Artois followed her. As he went he said to Ruffo in the Neapolitan
dialect:

"It's a good cigarette, isn't it? You are in luck this morning."

"Si, Signore," said the boy, smiling. "The Signorina gave me ten."

And he blew out a happy cloud.

There was something in his welcoming readiness of response, something
in his look and voice, that seemed to stir within the tenacious mind
of Artois a quivering chord of memory.

"I wonder if I have spoken to that boy in Naples?" he thought, as he
mounted the steps behind Vere.

Hermione met him at the door of her room, and they went in almost
directly to lunch with Vere. When the meal was over Vere disappeared,
without saying why, and Hermione and Artois returned to Hermione's
room to have coffee. By this time the day was absolutely windless, the
sky had become nearly white, and the sea was a pale gray, flecked here
and there with patches of white.

"This is like a June day of scirocco," said Artois, as he lit his pipe
with the air of a man thoroughly at home. "I wonder if it will succeed
in affecting Vere's spirits. This morning, when I arrived, she looked
wildly young. But the day held still some blue then."

Hermione was settling herself slowly in a low chair near the window