and suddenly made her eyes look very round, and staring,
and impudent.

"He's like that, Gaspare," she said.

"Vere!" said her mother.

Then she added to Gaspare:

"The Marchese is a friend of Don Emilio's. Ah! and here is a letter from
Don Emilio."

It was lying beside the Marchese's card with some other letters.
Hermione opened it first, and read that Artois had been unexpectedly
called away to Paris on business, but intended to return to Naples as
soon as possible, and to spend the whole summer on the Bay.

"I feel specially that this summer I should like to be near you," he
wrote. "I hope you wish it."

At the end of the letter there was an allusion to the Marchesino,
"that gay and admirably characteristic Neapolitan product, the Toledo
incarnate."

There was not a word of Vere.

Hermione read the letter aloud to Vere, who was standing beside her,
evidently hoping to hear it. When she had finished, Vere said:

"I am glad Monsieur Emile will be here all the summer."

"Yes."

"But why specially this summer, Madre?"

"I am not sure what he means by that," Hermione answered.

But she remembered the conversation in the Grotto of Virgil, and
wondered if her friend thought she needed the comfort of his presence.

"Well, Madre?"

Vere's bright eyes were fixed upon her mother.

"Well, Vere? What is it?"

"Is there no message for me from Monsieur Emile?"

"No, Vere."

"How forgetful of him! But never mind!" She went upstairs, looking
disappointed.

Hermione re-read the letter. She wondered, perhaps more than Vere, why
there was no message for the child. The child--she was still calling
Vere that in her mind, even after the night conversation with Gaspare.
Two or three times she re-read that sentence, "I feel specially that
this summer I should like to be near you," and considered it; but she
finally put the letter away with a strong feeling that most of its
meaning lay between the lines, and that she had not, perhaps, the power
to interpret it.

Vere had said that Emile was forgetful. He might be many things, but
forgetful he was not. One of his most characteristic qualities was his
exceptionally sharp consciousness of himself and of others. Hermione
knew that he was incapable of writing to her and forgetting Vere while
he was doing so.

She did not exactly know why, but the result upon her of this letter was
a certain sense of depression, a slight and vague foreboding. And yet
she was glad, s