Veronica smiled. "That would be quite
impossible. She has always been accustomed to being mistress in the
house, and if she lived with me, she would be my guest. She would not
like to accept that position. Just imagine! I would not even let her
order dinner."

"You might let her do that, by way of a compromise, my child."

"Oh--but she does it abominably! That is one reason for not living with
her!"

The cardinal could not help laughing at Veronica's statement of the
case.

"I see," he said. "She poisoned you!" And he laughed again.

"Yes," answered Veronica. "That was exactly it. She poisoned us all."

She smiled to herself at the terrible truth of the words which so much
amused the cardinal; but she continued to talk in the same strain,
giving him the infinity of small reasons, under which a clever woman
will hide her chief one, confusing a man's impression of the whole by
her superior handling of its parts, exaggerating the one detail and
belittling the next, until all proportion and true perspective are lost,
and the man leaves her with the sensation of having been delicately
taken to pieces, and put together again with his face turned backwards,
over his shoulders.

When, on leaving him, Veronica deposited the traditional and perfunctory
kiss upon his sapphire ring, Cardinal Campodonico felt that his late
ward had been a match for him at all points, and that after all it was
not such a great thing to be a man, if one could not do better than he
had done. If he consoled himself with the fact that Eve had out-argued
Adam, he was mentally confronted by the reflexion that Adam had been a
layman, and had not been called upon to sustain the dignity of a
cardinal and an archbishop. He determined, however, that he would renew
the attempt before long. If Veronica would not leave Bianca's villa, and
live in some other way, he would oblige his niece to cut the situation
short and go away for a journey.

But Veronica had no intention of quartering herself upon her friend for
any great length of time; and perhaps, under the circumstances, she did
the best thing she could in going directly to her. Bianca was discreet,
and lived very quietly, receiving few people and going very little into
the world. The villa itself was at some distance from the centre of
Neapolitan life, so that the average idle man or woman thought twice
before calling, without a distinct object, and merely for a cup of tea
and a cup-of-tea's worth