‘I’m not sorry, darling,’ Maria answered with a faint smile. ‘I was thinking of the time when you will be grown up.’
Leone reflected a little.
‘But why should you look sorry for that, mama? You won’t go away and leave me when I’m grown up, will you, to go and live with papa in Spain?’
‘No, dear. I shall certainly not do that.’
Another pause, longer than the first, during which the small boy watched her face keenly, and she shrank a little before the fearless blue eyes.
‘Why does papa never come back to see us?’ he asked.
She had expected the question a long time, and had made up her mind how to meet it when it came; yet she was taken by surprise.
‘Your father’s mother is a great invalid,’ she said, with a little nervous hesitation. ‘He does not like to leave her.’
‘He might come here for a day sometimes,’ answered Leone, not at all satisfied. ‘He doesn’t like us. That’s the reason. I know it is. He doesn’t want us to live in the palace. That’s why we live where we do.’