went there?"

"Yes."

"Was she as usual?"

"I don't think she was. I think Madre has been changing nearly all this
summer. That is why I am so afraid. You know she has been changing."

He was silent. The difficulty of the situation was great. He did not
know how to resolve it.

"You have seen the change, Monsieur Emile!"

He did not deny it. He did not know what to do or say. For of that
change, although perhaps now he partly understood it, he could never
speak to Vere or to any one.

"It has made me so unhappy," Vere said, with a break in her voice.

And he had said to himself: "Vere must be happy!" At that moment he and
his intellect seemed to him less than a handful of dust.

"But this change of to-day is different," he said, slowly. "Your mother
has had a dreadful shock."

"At Mergellina?"

"It must have been there."

"But what could it be? We scarcely ever go there. We don't know any one
there--oh, except Ruffo."

Her eyes, keen and bright with youth, even though they had been crying,
were fixed upon his face while she was speaking, and she saw a sudden
conscious look in his eyes, a movement of his lips--he drew them sharply
together, as if seized by a spasm.

"Ruffo!" she repeated. "Has it something to do with Ruffo?"

There was a profound perplexity in her face, but the fear in it was
less.

"Something to do with Ruffo?" she repeated.

Suddenly she moved, she got up. And all the fear had come back to her
face, with something added to it, something intensely personal.

"Do you mean--is Ruffo dead?" she whispered.

A voice rose up from the sea singing a sad little song. Vere turned
towards the sea. All her body relaxed. The voice passed on. The sad
little song passed under the cliff, to the Saint's Pool and the lee of
the island.

"Ah, Monsieur Emile," she said, "why don't you tell me?"

She swayed. He put his arm quickly behind her.

"No, no! It's all right. That was Ruffo!"

And she smiled.

At that moment Artois longed to tell her the truth. To do so would
surely be to do something that was beautiful. But he dared not--he had
no right.

A bell rang in the house, loudly, persistently, tearing its silence.
Gaspare turned angrily from the rail, with an expression of apprehension
on his face.

Giulia was summoning the household to dinner.

"Perhaps--perhaps Madre will come down," Vere whispered.

Gaspare passed them and went into the house quickly. They knew he had
gone to see