Fanny immediately rang the bell, and asked for Mademoiselle. But Mademoiselle knew nothing about it. She was overwhelmed with surprise and dismay. She greatly admired Pierre; even more she admired the old Count, whom she thought the most distinguished of men. Fanny dismissed the afflicted little woman, and sat pondering. While she was thinking, Eva re-entered. "Mamma, I forgot to say that I should like to have you tell Pierre immediately. To-day." Fanny was almost irritated. "You have never taken that tone before, my daughter. Have you no longer confidence in my judgment?" "If you do not want to tell him this afternoon, it can be easily arranged, mamma; I will not come to the dinner-table; that is all. I do not wish to see him until he knows." Pierre was to dine at the villa that evening. "What can he have done?" thought Fanny again. She rang for Rosine; half an hour later she was in the drawing-room. "Excuse me to every one but M. de Verneuil," she said to Angelo. She was very nervous, but she had decided upon her course: Pierre must leave Sorrento, and remain away until she herself should call him back. "At the end of a month, perhaps even at the end of a week, she will miss you so much that I shall have to issue the summons," she said, speaking as gayly as she could, as if to make it a sort of joke. It was very hard for her, at best, to send away the frank, handsome boy. Poor Pierre could not understand it at all. He declared over and over again that nothing he had said, nothing he had done, could possibly have offended his betrothed. "But surely you know yourself that it is impossible!" he added, clasping his hands beseechingly. "It is a girlish freak," explained the mother. "She is so young, you know." "But that is the very reason. I thought it was only older women who say what they wish to do in that decided way; who have freaks, as you call it," said the Belgian, his voice for a moment much older, more like the voice of a man who has spent half his life in Paris. This was so true that Fanny was driven to a defence that scarcely anything else would have made her use. "Eva is different from the young girls here," she said. "You must not forget that she is an American." At last Pierre went away; he had tried to bear himself as a gentleman should; but the whole affair was a mystery to him, and he was very unhappy. He went as far as Rome, and there he waited, writing to Fanny an anxious letter almost every day.