Again and again he repeated those words, "/La povera bambina--la
povera piccola bambina/." And at last Hermione was overcome.

"I won't go to Sicily," she said to Artois. "For if I went there I
could only go to Monte Amato. I won't go until Vere is old enough to
wish to go, to wish to see the house where her father and I were
happy."

And she had never gone back. For Artois had not been satisfied with
this early victory.

In returning from a tour in North America the following spring, when
Vere was nearly two years old, he had paid a visit to Marechiaro, and,
while there, had seen the contadino from whom Hermione had rented, and
still rented, the house of the priest. The man was middle-aged,
ignorant but shrewd, and very greedy. Artois made friends with him,
and casually, over a glass of /moscato/, talked about his affairs and
the land question in Sicily. The peasant became communicative and, of
course, loud in his complaining. His land yielded nothing. The price
of almonds had gone down. The lemon crop had been ruined by the
storms. As to the vines--they were all devoured by the phylloxera, and
he had no money to buy and plant vines from America. Artois hinted
that he received a good rent from the English lady for the cottage on
Monte Amato. The contadino acknowledged that he received a fair price
for the cottage and the land about it; but the house, he declared,
would go to rack and ruin with no one ever in it, and the land was
lying idle, for the English lady would have everything left exactly as
it had been when she lived there with her husband. Artois seized upon
this hint of what was in the peasant's mind, and bemoaned with him his
situation. The house ought to be occupied, the land all about it, up