at her, and she no doubt tasted the ironical flavor of much of his talk
and behavior, for in those days he liked to qualify his devotion to the
Vervains with a certain nonchalant slight, which, while the mother
openly enjoyed it, filled the daughter with anger and apprehension.
Quite at random, she visited points of his informal manner with
unmeasured reprisal; others, for which he might have blamed himself,
she passed over with strange caprice. Sometimes this attitude of hers
provoked him, and sometimes it disarmed him; but whether they were at
feud, or keeping an armed truce, or, as now and then happened, were in
an _entente cordiale_ which he found very charming, the thing that
he always contrived to treat with silent respect and forbearance in
Miss Vervain was that sort of aggressive tenderness with which she
hastened to shield the foibles of her mother. That was something very
good in her pride, he finally decided. At the same time, he did not
pretend to understand the curious filial self-sacrifice which it
involved.

Another thing in her that puzzled him was her devoutness. Mrs. Vervain
could with difficulty be got to church, but her daughter missed no
service of the English ritual in the old palace where the British and
American tourists assembled once a week with their guide-books in one
pocket and their prayer-books in the other, and buried the tomahawk
under the altar. Mr. Ferris was often sent with her; and then his
thoughts, which were a young man's, wandered from the service to the
beautiful girl at his side,--the golden head that punctiliously bowed
itself at the proper places in the liturgy: the full lips that murmured
the responses; the silken lashes that swept her pale cheeks as she
perused the morning lesson. He knew that the Vervains were not
Episcopalians when at home, for Mrs. Vervain had told him so, and that
Florida went to the English service because there was no other. He