“Nor mine, either,” said Miss Vivian. “I am not fond of absolute tranquillity.”

“How do you arrange it, then, with your mother?”

Again she looked at him a moment, with her clever, slightly mocking smile.

“As you see. By making her come where I wish.”

“You have a strong will,” said Bernard. “I see that.”

“No. I have simply a weak mother. But I make sacrifices too, sometimes.”

“What do you call sacrifices?”

“Well, spending the winter at Sorrento.”

Bernard began to laugh, and then he told her she must have had a very happy life—“to call a winter at Sorrento a sacrifice.”

“It depends upon what one gives up,” said Miss Vivian.