“I’ll get tickets for the enclosure in the Piazza. We shall have seats there. And you can bring Gaspare, if you like. Then you will have three cavaliers.”
“Yes, I should like Gaspare to come,” said Hermione.
There was a sound of warmth in her hitherto rather cold voice when she said that.
“How you rely on Gaspare!” Artois said, almost as if with a momentary touch of vexation.
“Indeed I do,” Hermione answered.
Their eyes met, surely almost with hostility.
“Madre knows how Gaspare adores her,” said Vere, gently. “If there were any danger he’d never hesitate. He’d save Madre if he left every other human being in the world to perish miserably—including me.”
“Vere!”
“You know quite well he would, Madre.”
They talked a little more. Presently Vere seemed to be feeling restless. Artois noticed it, and watched her. Once or twice she got up, without apparent reason. She pulled at the branches of the fig-trees. She gathered a flower. She moved away, and leaned upon the wall. Finally, when her mother and Artois had fallen into conversation about some new book, she slipped very quietly away.