ould be in comparison with the life that had been. And
he told her finally that what she wished to do was morbid, was unworthy
of her strength of character, was even wicked now that she was a mother.
He brought before her mind those widows who make a cult of their dead.
Would she be one of them? Would she steep a little child in such an
atmosphere of memories, casting a young and tender mind backward into a
cruel past instead of leading it forward into a joyous present? Maurice
had been the very soul of happiness. Vere must be linked with the
sunbeams. With his utmost subtlety Artois described and traced the
effect upon a tiny and sensitive child of a mother's influence, whether
for good or evil, until Hermione, who had a deep reverence for his
knowledge of all phases of human nature, at last, almost in despite of
the truth within her, of the interior voice which said to her, "With you
and Vere it would not be so," caught alarm from his apparent alarm, drew
distrust of herself from his apparent distrust of her.

Gaspare, too, played his part. When Hermione spoke to him of returning
to the priest's house, almost wildly, and with the hot energy that
bursts so readily up in Sicilians, he begged her not to go back to the
_maledetta casa_ in which his Padrone's dead body had lain. As he spoke
a genuine fear of the cottage came upon him. All the latent superstition
that dwells in the contadino was stirred as dust by a wind. In clouds
it flew up about his mind. Fear looked out of his great eyes. Dread was
eloquent in his gestures. And he, too, referred to the child, to the
_povera piccola bambina_. It would cast ill-luck on the child to bring
her up in a chamber of death. Her saint would forsake her. She too would
die. The boy worked himself up into a fever. His face was white. Drops
of sweat stood on his forehead.

He had set out to be deceptive--what he would have called _un poco
birbante_, and he had even deceived himself. He knew that it would
be dangerous for his Padrona to live again near Marechiaro. Any day
a chance scrap of gossip might reach her ears. In time she would
be certain almost to hear something of the dead Padrone's close
acquaintance with the dwellers in the Casa delle Sirene. She would
question him, perhaps. She would suspect something. She would inquire.
She would search. She would find out the hideous truth. It was this
fear which made him argue on the same side as Artois. But in doing so he
caught anot