well placed as to greatly improve the defect of the close-set eyes.
There was a marvellous genuine freshness of colour in the clear
complexion, and the woman carried her head well upon a really
magnificent neck. She was strong and vital and healthy, and her
personality was as distinctly dominating as her physical self. Yet she
was generally very careful not to displease her husband, even when he
was capricious, and Veronica was sometimes surprised by the apparent
weakness with which she yielded to him in matters about which she had as
good a right as he to an opinion and a decision. The girl supposed that
her aunt was not so strong as she seemed to be, when actually brought
face to face with the rough ice of Gregorio Macomer's character.

Veronica made her observations discreetly and kept them to herself, as
was not only becoming but wise. At first the change from the
semi-cloistered existence of the convent in Rome to the life at the
Palazzo Macomer had dazzled the girl and had confused her ideas. But
with the natural desire of the very young to seem experienced, she had
begun by manifesting no surprise at anything she saw; and she had soon
discovered that, although she was supposed to be living in the society
of the most idle and pleasure-loving city in the world, her surroundings
were in reality neither gay nor dazzling, but decidedly monotonous and
dull. She had dim, childish memories of magnificent things in her
father's house, though the main impression was that of his death,
following closely, as she had been told, upon her mother's. Of the
latter, she could remember nothing. In dreams she saw beautiful things,
and brilliant light and splendid pictures and enchanted gardens, and
when she awoke she felt that the dreams had been recollections of what
she had seen, and of what still belonged to her. But she sought the
reality in vain. The grand old palace in the Toledo was hers, she was
told, but it was let for a term of years to the municipality and was