They departed, however, and Frances got over it: and everything went on as before; her father was just as usual--a sphinx indeed, more and more hopelessly wrapped up in silence and mystery, but so natural and easy and kind in his uncommunicativeness, with so little appearance of repression or concealment about him, that it was almost impossible to retain any feeling of injury or displeasure. Love is cheated every day in this way by offenders much more serious, who can make their dependants happy even while they are ruining them, and beguile the bitterest anxiety into forgetfulness and smiles. It was easy to make Frances forget the sudden access of wonderment and wounded feeling which had seized her, even without any special exertion; time alone and the calm succession of the days were enough for that. She resumed her little picture of the palms, and was very successful--more than usually so. Mr Waring, who had hitherto praised her little works as he might have praised the sampler of a child, was silenced by this, and took it away with him into his room, and when he brought it back, looked at her with more attention than he had been used to show. “I think,” he said, “little Fan, that you must be growing up,” laying his hand upon her head with a smile. “I am grown up, papa; I am eighteen,” she said. At which he laughed softly. “I don’t think much of your eighteen; but this shows. I should not wonder, with time and work, if--you mightn’t be good enough to exhibit at Mentone--after a while.” Frances had been looking at him with an expression of almost rapturous expectation. The poor little countenance fell at this, and a quick sting of mortification brought tears to her eyes. The exhibition at Mentone was an exhibition of amateurs. Tasie was in it, and even Mrs Gaunt, and all the people about who ever spoilt a piece of harmless paper. “O papa!” she said. Since the failure of her late appeal to him, this was the only formula of reproach which she used. “Well,” he said, “are you more ambitious than that, you little thing? Perhaps, by-and-by, you may be fit even for better things.” “It is beautiful,” said Mariuccia. “You see where the light goes, and where it is in the shade. But, _carina_, if you were to copy the face of Domenico, or even mine, that would be more interesting. The palms we can see if we look out of the window; but imagine to yourself that ’Menico might go away, or even might die; and we should not miss him so much if we had his face hung up upon the wall.” “It is easier to do the trees than to do Domenico,” said Frances; “they stand still.” “And so would ’Menico stand still, if it was to please the signorina--he is not very well educated, but he knows enough for that; or I myself, though you will think, perhaps, I am too old to make a pretty picture. But if I had my veil on, and my best earrings, and the coral my mother left me----”