tiest of the year, they tell me. Why should not you and Vere come
to dine at the Hotel, or in the Galleria, with me? I will ask Panacci to
join us, and we will all go on afterwards to see the illuminations,
and the fireworks, and the sending up of the fire-balloons. What do you
say?"

"Would you like it, Vere?"

"Immensely, Madre."

She spoke quietly, but she looked pleased at the idea.

"Won't the crowd be very bad, though?" asked Hermione.

"I'll get tickets for the enclosure in the Piazza. We shall have seats
there. And you can bring Gaspare, if you like. Then you will have three
cavaliers."

"Yes, I should like Gaspare to come," said Hermione.

There was a sound of warmth in her hitherto rather cold voice when she
said that.

"How you rely on Gaspare!" Artois said, almost as if with a momentary
touch of vexation.

"Indeed I do," Hermione answered.

Their eyes met, surely almost with hostility.

"Madre knows how Gaspare adores her," said Vere, gently. "If there were
any danger he'd never hesitate. He'd save Madre if he left every other
human being in the world to perish miserably--including me."

"Vere!"

"You know quite well he would, Madre."

They talked a little more. Presently Vere seemed to be feeling restless.
Artois noticed it, and watched her. Once or twice she got up, without
apparent reason. She pulled at the branches of the fig-trees. She
gathered a flower. She moved away, and leaned upon the wall. Finally,
when her mother and Artois had fallen into conversation about some new
book, she slipped very quietly away.

Hermione and Artois continued their conversation, though without much
animation. At length, however, some remark of Hermione led Artois to
speak of the book he was writing. Very often and very openly in the days
gone by she had discussed with him his work. Now, feeling the barrier
between them, he fancied that perhaps it might be removed more easily
by such another discussion. And this notion of his was not any proof of
want of subtlety on his part. Without knowing why, Hermione felt a
lack of self-confidence, a distressing, an almost unnatural humbleness
to-day. He partially divined the feeling. Possibly it sprang from their
difference of opinion on the propriety of Vere's reading his books. He
thought it might be so. And he wanted to oust Hermione gently from her
low stool and to show her himself seated there. Filled with this idea,
he began to ask her advice about the task