The woman of passionate impulses--how dangerous she is, even when her
impulses are generous, are noble! Action without thought, though the
prompting heart behind it be a heart of gold--how fatal may it be!

And then he remembered a passionate impulse that had driven a happy
woman across a sea to Africa, and he was ashamed.

Yet again the feeling that was almost like hostility returned. He said
to himself that Hermione should have learned caution in the passing of
so many years, that she ought to have grown older than she had. But
there was something unconquerably young, unconquerably naïve, in her--
something that, it seemed, would never die. Her cleverness went hand
in hand with a short-sightedness that was like a rather beautiful, yet
sometimes irritating stupidity. And this latter quality might
innocently make victims, might even make a victim of her own child.

And then a strange desire rose up in Artois, a desire to protect Vere
against her own mother.

But how could that be done?

Vere, guarded by the beautiful unconsciousness of youth, was unaware
of the subtleties that were brought into activity by her. That the
Marchesino was, or thought himself, in love with her she realized. But
she could not connect any root-sincerity with his feeling. She was
accustomed vaguely to think of all young Southern Italians as
perpetually sighing for some one's dark eyes. The air of the South was
full of love songs that rose and fell without much more meaning than a
twitter of birds, that could not be stilled because it was so natural.
And the Marchesino was a young aristocrat who did absolutely nothing