new way. She
was growing up. She was passing from childhood into girlhood. She was
developing swiftly. That development fascinated me. Of course I had
always been very fond of Vere. But this summer she meant more to me than
she had meant. One day--it was the day I came back to the island after
my visit to Paris--"

"Yes?"

He looked at her, trying to read what she was feeling in her face, but
it was too dark for him to discern it.

"Vere made a confession to me. She told me she was working secretly,
that she was writing poems. I asked her to show them to me. She did so.
I found some talent in them, enough for me to feel justified in telling
her to continue. Once, Hermione, you consulted me. Then my advice was
different."

"I know."

"The remembrance of this, and Vere's knowledge that you had suffered in
not succeeding with work, prompted us to keep the matter of her attempts
to write a secret for the time. It seems a trifle--all this, but looking
back now I feel that we were quite wrong in not telling you."

"I found it out."

"You knew?"

"I went to Vere's room. The poems were on the table with your
corrections. I read them."

"We ought to have told you."

"I oughtn't to have read them, but I did."

"A mother has the right--"

"Not a mother who has resigned her right to question her child. I had
said to Vere, 'Keep your secrets.' So I had no right, and I did wrong in
reading them."

He felt that she was instinctively trying to match his sincerity with
hers, and that fact helped him to continue.

"The knowledge of this budding talent of Vere's made me take a new
interest in her, made me wish very much--at least I thought, I believed
it was that, Hermione--that no disturbing influence should come into
her life. Isidoro Panacci came--through me. Peppina came--through you.
Hermione, on the night when Vere and I went out alone together in
the boat Vere learned the truth about Peppina and the life behind the
shutter."

"I knew that, too."

"You knew it?"

"Yes. I suspected something. You led me to suspect it."

"I remember--"

"I questioned Peppina. I made her tell me."

He said nothing for a moment. Then, with an effort, he said:

"You knew we had kept those two things from you, Vere and I?"

"Vere and you--yes."

Now he understood almost all, or quite all, that had been strange to him
in her recent conduct.

"Sometimes--have you almost hated us for keeping those two secrets?"

"I don't