"It has made me so unhappy," Vere said, with a break in her voice.
And he had said to himself: "Vere must be happy!" At that moment he
and his intellect seemed to him less than a handful of dust.
"But this change of to-day is different," he said, slowly. "Your
mother has had a dreadful shock."
"At Mergellina?"
"It must have been there."
"But what could it be? We scarcely ever go there. We don't know any
one there--oh, except Ruffo."
Her eyes, keen and bright with youth, even though they had been
crying, were fixed upon his face while she was speaking, and she saw a
sudden conscious look in his eyes, a movement of his lips--he drew
them sharply together, as if seized by a spasm.
"Ruffo!" she repeated. "Has it something to do with Ruffo?"
There was a profound perplexity in her face, but the fear in it was
less.
"Something to do with Ruffo?" she repeated.
Suddenly she moved, she got up. And all the fear had come back to her
face, with something added to it, something intensely personal.
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