f.a.n.n.y, who had sunk into an easy-chair, at these words sprang up. "What is the matter? Are you ill?"

"Not in the least, mamma; I am only telling you that I cannot marry Pierre."

"You _must_ be ill," pursued f.a.n.n.y. "You have fever. Don't deny it." And anxiously she took the girl's hands. But Eva's hands were cooler than her own.

"I don't think I have any fever," replied Eva. She had been taught to answer all her mother's questions in fullest detail. "I sleep and eat as usual; I have no headache."

f.a.n.n.y still looked at her anxiously. "Then if you are not ill, what can be the matter with you?"

"I have only told you, mamma, that I could not marry Pierre; it seems to me very simple."

She was so quiet that f.a.n.n.y began at last to realize that she was in earnest. "My dearest, you know you like Pierre. You have told me so yourself."

"I don't like him now."

"What has he done--poor Pierre? He will explain, apologize; you may be sure of that."

"He has done nothing; I don't want him to apologize. He is as he always is. It is I who have changed."

"Oh, it is you who have changed," repeated f.a.n.n.y, bewildered.

"Yes," answered Eva.

"Come and sit down and tell mamma all about it. You are tired of poor Pierre--is that it? It is very natural, he has been here so often, and stayed so long. But I will tell him that he must go away--leave Sorrento. And he shall stay away as long as you like, Eva; just as long as you like."

"Then he will stay away forever," the girl answered, calmly.

f.a.n.n.y waited a moment. "Did you like Gino better? Is that it?" she said, softly, watching Eva's face.

"No."

"Thornton Stanley?"

"Oh no!"

"Dear child, explain this a little to your mother. You know I think only of your happiness," said f.a.n.n.y, with tender solicitude.

Eva evidently tried to obey. "It was this morning. It came over me suddenly that I could not possibly marry him. Now or a year from now.

Never." She spoke tranquilly; she even seemed indifferent. But this one decision was made.

"You know that I have given my word to the old Count," began f.a.n.n.y, in perplexity.

Eva was silent.

"And everything was arranged."

Eva still said nothing. She looked about the room with wandering attention, as though this did not concern her.

"Of course I would never force you into anything," f.a.n.n.y went on. "But I thought Pierre would be so congenial." In her heart she was asking herself what the young Belgian could have done. "Well, dear," she continued, with a little sigh, "you must always tell mamma everything."

And she kissed her.

"Of course," Eva answered. And then she went away.

f.a.n.n.y immediately rang the bell, and asked for Mademoiselle. But Mademoiselle knew nothing about it. She was overwhelmed with surprise and dismay. She greatly admired Pierre; even more she admired the old Count, whom she thought the most distinguished of men. f.a.n.n.y dismissed the afflicted little woman, and sat pondering. While she was thinking, Eva re-entered.

"Mamma, I forgot to say that I should like to have you tell Pierre immediately. To-day."

f.a.n.n.y was almost irritated. "You have never taken that tone before, my daughter. Have you no longer confidence in my judgment?"

"If you do not want to tell him this afternoon, it can be easily arranged, mamma; I will not come to the dinner-table; that is all. I do not wish to see him until he knows."

Pierre was to dine at the villa that evening.

"What can he have done?" thought f.a.n.n.y again.

She rang for Rosine; half an hour later she was in the drawing-room.

"Excuse me to every one but M. de Verneuil," she said to Angelo. She was very nervous, but she had decided upon her course: Pierre must leave Sorrento, and remain away until she herself should call him back.

"At the end of a month, perhaps even at the end of a week, she will miss you so much that I shall have to issue the summons," she said, speaking as gayly as she could, as if to make it a sort of joke. It was very hard for her, at best, to send away the frank, handsome boy.

Poor Pierre could not understand it at all. He declared over and over again that nothing he had said, nothing he had done, could possibly have offended his betrothed. "But surely you know yourself that it is impossible!" he added, clasping his hands beseechingly.

"It is a girlish freak," explained the mother. "She is so young, you know."

"But that is the very reason. I thought it was only older women who say what they wish to do in that decided way; who have freaks, as you call it," said the Belgian, his voice for a moment much older, more like the voice of a man who has spent half his life in Paris.

This was so true that f.a.n.n.y was driven to a defence that scarcely anything else would have made her use.

"Eva is different from the young girls here," she said. "You must not forget that she is an American."

At last Pierre went away; he had tried to bear himself as a gentleman should; but the whole affair was a mystery to him, and he was very unhappy. He went as far as Rome, and there he waited, writing to f.a.n.n.y an anxious letter almost every day.

In the meanwhile life at the villa went on; there were many excursions.

f.a.n.n.y's thought was that Eva would miss Pierre more during these expeditions than at other times, for Pierre had always arranged them, and he had enjoyed them so much himself that his gay spirits and his gay wit had made all the party gay. Eva, however, seemed very happy, and at length the mother could not help being touched to see how light-hearted her serious child had become, now that she was entirely free. And yet how slight the yoke had been, and how pleasant! thought f.a.n.n.y. At the end of two weeks there were still no signs of the "missing" upon which she had counted. She thought that she would try the effect of briefly mentioning the banished man. "I hear from Pierre almost every day, poor fellow. He is in Rome."

"Why does he stay in Rome?" said Eva. "Why doesn't he return home?"

"I suppose he doesn't want to go so far away," answered f.a.n.n.y, vaguely.

"Far away from what? Home should always be the first place," responded the young moralist. "Of course you have told him, mamma, that I shall never be his wife? That it is forever?" And she turned her gray eyes towards her mother, for the first time with a shade of suspicion in them.

"Never is a long word, Eva."

"Oh, mamma!" The girl rose. "I shall write to him myself, then."

"How you speak! Do you wish to disobey me, my own little girl?"

"No; but it is so dishonest; it is like a lie."