“Ruffo.”
“That Ruffo, I should like to run a knife into him under the left shoulder-blade. How dare he, a ragamuffin from some hovel of Naples, make you know that you are unhappy?”
“How strange it is what outside things, or people who have no connection with us or with our lives, can do to us unconsciously!” she said. “I have heard a hundred boys sing on the Bay, seen a hundred rowing their boats into the Pool—and just this one touches some chord, and all the strings of my soul quiver.”
“Some people act upon us somewhat as nature does sometimes. And Vere paid the boy. There is another irony of unconsciousness. Vere, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, rewards your pain-giver. How we hide ourselves from those we love best and live with most intimately! You, her mother, are a stranger to Vere. Does not to-day prove it?”
“Ah, but Vere is not a stranger to me. That is where the mother has the advantage of the child.”
Artois did not make any response to this remark. To cover his silence, perhaps, he grasped the oars more firmly and began to back the boat out of the cave. Both felt that it was no longer necessary to stay in this confessional of the rock.
As they came out under the grayness of the sky, Hermione, with a change of tone, said:
“And your friend? The Marchese—what is his name?”
“Isidoro Panacci.”
“Tell me about him.”