The Vice-Consul did not know what to make of the business altogether. It gave him a great deal of thought. He watched the young man with a jealous eye: but Harry met every scrutiny with an unflinching front. And Mr. Bonamy did what he could to watch his daughter, but that was not so easy. She was amusing herself, but whether she was going too far in her trial of Harry’s constancy he could not tell. She bewildered her father, which was not difficult; but what was more wonderful, after a while, this venturous person began to bewilder herself. She thought she was tired of Harry, who could not be got to swerve out of the right way. She began to think that it was all a fiction, or that this love after the English fashion was far too self-commanded and restrained for a half Italian girl. She had thought at first that it would be quite easy and extremely amusing to make him betray himself. And she had resolved in such a case that his downfall should do him no harm; she would not betray him; she would keep his secret. But she had not supposed that he would stand out, that he would be able to resist her: and at length she got confused about her own notions, and about his conduct and everything around her, and knew no longer what to think. CHAPTER XIV. A CRISIS. It was like a play the intercourse which went on between these two; the perpetual aggressions of the girl and defences of the young man, the troubled spectatorship of the father, who saw that slave of his word resisting, fighting always, more or less feebly, but yet resisting all the _agaceries_, all the temptations, which a spirit of mischief could throw in his way. Sometimes the sight was laughable, sometimes it was almost tragic, to the looker on; and he was much disturbed at the same time on his own account, not knowing what Rita meant by it all. “Take care what you are doing,” he would say to her, with mingled pity and alarm--pity for the young man, alarm for himself and her. “What am I doing, papa?” Rita would ask, with the greatest innocence. “That is exactly what I can’t tell,” poor Mr. Bonamy said. But his warnings never came to more than this. And nothing in all her life had so amused Rita as her torture of this unfortunate young man. One day they happened to be alone for a little while, Mr. Bonamy having been called away. It was on a Sunday evening, after dinner, a day when the Bonamys, following the old-fashioned English rule, were always alone. Harry had avoided opportunities of being alone with Rita as much as lovers generally scheme for that privilege, but to-day there was no help for it. She was seated at the open window in her usual dress of vapoury white; the summer was advancing, and it would soon be time for the removal of the household to the country, where they went every year. Mr. Bonamy had been called away, quite unexpectedly, to his own dreadful vexation and the terror of Harry, but to Rita’s secret delight. The night-air puffed