er.

But very soon she would be sure to hear the soft splash of oars
following her, and, looking back, would see the large, attentive eyes of
the faithful Gaspare cautiously watching her dark head. Then she would
lift up one hand, and call to him to go, and say she did not want him,
that she wished to be alone, smiling and yet imperious. He only followed
quietly and inflexibly. She would dive. She would swim under water. She
would swim her fastest, as if really anxious to escape him. It was a
game between them now. But always he was there, intent upon her safety.

Vere did not know the memories within Gaspare that made him such a
guardian to the child of the Padrone he had loved; but she loved him
secretly for his watchfulness, even though now and then she longed to
be quite alone with the sea. And this she never was when bathing, for
Hermione had exacted a promise from her not to go to bathe without
Gaspare. In former days Vere had once or twice begun to protest against
this prohibition, but something in her mother's eyes had stopped her.
And she had remembered:

"Father was drowned in the sea."

Then, understanding something of what was in her mother's heart, she
threw eager arms about her, and anxiously promised to be good.

One afternoon of the summer, towards the middle of June, she prolonged
her bathe in the Grotto of Virgil until Gaspare used his authority, and
insisted on her coming out of the water.

"One minute more, Gaspare! Only another minute!"

"Ma Signorina!"

She dived. She came up.

"Ma veramente Signorina!"

She dived again.

Gaspare waited. He was standing up in the boat with the oars in his
hands, ready to make a dash at his Padroncina directly she reappeared,
but she was wily, and came up behind the boat with a shrill cry that
startled him. He looked round reproachfully over his shoulder.

"Signorina," he said, turning the boat round, "you are like a wicked
baby to-day."

"What is it, Gaspare?" she asked, this time letting him come towards
her.

"I say that you are like a wicked baby. And only the other day I was
saying to the Signora--"

"What were you saying?"

She swam to the boat and got in.

"What?" she repeated, sitting down on the gunwale, while he began to row
towards the islet.

"I was saying that you are nearly a woman now."

Vere seemed extraordinarily thin and young as she sat there in her
dripping bathing-dress, with her small, bare feet distilling drops into