the island, and she would dive from them. Sometimes, if it was very
hot, he would take her to the Grotto of Virgil. Sometimes they went
far out to sea, and then, like her father in the Ionian Sea before the
Casa delle Sirene, Vere would swim away and imagine that this was her
mode of travel, that she was journeying alone to some distant land, or
that she had been taken by the sea forever.

But very soon she would be sure to hear the soft splash of oars
following her, and, looking back, would see the large, attentive eyes
of the faithful Gaspare cautiously watching her dark head. Then she
would lift up one hand, and call to him to go, and say she did not
want him, that she wished to be alone, smiling and yet imperious. He
only followed quietly and inflexibly. She would dive. She would swim
under water. She would swim her fastest, as if really anxious to
escape him. It was a game between them now. But always he was there,
intent upon her safety.

Vere did not know the memories within Gaspare that made him such a
guardian to the child of the Padrone he had loved; but she loved him
secretly for his watchfulness, even though now and then she longed to
be quite alone with the sea. And this she never was when bathing, for
Hermione had exacted a promise from her not to go to bathe without
Gaspare. In former days Vere had once or twice begun to protest
against this prohibition, but something in her mother's eyes had
stopped her. And she had remembered:

"Father was drowned in the sea."

Then, understanding something of what was in her mother's heart, she
threw eager arms about her, and anxiously promised to be good.