; but its worth cultivating anyhow,” suggested sensible Betty.

“‘Like sweet bells jangled and out of tune’ Uncle says her mind is, but not ‘harsh,’ as Ophelia says of Hamlet. I thought of it when we were reading Hamlet in English the other day. But that isn’t what I want to talk to you about. It is what I am going to do about staying in America—and that brings in other things. I hardly know how to begin.”

Betty said nothing, but laid her cheek over against Lucia’s soft hair.

“If you only understood Italian, Betty! Che peccato! That means ‘What a pity’—for I’ll forget myself and want to drop into my natural tongue when I’m telling about home and my father and mother. If I forget and say anything that you do not understand, just remind me, please.”

“I wish I did know Italian. Maybe I could learn to speak it some time.”

“It’s easy, especially when you know Latin and French.”

This was the introduction to Lucia’s story. She did drop into Italian at times, but caught herself. Betty missed nothing important.

“You can imagine, Betty, how I dreaded coming to America to stay when I tell you that it was at the end of a terrible quarrel between my father and mother. I do not mean a loud, awful time, but one of those still, quiet stiletto exchanges of opinions and decisions. My father accused my mother of not caring for him. Mother set her teeth and said that the matter was of no consequence one way or another because it was quite clear that he had never cared for her. And, Betty, both of them love each other dearly, though I suppose it has gone too far for anything but one of those dreadful divorces. This last talk was before me, and I tried to say something; but both of them told me to keep quiet. It had to be talked through.

“The point was this. My uncle had begged her to come for a while, writing her about Aunt Laura’s death and Grandmother’s condition and business worries, and some of her money is in the business, you know. Then she wanted to have me in American schools for a while. Also she was homesick. School was an excuse.

“That would have been an interesting thing for me if it had not been for the trouble between my father and my mother. He was tired of trips to America, he said. Oh, one thing led to another and they were so far apart it makes me sick to think about it all. Finally I think my father told her that if she went to America to stay any length of time, that is, to stay with me while I was having what she wanted in school for me, she need not come back, so far as he was concerned. And she said she never would. Betty, my mother packed up and so did my father; and after the next day—I’ve never seen my father since.”

Lucia choked a little, stopped and used the little handkerchief again.

“Before he married my mother he was interested in travel and hunting and all that. So he started right away, for an eastern trip first, over into India and other countries, and now he is on an African safari; he wrote me just before he left Cairo for some other point. I’ve heard from him as often as it was possible for him to write. He does not intend to let me go, you know. He said she might have her way for a while with the schools, but that he would come for me. He never asks how my mother is, or mentions her at all. But when I write, I tell him; for I know he wants to know. I tell him about how well she is and a little bit about what she is doing. In the last letter I said, ‘to keep from being too unhappy and missing you.’

“I casually mention hearing from my father to my mother and I leave the letter where she can read it, pretending to take it for granted that she will read it, of course. But Mother wouldn’t ask for the letters and for a long time I think she didn’t read them, till one day I wanted to look up something my father said about what he was doing and I found several old letters to me lying on Mother’s desk. Of course she had been called somewhere and had forgotten to take them back to my room. It did not matter, to be sure, except to keep from me that she wanted to read them. Do you think I am very dreadful to tell anybody all this, Betty? You see I want you to tell me what else you think I could do.”

But Lucia did not wait for Betty’s comment. She went on with the account.

“I’m not going to put up with it, Betty! I’m going back to my father this summer if he wants me! I’m putting by enough money for my fare and passage across, though I think I could cash a draft from him without their finding it out. Perhaps that would bring Mother! I don’t know! I’ve thought and thought about it until I’m most sick over it now.” Lucia checked a sob.

“You saw that horrid man at the table tonight and heard the silly compliments he makes to my mother. She doesn’t care a centime for him; but she’s getting so reckless with all this social stuff that I’m most scared for fear she will start divorce proceedings.”

“Couldn’t you talk to your uncle about it?” asked Betty, who thought it a terrible situation indeed. “It doesn’t seem to me that it would do for you to just go off, even if your father does want you.”

“I will if my mother is going to leave him. I almost ran away to keep from coming.” Lucia’s voice was defiant.

“Well, then, why don’t you write to your father, tell him that you know your mother loves him and tell him just to come over and get her!”

Lucia laughed then. “The girls would say that you are old-fashioned, Betty. Men don’t carry their wives off nowadays.”

Betty laughed but asserted that they “ought to sometimes.” “It’s their business to take care of their wives and if their wives are—mistaken—to prove it to them. My father would say, ‘Now, dear, this is all a mistake. You come right along home with me and I’ll explain it to you!’”

“What if she wouldn’t go?”

“Then he’d tell her that they must think of the children first and that two people who wanted to do the right thing ought to get along somehow, even if they didn’t love each other. I’ve heard them both say that, about other people.”

“You asked me if I couldn’t talk to my uncle. I would only that Mother did when we first came and told him all the cutting things my father had said. Uncle just raved and was for a legal separation right away, but my mother saw she had gone too far and told him that they would wait. My uncle called him a fortune hunter; and he thought that about him anyway, before they were married. They talked about it that time in Milan.”

Betty could imagine what sharp things must have been said. She was quiet, thinking over what Lucia had told her and Lucia stopped to wipe her eyes again.

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “it’s helped clear things up, some way, to talk with you, Betty. I believe I will write and tell my father to come and ‘get her!’ I could ask him if neither of them cared enough about me to try to make up, and if he wanted to see some other man fall in love with my mother and try to win her, all for the want of his making love the way he can. Oh, you ought to see my father, Betty. Giovanna says that they fell in love at first sight because of their looks. And my father is not a fortune hunter! He hasn’t as much money as my mother has and I suppose that is one reason why he was so proud about the whole thing; but he has a good home in Milan. You’d love it, Betty, and I hope you’ll be in it some day. Oh!”

Now, indeed, Lucia cried in earnest and Betty, holding her affectionately, let her cry it out.