She said "with me," not "with us"—ignoring the child.
Her hours were so long and so dull, she complained, and she loved conversation; to hear about, and talk about, everything that was going on in the world; the political and the social, the scientific and the literary world. Art, letters, everything interested her; and she had only such driblets of news as Dr. Wilmot could bring her.
"The man is fairly intelligent, but oh, so narrow," she complained.
"It will be an act of real benevolence if you will drop in at tea-time," urged Grannie, when Provana was taking leave.
He promised to be benevolent, to take tea with Grannie every afternoon, if so dull a person's company could give her any pleasure. He knew no one at San Marco, wanted to know no one. He had come there only to be near his daughter for a little while, just a short spell of thought and rest.
"If I had been a good Catholic, I should have gone into retreat at the nearest monastery," he said; "but my religion is too vague and shadowy for such discipline; so I just wander about among the woods and hills, and think, and remember."
The profound melancholy with which those words were spoken convinced Grannie that, although his sorrow was half a year old, it was still an absorbing grief, and that she must be prepared to take him seriously.
Vera felt a certain shyness about going to the spot where so many of her afternoons had been spent. Signor Provana might be there before her, and she would seem to intrude upon his sorrow. He had told them why he had come to San Marco. He must want to be alone with sad thoughts and cherished memories.
She took last year's dull walk on the parade, and met several of her hotel acquaintances, one of whom, no less a personage than Lady Jones, stopped to talk.
"I hear you had a visitor yesterday afternoon," she said; "the Italian millionaire. Miss Mason saw him leave the hotel after dark. He must have stopped with her ladyship quite a long time."