r confused,
and opened the former. The wind rushed in, carrying with it spray from
the sea. At the same moment there was a loud tapping on the glass
behind them. Vere looked round. Gaspare was crouching down with his face
against the pane. She put her ear to the glass by his mouth.

"Signorina, you must not go into the bows," he called. "If you will come
out, come here, and I will take care of you."

He knew Vere's love of the sea and understood her desire.

"Go, Vere," said Hermione.

The Marchesino shut the door and stood by it, bending and looking
doubtful.

"I will stay here with the Marchese. I am really too old to face such a
tempest, and the Marchese has no coat. He simply can't go."

"But, Signora, it does not matter! I am ready."

"Impossible. Your clothes would be ruined. Go along, Vere! Turn up your
collar."

She spoke almost as if to a boy, and like a gay boy Vere obeyed her and
slipped out to Gaspare.

"You really won't come, Madre?"

"No. But--tell me if you see the light."

The girl nodded, and the door moved into its place, shutting out the
wind.

Then the Marchesino sat down and looked at his damp patent-leather
boots.

He really could not comprehend these English ladies. That Vere was
greatly attracted by him he thoroughly believed. How could it be
otherwise? Her liveliness he considered direct encouragement. And then
she had gone out to the terrace after dinner, leaving her mother. That
was to make him follow her, of course. She wanted to be alone with
him. In a Neapolitan girl such conduct would have been a declaration.
A Neapolitan mother would not have allowed them to sit together on the
terrace without a chaperon. But the English mother had deliberately
remained within and had kept Caro Emilio with her. What could such
conduct mean, if not that the Signorina was in love with him, the
Marchesino, and that the Signorina's mamma was perfectly willing for him
to make love to her child?

And yet--and yet?

There was something in Vere that puzzled him, that had kept him
strangely discreet upon the terrace, that made him silent and thoughtful
now. Had she been a typical English girl he might have discerned
something of the truth of her. But Vere was lively, daring, passionate,
and not without some traces of half-humorous and wholly innocent
coquetry. She was not at all what the Neapolitan calls "a lump of
snow to cool the wine." In her innocence there was fire. That was what
confuse