"Pure bred?"

"I don't know."

"I fancy I must have run across him somewhere in or about Naples. It
is he who made Vere, as I told her, look so insolently young this
morning."

"Ah, you noticed! I, too, thought I had never seen her so full of the
inner spirit of youth--almost as he was in Sicily."

"Yes," Artois said, gravely. "In some things she is very much his
daughter."

"In some things only?" asked Hermione.

"Don't you think so? Don't you think she has much of you in her also?
I do."

"Has she? I don't know that I see it. I don't know that I want to see
it. I always look for him in Vere. You see, I dreamed of having a boy.
Vere is instead of the boy I dreamed of, the boy--who never came, who
will never come."

"My friend," said Artois, very seriously and gently, "are you still
allowing your mind to dwell upon that old imagination? And with Vere
before you, can you regard her merely as a substitute, an understudy?"

An energy that was not free from passion suddenly flamed up in
Hermione.