to
Hermione year by year, and had no contract with her extending beyond a
twelve-months' lease. Before Artois left Marechiaro the tender treachery
was arranged. When the year's lease was up, the contadino wrote to her
declining to renew it. She answered, protesting, offering more money.
But it was all in vain. The man replied that he had already let the
cottage and the land around it to a grower of vines for a long term of
years, and that he was getting double the annual price she offered.

Hermione was indignant and bitterly distressed. When this letter reached
her she was at Fiesole with Vere in a villa which she had taken. She
would probably have started at once for Sicily; but Vere was just then
ill with some infantile complaint, and could not be left. Artois,
who was in Rome, and had received from her the news of this carefully
arranged disaster, offered to go to Sicily on her behalf--and actually
went. He returned to tell her that the house of the priest was already
occupied by contadini, and all the land up to the very door in process
of being dug up and planted with vines. It was useless to make any
further offer. The thing was done.

Hermione said nothing, but Artois saw in her eyes how keenly she was
suffering, and turned his own eyes away. He was only trying to preserve
her from greater unhappiness, the agony of ever finding out the truth;
but he felt guilty at that moment, and as if he had been cruel to the
woman who roused all his tenderness, all his protective instinct.

"I shall not go back to Marechiaro now," Hermione said. "I shall not
go back even to see the grave. I could never feel that anything of his
spirit lingered there. But I did feel, I should have felt again, as if
something of him still loved that little house on the mountain, still
stayed among the oak-trees. It seemed to me that when I took Vere to the
Casa del Prete she would have learned to know something of her father
there that she could never have learned to know in another place. But
now--no, I shall not go back. If I did I should even lose my memories,
perhaps, and I could not bear that."

And she had not returned. Gaspare went to Marechiaro sometimes, to see
his family and his friends. He visited the grave and saw that it was
properly kept. But Hermione remained in Italy. For some time she lived
near Florence, first at Fiesole, later at Bellosguardo. When the summer
heat came she took a villa at the Abetone. Or she spent some mo