She put on her dress and fastened it. At the age of sixteen she had put up her hair, but now it was still wet, and she had left it streaming over her shoulders. In a moment she was going out onto the cliff to let the sun dry it thoroughly. The sun was so much better than any towel. With her hair down she really looked like a child, whatever Gaspare thought. She said that to herself, standing for a moment before the glass. Vere was almost as divinely free from self-consciousness as her father had been. But the conversation in the boat had made her think of herself very seriously, and now she considered herself, not without keen interest.
“I am certainly not a wicked baby,” she said to herself. “But I don’t think I look at all like a woman.”
Her dark eyes met the eyes in the glass and smiled.
“And yet I shall be seventeen quite soon. What can have made Gaspare talk like that to Madre? I wonder what he said exactly. And then that about ‘women cannot talk to everybody as children can.’ Now what—?”
Ruffo came into her mind.
“Ah!” she said, aloud.
The figure in the glass made a little gesture. It threw up its hand.
“That’s it! That’s it! Gaspare thinks—”
“Signorina! Signorina!”
Gaspare’s voice was speaking outside the door. And now there came a firm knock. Vere turned round, rather startled. She had been very much absorbed by her colloquy.