Carmella Commands
international. Unconsciously that day she cut short the South American lesson to turn to the rules of percentage. And she noted with interest that Carmella devoted herself to figures as never before.
“Somebody’s cheated her out of a dime,” thought Miss Kelly, little dreaming that Carmella was dreaming in terms of thousands of dollars.
What the girl was, in fact, dreaming at the time was less dream than nightmare. Her father had set four thousand dollars as his price. She had heard the Americans say that Mr. Barrington would pay up to double the value. Yet they had offered nothing like twice Tommaso’s figure.
Her opinion, after an afternoon and night of feverish worry, was that they had been commissioned to buy up to a certain sum, and were trying to pay less in order to pocket the difference. This theory presupposed that her father had named a price in fair proportion to value. She believed that Tommaso would do that.
And yet⸺
It swept over her in sudden tremors that he might have added all the possible profit for himself, before setting his figure. In which case all her dreams of sudden prosperity were void, and life held nothing but horror for her. Yet always, after a trembling spell, her thoughts came back to the secure belief that her father was not American enough for that.
If he had said four thousand, believing that the
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