Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 5, 2025
Vere had said something what was it? about Peppina and her cross. Oh yes! That Peppina's cross seemed like a sign, a warning come into the house on the island, that it seemed to say, "There is a cross to be borne by some one here, by one of us!" And the fishermen's sign of the cross under the light of San Francesco? Surely there had been many warnings in her life.
Suddenly Vere got up and went quietly away. While she had been with them silence had been easy. Directly she was gone Artois felt that it was difficult, in another moment that it was no longer possible. "Am I to see Peppina to-night?" he asked. "Do you wish to?" Hermione's hands moved a little faster about their work when he spoke.
On the morning after the incident with Peppina, Vere came down looking strangely grave and tired. Her mother, too, was rather heavy-eyed, and the breakfast passed almost severely. When it was over Hermione, who still conducted Vere's education, but with a much relaxed vigor in the summer months, suggested that they should read French together.
If she had been born in the right class and the right century, Peppina would have made an admirable and brilliant Borgia.
Then she said: "You know Peppina!" She came forward again, quite up to him, and peered into his face, seeking there for an ugly truth which till now had been hidden from her. "What had you to do with Peppina?" "Nothing. Tell me about her, and " He put his hand to the inside pocket of his coat, and showed her the edge of a little case containing paper notes. The woman misunderstood him.
But very soon Hermione noticed that Vere was specially kind always to Peppina. They did not meet, perhaps, very often, but when by chance they did Vere spoke to the disfigured girl with a gentleness, almost a tenderness, that were striking. "You like Peppina, Vere?" asked her mother one day. "Yes, because I pity her so much."
Her two hands shot up, dropped, shot up again, imprecating, cursing the world, the sky, the whole scheme of the universe, it seemed. She chattered like an ape. Artois soothed her with a ten-lire note. That night, when he went back to the hotel, he had heard the aunt's version of Peppina, and knew that which really he had known before that Hermione had taken her to live on the island. Hermione!
"I would go to see her, only well, you see, I have Peppina here, and " She broke off. Perhaps the boy would not understand what she considered the awkwardness of the situation. She did not quite know how these people regarded certain things. "Wait here a moment, Ruffo," she said. "I am going to give you something for your mother. I won't be a moment." "Grazie, Signora."
Vere's coolness to him, even avoidance of him, had struck hammer-like blows upon his amour propre. He saw her now yes, he saw her coming down the stairs behind Peppina. Had they been together? Did they talk together, the cold, the prudish Signorina Inglese so he called Vere now in his anger and the former decoy of Maria Fortunata?
Come when the inclination whispers 'I want to be with friends." He pressed her hand. "Shall I see Peppina?" "Chi lo sa?" "And Ruffo?" She laughed. "The Marchesino, too, perhaps." "No," said Artois, emphatically. "Disfigured girls and fisher-boys as many as you like, but not the alta aristocrazia Napoletana." "But I thought " "I like Doro, but I like him in his place." "And his place?"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking