cruel to the woman who roused all his tenderness, all his protective
instinct.

"I shall not go back to Marechiaro now," Hermione said. "I shall not
go back even to see the grave. I could never feel that anything of his
spirit lingered there. But I did feel, I should have felt again, as if
something of him still loved that little house on the mountain, still
stayed among the oak-trees. It seemed to me that when I took Vere to
the Casa del Prete she would have learned to know something of her
father there that she could never have learned to know in another
place. But now--no, I shall not go back. If I did I should even lose
my memories, perhaps, and I could not bear that."

And she had not returned. Gaspare went to Marechiaro sometimes, to see
his family and his friends. He visited the grave and saw that it was
properly kept. But Hermione remained in Italy. For some time she lived
near Florence, first at Fiesole, later at Bellosguardo. When the
summer heat came she took a villa at the Abetone. Or she spent some
months with Vere beside the sea. As the girl grew older she developed
a passion for the sea, and seemed to care little for the fascination
of the pine forests. Hermione, noting this, gave up going to the
Abetone and took a house by the sea for the whole summer. Two years
they were at Santa Margherita, one year at Sorrento.

Then, sailing one evening on the sea towards Bagnoli, they saw the
house on the islet beyond the Pool of San Francesco. Vere was
enchanted by it.

"To live in it," she exclaimed, "would be almost like living in the
sea!"