In the meanwhile life at the villa went on; there were many excursions. Fanny's thought was that Eva would miss Pierre more during these expeditions than at other times, for Pierre had always arranged them, and he had enjoyed them so much himself that his gay spirits and his gay wit had made all the party gay. Eva, however, seemed very happy, and at length the mother could not help being touched to see how light-hearted her serious child had become, now that she was entirely free. And yet how slight the yoke had been, and how pleasant! thought Fanny. At the end of two weeks there were still no signs of the "missing" upon which she had counted. She thought that she would try the effect of briefly mentioning the banished man. "I hear from Pierre almost every day, poor fellow. He is in Rome." "Why does he stay in Rome?" said Eva. "Why doesn't he return home?" "I suppose he doesn't want to go so far away," answered Fanny, vaguely. "Far away from what? Home should always be the first place," responded the young moralist. "Of course you have told him, mamma, that I shall never be his wife? That it is forever?" And she turned her gray eyes towards her mother, for the first time with a shade of suspicion in them. "Never is a long word, Eva." "Oh, mamma!" The girl rose. "I shall write to him myself, then." "How you speak! Do you wish to disobey me, my own little girl?" "No; but it is so dishonest; it is like a lie." "My dear, trust your mother. You have changed once; you may change again." "Not about this, mamma. Will you please write this very hour, and make an end of it?" "You are hard, Eva. You do not think of poor Pierre at all." "No, I do not think of Pierre." "And is there any one else you think of? I must ask you that once more," said Fanny, drawing her daughter down beside her caressingly. Her thoughts could not help turning again towards Gino, and in her supreme love for her child she now accomplished the mental somerset of believing that on the whole she preferred the young Italian to all the liberty, all the personal consideration for herself, which had been embodied in the name of Verneuil. "Yes, there is some one else I think of," Eva replied, in a low voice. "In Rome?" said Fanny. Eva made a gesture of denial that was fairly contemptuous. Fanny's mind flew wildly from Bartholomew to Dallas, from Ferguson to Gordon-Gray: Eva had no acquaintances save those which were her mother's also. "It is David Rod," Eva went on, in the same low tone. Then, with sudden exaltation, her eyes gleaming, "I have never seen any one like him."