"Yes, I have a right that you should say that--I have a right that you should always say it. I think he has behaved very foolishly, but I don't blame him----" "No! I was to blame." "I don't _know_ that he was to blame, and I won't let you think he was." "Oh, he is the best man in the world!" "He gave up at once; he didn't try to defend himself. It's nothing for you to lose a friend at your age; but at mine----" "I _know_ it, Mrs. Bowen." "And I wouldn't even shake hands with him when he was going; I----" "Oh, I don't see how you could be so hard!" cried Imogene. She put up her hands to her face, and broke into tears. Mrs. Bowen watched her, dry eyed, with her lips parted, and an intensity of question in her face. "Imogene," she said at last, "I wish you to promise me one thing." "Yes." "Not to write to Mr. Colville again." "No, no; indeed I won't, Mrs. Bowen!" The girl came up to kiss her; Mrs. Bowen turned her cheek. Imogene was going from the room when Mrs. Bowen spoke again. "But I wish you to promise me this only because you don't feel sure of yourself about him." Imogene was going from the room, when Mrs. Bowen spoke again. "But I wish you to promise me this only because you don't feel sure of yourself about him. If you care for him--if you think you care for him--then I leave you perfectly free." The girl looked up, scared. "No, no; I'd rather you wouldn't leave me free--you mustn't; I shouldn't know what to do." "Very well, then," said Mrs. Bowen. They both waited a moment, as if each were staying for the other to speak. Then Imogene asked, "Is he--going soon?" "I don't know," said Mrs. Bowen. "Why should he want to delay? He had better go at once. And I hope he will go home--as far from Florence as he can. I should think he would _hate_ the place." "Yes," said the girl, with a quivering sigh; "it must be hateful to him." She paused, and then she rushed on with bitter self-reproach. "And I--_I_ have helped to make it so! O Mrs. Bowen, perhaps it's _I_ who have been trifling with _him_. Trying to make him believe--no, not trying to do that, but letting him see that I sympathised--Oh, do you think I have?" "You know what you have been doing, Imogene," said Mrs. Bowen, with the hardness it surprises men to know women use with each other, they seem such tender creatures in the abstract. "You have no need to ask me." "No, no." "As you say, I warned you from the first." "Oh yes; you did." "I couldn't do more than hint; it was too much to expect----" "Oh, yes, yes." "And if you couldn't take my hints, I was helpless." "Yes; I see it." "I was only afraid of saying too much, and all through that miserable veglione business I was trying to please you and him, because I was afraid I _had_ said too much--gone too far. I wanted to show you that I disdained to be suspicious, that I was ashamed to suppose that a girl of your age could care for the admiration of a man of his."