THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD
 
 A FEAKFUL EESPONSIBILITY 
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 A nd published with Mr. Uou-ells's sanction. 
 
 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT. 
 
 THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK. 2 VOLS. 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 
 OUT OF THE QUESTION and AT THE 
 
 SIGN OF THE SAVAGE. 
 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 2 VOLS. 
 
 EDINBURGH : DAVID DOUGLAS. 
 LONDON : HAMILTON, ADAMS AND Co.
 
 A FEARFUL 
 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 AND 
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE 
 
 BY 
 WILLIAM D. HOWELLS 
 
 Author's Edition 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET
 
 lEimburgf) CSmbfrsttjj 13r:ss : 
 
 T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.

 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY.
 
 A FEAKFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 T^ VERY loyal American who went abroad 
 Jj during the first years of our great war 
 felt bound to make himself some excuse for 
 turning his back on his country in the hour 
 of her trouble. But when Owen Elmore 
 sailed, no one else seemed to think that he 
 needed excuse. All his friends said it was 
 the best thing for him to do ; that he could 
 have leisure and quiet over there, and would 
 be able to go on with his work. 
 
 At the risk of giving a farcical effect to 
 my narrative, I am obliged to confess that 
 the work of which Elmore's friends spoke 
 was a projected history of Venice. So many 
 literary Americans have projected such a 
 work that it may now fairly be regarded as
 
 10 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 a national enterprise. Elmore was too ob- 
 scure to have been announced in the usual 
 way by the newspapers as having this de- 
 sign ; but it was well known in his town 
 that he was collecting materials when his 
 professorship in the small inland college 
 with which he was connected lapsed through 
 the enlistment of nearly all the students. 
 The president became colonel of the college 
 regiment ; and in parting with Elmore, 
 while their boys waited on the campus with- 
 out, he had said, " Now, Elmore, you must 
 go on with your history of Venice. Go to 
 Venice and collect your materials on the 
 spot. "We 're coming through this all right. 
 Mr. Seward puts it at sixty days, but I '11 
 give them six months to lay down their 
 arms, and we shall want you back at the 
 end of the year. Don't you have any com- 
 punctions about going. I know how you 
 feel ; but it is perfectly right for you to 
 keep out of it. Good-bye." They wrung 
 each other's hands for the last time, the 
 president fell at Fort Donelson ; but now 
 Elmore followed him to the door, and when 
 lie appeared there one of the boyish cap- 
 tains shouted, ' ' Three cheers for Pz*of essor 
 Elmore !" and the president called for the
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 11 
 
 tiger, and led it, whirling his cap round his 
 head. 
 
 Elmore went back to his study, sick at 
 heart. It grieved and vexed him that even 
 these had not thought that he should go to 
 the war, and that his inward struggle on 
 that point had been idle so far as others 
 were concerned. He had been quite earnest 
 in the matter ; he had once almost volun- 
 teered as a private soldier : he had consulted 
 his doctor, who sternly discouraged him. 
 He would have been truly glad of any 
 accident that forced him into the ranks ; 
 but, as he used afterward to say, it was not 
 his idea of soldiership to enlist for the hos- 
 pital. At the distance of five hundred miles 
 from the scene of hostilities, it was absurd 
 to enter the Home Guard ; and, after all, 
 there were, even at first, some selfish people 
 who went into the army, and some unselfish 
 
 i--people who kept out of it. Elmore's bron- 
 chitis was a disorder which active service 
 
 --would undoubtedly have aggravated ; as it 
 was, he made a last effort to be of use to 
 our Government as a bearer of despatches. 
 Failing such an appointment, he submitted 
 to expatriation as he best could ; and in 
 Italy he fought for our cause against the
 
 1'2 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 English, whom he found everywhere all but 
 in arms against us. 
 
 He sailed, in fine, with a very fair con- 
 science. "I should be perfectly at ease," 
 he said to his wife, as the steamer dropped 
 smoothly down to Sandy Hook, " if I were 
 sure that I was not glad to be getting away. " 
 
 " You are not glad," she answered. 
 
 "I don't know, I don't know," he said, 
 with the weak persistence of a man willing 
 that his wife should persuade him against 
 his convictions ; "I wish that I felt certain 
 of it." 
 
 "You are too sick to go to the war; 
 nobody expected you to go." 
 
 " I know that, and I can't say that I like 
 it. As for being too sick, perhaps it 's the 
 part of a man to go if he dies on the way to 
 the field. It would encourage the others," 
 he added, smiling faintly. 
 
 She ignored the tint from Voltaire in 
 replying : " Nonsense ! It would do no 
 good at all. At any rate, it 's too late now." 
 
 "Yes, it 's too late now." 
 
 The sea-sickness which shortly followed 
 formed a diversion from his accusing 
 thoughts. Each day of the voyage removed 
 them further, and with the preoccupations
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 13 
 
 of his first days in Europe, his travel to 
 Italy, and his preparations for a long so- 
 journ in Venice, they had softened to a 
 pensive sense of self-sacrifice, which took a 
 warmer or a cooler tinge according as the 
 news from home was good or bad.
 
 14 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 II. 
 
 HE lost no time in going to work in the 
 Marcian Library, and he early applied 
 to the Austrian authorities for leave to have 
 transcripts made in the archives. The per- 
 mission was negotiated by the American 
 consul (then a young painter of the name of 
 Ferris), who reported a mechanical facility 
 on the part of the authorities, as if, he 
 said, they were used to obliging American 
 historians of Venice. The foreign tyranny 
 which cast a pathetic glamour over the 
 romantic city had certainly not appeared to 
 grudge such publicity as Elmore wished to 
 give her heroic memories, though it was 
 then at its most repressive period, and 
 formed a check upon the whole life of the 
 place. The tears were hardly yet dry in 
 the despairing eyes that had seen the French 
 fleet sail away from the Lido, after Solferine, 
 without firing a shot in behalf of Venice ; 
 but Lombardy, the Duchies, the Sicilies,
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 15 
 
 had all passed to Sardinia, and the Pope 
 alone represented the old order of native 
 despotism in Italy. At Venice the Germans 
 seemed tranquilly awaiting the change which 
 should destroy their system with the rest ; 
 and in the meantime there had occurred one 
 of those impressive pauses, as notable in the 
 lives of nations as of men, when, after the 
 occurrence of great events, the forces of 
 action and endurance seem to be gathering 
 themselves against the stress of the future. 
 The quiet was almost consciously a truce 
 and not a peace ; and this local calm had 
 drawn into it certain elements that pictur- 
 esquely and sentimentally heightened the 
 charm of the place. It was a refuge for 
 many exiled potentates and pretenders ; the 
 gondolier pointed out on the Grand Canal 
 the palaces of the Count of Chambord, the 
 Duchess of Parma, and the Infante of Spain ; 
 and one met these fallen princes in the 
 squares and streets, bowing with distinct 
 courtesy to any that chose to salute them. 
 Every evening the Piazza San Marco was 
 filled with the white coats of the Austrian 
 officers, promenading to the exquisite mili- 
 tary music which has ceased there for ever ; 
 the patrol clanked through the footways at
 
 It) A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 all hours of the night, and the lagoon heard 
 the cry of the sentinel from fort to fort, and 
 from gunboat to gunboat. Through all this 
 the demonstration of the patriots went on, 
 silent, ceaseless, implacable, annulling every 
 alien effort at gaiety, depopulating the thea- 
 tres, and desolating the ancient holidays. 
 
 There was something very fine in this, as 
 a spectacle, Elmore said to his young wife, 
 and he had to admire the austere self-denial 
 of a people who would not suffer their tyrants 
 to see them happy ; but they secretly owned 
 to each other that it was fatiguing. Soon 
 after coming to Venice they had made some 
 acquaintance among the Italians through Mr. 
 Ferris, and had early learned that the condi- 
 tion of knowing Venetians was not to know 
 Austrians. It was easy and natural for them 
 to submit, theoretically. As Americans, they 
 must respond to any impulse for freedom, and 
 certainly they could have no sympathy with 
 such a system as that of Austria. By what- 
 ever was sacred in our own war upon slavery, 
 they were bound to abhor oppression in every 
 form. But it was hard to make the applica- 
 tion of their hatred to the amiable -looking 
 people whom they saw everywhere around 
 them in the quality of tyrants, especially
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 17 
 
 when their Venetian friends confessed that 
 personally they liked the Austrians. Be- 
 sides, if the whole truth must be told, they 
 found that their friendship with the Italians 
 was not always of the most penetrating sort, 
 though it had a superficial intensity that for 
 a while gave the effect of lasting cordiality. 
 The Elmores were not quite able to decide 
 whether the pause of feeling at which they 
 arrived was through their own defect or not. 
 Much was to be laid to the difference of race, 
 religion, and education ; but something, they 
 feared, to the personal vapidity of acquaint- 
 ances whose meridional liveliness made them 
 yawn, and in whose society they did not 
 always find compensation for the sacrifices 
 they made for it. 
 
 " But it is right," said Elmore. " It would 
 be a sort of treason to associate with the 
 Austrians. We owe it to the Venetians to 
 let them see that our feelings are with them." 
 
 " Yes," said his wife pensively. 
 
 "And it is better for us, as Americans 
 abroad, during this war, to be retired." 
 
 " Well, we are retired," said Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 " Yes, there is no doubt of that," he re- 
 turned. 
 
 They laughed, and made what they could
 
 18 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 of chance American acquaintances at the 
 caffes. Elmore had his history to occupy 
 him, and doubtless he could not understand 
 how heavy the time hung upon his wife's 
 hands. They went often to the theatre, 
 and every evening they went to the Piazza, 
 and ate an ice at Florian's. This was cer- 
 tainly amusement ; and routine was so plea- 
 sant to his scholarly temperament that he 
 enjoyed merely that. He made a point of 
 admitting his wife as much as possible into 
 his intellectual life f he read her his notes as 
 fast as he made them, and he consulted her 
 upon the management of his theme, which, 
 as his research extended, he found so vast 
 that he was forced to decide upon a much 
 lighter treatment than he had at first in- 
 tended. He had resolved upon a history 
 which should be presented in a series of bio- 
 graphical studies, and he was so much in- 
 terested in this conclusion, and so charmed 
 with the advantages of the form as they de- 
 .veloped themselves, that he began to lose the 
 \sense of social dulness, and ceased to imagine 
 it in his wife. 
 
 A sort of indolence of the sensibilities, in. v 
 fact, enabled him to endure ennui that made ' 
 her frantic, and he was often deeply bored
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 19 
 
 without knowing it at the time, or without 
 a reasoned suffering. He suffered as a child 
 suffers, simply, almost ignorantly : it was 
 upon reflection that his nerves began to 
 quiver with retroactive anguish. He was 
 also able to idealise the situation when his 
 wife no longer even wished to do so. His 
 fancy cast a poetry about these Venetian 
 friends, whose conversation displayed the 
 occasional sparkle of Ollendorff-English on 
 a dark ground of lagoon-Italian, and whose 
 vivid smiling and gesticulation she wearied 
 herself in hospitable efforts to outdo. To his 
 eyes their historic past clothed them with 
 its interest, and the long patience of their 
 hope and hatred under foreign rule ennobled 
 them, while to hers they were too often only 
 tiresome visitors, whose powers of silence 
 and of eloquence were alike to be dreaded. 
 It did not console her as it did her husband 
 to reflect that they probably bored the Ital- 
 ians as much in their turn. When a young 
 man, very sympathetic for literature and the 
 Americans, spent an evening, as it seemed 
 to her, in crying nothing but " Per Bacco ! " 
 she owned that she liked better his oppres- 
 sor, who once came by chance, in the figure 
 of a young lieutenant, and who unbuckled his
 
 20 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 wife, as he called his sword, and, putting 
 her in a corner, sat up on a chair in the 
 middle of the room and sang like a bird, and 
 then told ghost stories. The songs were 
 out of Heine, and they reminded her of her 
 girlish enthusiasm for German. Elmore was 
 troubled at the lieutenant's visit, and feared 
 it would cost them all their Italian friends ; 
 but she said boldly that she did not care ; 
 and she never even tried to believe that the 
 life they saw in Venice was comparable to 
 
 !that of their little college town at home, 
 with its teas and picnics, and simple, easy 
 social gaieties. There she had been a 
 power in her way ; she had entertained, 
 and had helped to make some matches : 
 but the Venetians ate nothing, and as for 
 young people, they never saw each other 
 but by stealth, and their matches were 
 made by their parents on a money-basis. 
 She could not adapt herself to this foreign 
 life ; it puzzled her, and her husband's con- 
 formity seemed to estrange them, -as far as 
 it went. It took away her spirit, and she 
 grew listless and dull. Even the history 
 began to lose its interest in her eyes ; she 
 doubted if the annals of such a people as she 
 saw about her could ever be popular.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 21 
 
 There were other things to make them 
 melancholy in their exile. The war at home 
 was going badly, where it was going at all. 
 The letters now never spoke of any term 
 to it ; they expressed rather the dogged 
 patience of the time when it seemed as if 
 there could be no end, and indicated that 
 the country had settled into shape about it, 
 and was pushing forward its other affairs as 
 if the war did not exist. Mrs. Elmore felt 
 that the America which she had left had 
 ceased to be. The letters were almost less a 
 pleasure than a pain, but she always tore 
 them open, and read them with eager un- 
 happiness. There were miserable intervals 
 of days and even weeks when no letters came, 
 and when the Renter telegrams in the Gazette 
 of Venice dribbled their vitriolic news of 
 Northern disaster through a few words or 
 lines, and Galignani's long columns were 
 filled with the hostile exultation and pro- 
 phecy of the London press.
 
 22 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 III. 
 
 rpHEY had passed eighteen months of this 
 _L sort of life in Venice when one day a 
 letter dropped into it which sent a thousand 
 ripples over its stagnant surface. Mrs. 
 Elmore read it first to herself, with gasps 
 and cries of pleasure and astonishment, 
 which did not divert her husband from the 
 perusal of some notes he had made the day 
 before, and had brought to the breakfast- 
 table with the intention of amusing her. 
 When she flattened it out over his notes, 
 and exacted his attention, he turned an un- 
 willing and lack-lustre eye upon it ; then he 
 looked up at her. 
 
 "Did you expect she would come?" he 
 asked, in ill-masked dismay. 
 
 " I don't suppose they had any idea of it 
 at first. When Sue wrote me that Lily had 
 been studying too hard, and had to be taken 
 out of school, I said that I wished she could 
 come over and pay us a visit. But I don't
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 23 
 
 believe they dreamed of letting her Sue 
 says so till the Mortons' coming seemed too 
 good a chance to be lost. I am so glad of it, 
 Owen ! You know how much they have 
 always done for me ; and here is a chance 
 now to pay a little of it back." 
 
 "What in the world shall we do with 
 her ?" he asked. 
 
 "Do? Everything! Why, Owen," she 
 urged, with pathetic recognition of his cold- 
 ness, " she is Susy Stevens's own sister !" 
 
 " Oh, yes yes," he admitted. 
 
 " And it was Susy who brought us to- 
 gether !" 
 
 " Why, of course." 
 
 " And oughtn't you to be glad of the op- 
 portunity ?" 
 
 " I am glad very glad." 
 
 ' ' It will be a relief to you instead of a 
 care. She 's such a bright, intelligent girl 
 that we can both sympathise with your 
 work, and you won't have to go round with 
 me all the time, and I can matronise her 
 myself. " 
 
 "I see, I see," Elmore replied, with 
 scarcely abated seriousness. " Perhaps, if 
 she is coming here for her health, she won't 
 need much matronising. "
 
 24 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " Oh, pshaw ! She '11 be well enough for 
 that ! She 's overdone a little at school. I 
 shall take good care of her, I can tell you ; 
 and I shall make her have a real good time. 
 It 's quite flattering of Susy to trust her to 
 us, so far away, and I shall write and tell 
 her we both think so." 
 
 "Yes," said Elmore, "it's a fearful re- 
 sponsibility. " 
 
 There are instances of the persistence of 
 husbands in certain moods or points of view 
 on which even wheedling has no effect. The 
 wise woman perceives that in these cases she 
 must trust entirely to the softening influ- 
 ences of time, and as much as possible she 
 changes the subject ; or if this is impossible 
 she may hope something from presenting a 
 still worse aspect of the affair. Mrs. Elmore 
 said, in lifting the letter from the table : 
 " If she sailed the 3d in the ' City of Tim- 
 buctoo,' she will be at Queenstown on the 
 12th or 13th, and we shall have a letter from 
 her by Wednesday saying when she will be 
 at Genoa. That 's as far as the Mortons can 
 bring her, and there 's where we must meet 
 her." 
 
 ' ' Meet her in Genoa ! How ? " 
 
 "By going there for her," replied Mrs.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 25 
 
 Elmore, as if this were the simplest thing in 
 the world. " I have never seen G<.noa." 
 
 Elmore now tacitly abandoned himself to 
 his fate. His wife continued : "I needn't 
 take anything. Merely run on, and right 
 back." 
 
 " When must we go ?" he asked. 
 
 ' ' I don't know yet ; but we shall have a 
 letter to-morrow. Don't worry on my ac- 
 count, Owen. Her coming won't be a bit of 
 care to me. It will give me something to 
 do and to think about, and it will be a plea- 
 sure all the time to know that it 's for Susy 
 Stevens. And I shall like the companion- 
 ship." 
 
 Elmore looked at his wife in surprise, for 
 it had not occurred to him before that with 
 his company she could desire any other com- 
 panionship. He desired none but hers, and 
 when he was about his work he often thought 
 of her. He supposed that at these moments 
 she thought of him, and found society, as he 
 did, in such thoughts. But he was not a 
 jealous or exacting man, and he said nothing. 
 His treatment of the approaching visit from 
 Susy Stevens's sister had not been enthusi- 
 astic, but a spark had kindled his imagina- 
 tion, and it burned wanner and brighter as
 
 26 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 the days went by. He found a charm in the 
 thought of having this fresh young life here 
 in his charge, and of teaching the girl to live 
 into the great and beautiful history of the 
 city ; there was still much of the school- 
 master in him, and he intended to make her 
 sojourn an education to her ; and as a liter- 
 ary man he hoped for novel effects from her 
 mind upon material which he was above all 
 trying to set in a new light before himself. 
 
 When the time had arrived for them to go 
 and meet Miss Mayhew at Genoa, he was 
 more than reconciled to the necessity. But 
 at the last moment, Mrs. Elmore had one of 
 her old attacks. What these attacks were I 
 find myself unable to specify, but as every 
 lady has an old attack of some kind, I may 
 safely leave their precise nature to conjec- 
 ture. It is enough that they were of a 
 nervous character, that they were accom- 
 panied with headache, and that they pro- 
 strated her for several days. During their 
 continuance she required the active sym- 
 pathy and constant presence of her husband, 
 whose devotion was then exemplary, and 
 brought up long arrears of indebtedness in 
 that way. 
 
 "Well, what shall we do?" he asked, as
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 27 
 
 he sank into a chair beside the lounge on 
 which Mrs. Elmore lay, her eyes closed, and 
 a slice of lemon placed on each of her throb- 
 bing temples with the effect of a new sort of 
 blinders. " Shall I go alone for her ?" 
 
 She gave his hand the kind of convulsive 
 clutch that signified, " Impossible for you to 
 leave me." 
 
 He reflected. " The Mortons will be push- 
 ing on to Leghorn, and somebody must meet 
 her. How would it do for Mr. Hoskins to 
 go?" 
 
 Mrs. Elmore responded with a clutch tan- 
 tamount to " Horrors ! How could you 
 think of such a thing ?" 
 
 "Well, then," he said, "the only thing 
 we can do is to send a valet de place for her. 
 We can send old Gazzi. He 's the incarna- 
 tion of respectability ; five francs a day and 
 his expenses will buy all the virtues of him. 
 She '11 come as safely with him as with me." 
 
 Mrs. Elmore had applied a vividly thought- 
 ful pressure to her husband's hand ; she now 
 released it in token of assent, and he rose. 
 
 " But don't be gone long," she whispered. 
 
 On his way to the caffe which Gazzi fre- 
 quented, Elmore fell in with the consul. 
 
 By this time a change had taken place in
 
 '28 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 the consular office. Mr. Ferris, some months 
 before, had suddenly thrown up his charge 
 and gone home ; and after the customary 
 interval of ship-chandler, the California 
 sculptor, Hoskins, had arrived out, with his 
 commission in his pocket, and had set up his 
 allegorical figure of " The Pacific Slope" in 
 the room where Ferris had painted his too 
 metaphysical conception of "A Venetian 
 Priest." Mrs. Elmore had never liked 
 Ferris ; she thought him cynical and opin- 
 ionated, and she believed that he had not 
 behaved quite well towards a young Ameri- 
 can lady, a Miss Vervain, who had stayed 
 a while in Venice with her mother. She 
 was glad to have him go ; but she could 
 not admire Mr. Hoskins, who, however good- 
 hearted, was too hopelessly Western. He 
 had had part of one foot shot away in the 
 nine months' service, and walked with a 
 limp that did him honour ; and he knew as 
 much of a consul's business as any of the 
 authors or artists with whom it is the tradi- 
 tion to fill that office at Venice. Besides, he 
 was at least a fellow- American, and Elmore 
 could not forbear telling him the trouble he 
 was in : a young girl coming from their town 
 in America as far as Genoa with friends, and
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 29 
 
 expecting to be met there by the Elmores, 
 with whom she was to pass some months ; 
 Mrs. Elmore utterly prostrated by one of 
 her old attacks, and he unable to leave her, 
 or to take her with him to Genoa ; the friends 
 with whom Miss May hew travelled unable 
 to bring her to Venice ; she, of course, un- 
 able to come alone. The case deepened and 
 darkened in Elmore's view as he unfolded it. 
 
 " Why," cried the consul sympathetically, 
 " if I could leave my post I 'd go !" 
 
 "Oh, thank you !" cried Elmore eagerly, 
 remembering his wife. " I couldn't think 
 of letting you." 
 
 " Look here !" said the consul, taking an 
 official letter, with the seal broken, from his 
 pocket. ' ' This is the first time I couldn't 
 have left my post without distinct advantage 
 to the public interests, since I 've been here. 
 But with this letter from Turin, telling me 
 to be on the look-out for the ' Alabama, ' I 
 couldn't go to Genoa even to meet a young 
 lady. The Austrians have never recognised 
 the rebels as belligerents : if she enters the 
 port of Venice, all I Ve got to do is to re- 
 quire the deposit of her papers with me, and 
 then I should like to see her get out again. 
 I should like to capture her. Of course, I
 
 30 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 don't mean Miss Mayhew," said the consul, 
 recognising the double sense in which his 
 language could be taken. 
 
 " It would be a great thing for you," said 
 Elmore, " a great thing." 
 
 " Yes, it would set me up in my own eyes, 
 and stop that infernal clatter inside about 
 going over and taking a hand again." 
 
 " Yes," Elmore assented, with a twinge of 
 the old shame. " I didn't know you had it 
 too. " 
 
 " If I could capture the 'Alabama,' I 
 could afford to let the other fellows fight it 
 out." 
 
 " I congratulate you with all my heart," 
 said Elmore sadly, and he walked in silence 
 beside the consul. 
 
 "Well," said the latter, with a laugh at 
 Elmore's pensive rapture. "I'm as much 
 obliged to you as if I had captured her. I '11 
 go up to the Piazza with you, and see Gazzi." 
 
 The affair was easily arranged ; Gazzi was 
 made to feel by the consul's intervention 
 that the shield of American sovereignty had 
 been extended over the young girl whom he 
 was to escort from Genoa, and two days 
 later he arrived with her. Mrs. Elmore's 
 attack now was passing off, and she was Avell
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 31 
 
 enough to receive Miss Mayhew half -recum- 
 bent on the sofa where she had been prone 
 till her arrival. It was pretty to see her 
 fond greeting of the girl, and her joy in her 
 presence as they sat down for the first long 
 talk ; and Elm ore realised, even in his 
 dreamy withdrawal, how much the bright, 
 active spirit of his wife had suffered merely 
 in the restriction of her English. Now it 
 was not only English they spoke, but that 
 American variety of the language of which 
 I hope we shall grow less and less ashamed ; 
 and not only this, but their parlance was 
 characterised by local turns and accents, 
 which all came welcomely back to Mrs. 
 Elmore, together with those still more 
 intimate inflections which belonged to her 
 own particular circle of friends in the little 
 town of Patmos, N. Y. Lily Mayhew was 
 of course not of her own set, being five or 
 six years younger ; but women, more easily 
 than men, ignore the disparities of age 
 between themselves and their juniors ; and 
 in Susy Stevens's absence it seemed a sort 
 of tribute to her to establish her sister in the 
 affection which Mrs. Elmore had so long 
 cherished. Their friendship had been of 
 such a thoroughly trusted sort on both sides
 
 32 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 that Mrs. Stevens (the memorably brilliant 
 Sue Mayhew in her girlish days) had felt 
 perfectly free to act upon Mrs. Elmore's 
 invitation to let Lily come out to her ; and 
 here the child was, as much at home as if 
 she had just walked into Mrs. Elmore's 
 parlour out of her sister's house in Patmos.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 33 
 
 IV. 
 
 THEY briefly despatched the facts relating 
 to Miss Mayhew's voyage, and her 
 journey to Genoa, and came as quickly as 
 they could to all those things which Mrs. 
 Elmore was thirsting to learn about the town 
 and its people. "Is it much changed ? I 
 suppose it is," she sighed. " The war 
 changes everything." 
 
 " Oh, you don't notice the war much," 
 said Miss May hew. "But Patmos is gay, 
 perfectly delightful. We Ve got one of the 
 camps there now ; and such times as the girls 
 have with the officers ! We have lots of fun 
 getting up things for the Sanitary. Hops on 
 the parade-ground at the camp, and going 
 out to see the prisoners, you never saw 
 such a place. " 
 
 " The prisoners ?" murmured Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 " Why, yes !" cried Lily, with a gay laugh. 
 " Didn't you know that we had a prison- 
 camp too? Some of the Southerners look 
 c
 
 34 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 real nice. I pitied them," she added, with 
 unabated gaiety. 
 
 "Your sister wrote to me," said Mrs. 
 Elmore ; " but I couldn't realise it, I sup- 
 pose, and so I forgot it." 
 
 " Yes," pursued Lily, " and Frank Hal- 
 sey 's in command. You would never know 
 by the way he walks that he had a cork leg. 
 Of course he can't dance, though, poor fellow. 
 He 's pale, and he 's perfectly fascinating. 
 So 's Dick Burton, with his empty sleeve ; 
 he 's one of the recruiting officers, and there 's 
 nobody so popular with the girls. You can't 
 think how funny it is, Professor Elmore, to 
 see the old college buildings used for barracks. 
 Dick says it 's much livelier than it was 
 when he was a student there." 
 
 " I suppose it must be," dreamily assented 
 the professor. " Does he find plenty of 
 volunteers ?" 
 
 "Well, you know," the young girl ex- 
 plained, ' ' that the old style of volunteering 
 is all over." 
 
 " No, I didn't know it." 
 
 "Yes. It's the bounties now that they 
 rely upon, and they do say that it will come 
 to the draft very soon, now. Some of the 
 young men have gone to Canada. But
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 35 
 
 everybody despises them. Oh, Mrs. Elmore, 
 I should think you 'd be so glad to have the 
 professor off here, and honourably out of the 
 way !" 
 
 " I 'm dishonourably out of the way ; I can 
 never forgive myself for not going to the 
 war," said Elmore. 
 
 "Why, how ridiculous!" cried Lily. 
 1 ' Nobody feels that way about it now ! As 
 Dick Burton says, we Ve come down to busi- 
 ness. I tell you, when you see arms and 
 legs off in every direction, and women going 
 about in black, you don't feel that it 's such 
 a romantic thing any more. There are mighty 
 few engagements now, Mrs. Elmore, when 
 a regiment sets off; no presentation of re- 
 volvers in the town hall ; and some of the 
 widows have got married again ; and that I 
 don't think is right. But what can they do, 
 poor things? You remember Tom Friar's 
 widow, Mrs. Elmore?" 
 
 "Tom Friar's ividoio ! Is Tom Friar 
 dead?" 
 
 "Why, of course ! One of the first. I 
 think it was Ball's Bluff. Well, she 's mar- 
 ried. But she married his cousin, and as 
 Dick Burton says, that isn't so bad. Isn't it 
 awful, Mrs. Clapp 's losing all her boys, all
 
 36 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 five of them ? It does seem to bear too hard 
 on some families. And then, when you see 
 every one of those six Armstrongs going 
 through without a scratch ! " 
 
 " I suppose," said Elmore, "that business 
 is at a standstill. The streets must look 
 rather dreary." 
 
 " Business at a standstill !" exclaimed 
 Lily. " What has Sue been writing you all 
 this time ? Why, there never was such pros- 
 perity in Patmos before ! Everybody is 
 making money, and people that you wouldn't 
 hardly speak to a year ago are giving parties 
 and inviting the old college families. You 
 ought to see the residences and business 
 blocks going up all over the place. I don't 
 suppose you would know Patmos now. You 
 remember George Fenton, Mrs. Elmore?" 
 
 " Mr. Haskell's clerk ?" 
 
 " Yes. Well, he 's made a fortune out of 
 an army contract ; and he 's going to marry 
 the engagement came out just before I left 
 Bella Stearns." 
 
 At these words Mrs. Elmore sat upright, 
 the only posture in which the fact could 
 be imagined. " Lily ! " 
 
 " Oh, I can tell you these are gay times in 
 America," triumphed the young girl. She
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 37 
 
 now put her hand to her mouth and hid a 
 yawn. 
 
 ' ' You 're sleepy, " said Mrs. Elmore. 
 " Well, you know the way to your room. 
 You '11 find everything ready there, and I 
 shall let you go alone. You shall commence 
 being at home at once." 
 
 "Yes, lam sleepy," assented Lily; and 
 she promptly said her good-nights and van- 
 ished ; though a keener eye than Elmore's 
 might have seen that her promptness had a 
 colour or say light of hesitation in it. 
 
 But he only walked up and down the 
 room, after she was gone, in unheedful dis- 
 tress. " Gay times in America ! Good 
 heavens ! Is the child utterly heartless, 
 Celia, or is she merely obtuse ? " 
 
 ' ' She certainly isn't at all like Sue, " 
 sighed Mrs. Elmore, who had not had time 
 to formulate Lily's defence. "But she's 
 excited now, and a little off her balance. 
 She '11 be different to-morrow. Besides, all 
 America seems changed, and the people 
 with it. We shouldn't have noticed it if 
 we had stayed there, but we feel it after 
 this absence." 
 
 ' ' I never realised it before, as I did from 
 her babble ! The letters have told us the
 
 38 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 same thing, but they were like the histories 
 of other times. Camps, prisoners, barracks, 
 mutilation, widowhood, death, sudden gains, 
 social upheavals, it is the old, hideous 
 story of war come true of our day and 
 country. It 's terrible ! " 
 
 " She will miss the excitement," said Mrs. 
 Elmore. "I don't know exactly what we 
 shall do with her. Of course, she can't 
 expect the attentions she 's been used to in 
 Patmos, with those young men." 
 
 Elmore stopped, and stared at his wife. 
 " What do you mean, Celia ?" 
 
 " We don't go into society at all, and she 
 doesn't speak Italian. How shall we amuse 
 her ? " 
 
 " Well, upon my word, I don't know that 
 we 're obliged to provide her amusement ! 
 Let her amuse herself. Let her take up 
 some branch of study, or of of research, 
 and get something besides ' fun ' into her 
 head, if possible." He spoke boldly, but 
 his wife's question had unnerved him, for 
 he had a soft heart, and liked people about 
 him to be happy. " We can show her the 
 objects of interest. And there are the 
 theatres, " he added. 
 
 " Yes, that is true," said Mrs. Elmore.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 39 
 
 " We can both go about with her. I will 
 just peep in at her now, and see if she has 
 everything she wants." She rose from her 
 sofa and went to Lily's room, whence she 
 did not return for nearly three quarters of 
 an hour. By this time Elmore had got out 
 his notes, and, in their transcription and clas- 
 sification, had fallen into forgetfulness of his 
 troubles. His wife closed the door behind 
 her, and said in a low voice, little above a 
 whisper, as she sank very quietly into a 
 chair, " Well, it has all come out, Owen." 
 
 "What has all come out?" he asked, 
 looking up stupidly. 
 
 "I knew that she had something on her 
 mind, by the way she acted. And you saw 
 her give me that look as she went out ?" 
 
 "No no, I didn't. What look was it? 
 She looked sleepy." 
 
 "She looked terribly, terribly excited, 
 and as if she would like to say something to 
 me. That was the reason I said I would 
 let her go to her room alone. " 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 ' ' Of course she would have felt awfully 
 if I had gone straight off with her. So I 
 waited. It may never come to anything in 
 the world, and I don't suppose it will ; but
 
 40 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 it 's quite enough to account for everything 
 you saw in her. " 
 
 " I didn't see anything in her, that was 
 the difficulty. But what is it what is it, 
 Celia ? You know how I hate these de- 
 lays." 
 
 " Why, I 'm not sure that I need tell you, 
 Owen ; and yet I suppose I had better. It 
 will be safer," said Mrs. Elmore, nursing 
 her mystery to the last, enjoying it for its 
 own sake, and dreading it for its effect upon 
 her husband. "I suppose you will think 
 your troubles are beginning pretty early," 
 she suggested. 
 
 " Is it a trouble ?" 
 
 "Well, I don't know that it is. If it 
 comes to the very worst, I daresay that 
 every one wouldn't call it a trouble. " 
 
 Elmore threw himself back in his chair in 
 an attitude of endurance. " What would 
 the worst be ?" 
 
 " Why, it 's no use even to discuss that, 
 for it 's perfectly absurd to suppose that it 
 could ever come to that. But the case," 
 added Mrs. Elmore, perceiving that further 
 delay was only further suffering for her 
 husband, and that any fact would now prob- 
 ably fall far short of his apprehensions, ' ' is
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 41 
 
 simply this, and I don't know that it amounts 
 to anything ; but at Peschiera, just before 
 the train started, she looked out of the 
 window, and saw a splendid officer walking 
 up and down and smoking ; and before she 
 could draw back he must have seen her, for 
 he threw away his cigar instantly, and got 
 into the same compartment. He talked a 
 while in German with an old gentleman 
 who was there, and then he spoke in Italian 
 with Gazzi ; and afterwards, when he heard 
 her speaking English with Gazzi, he joined in. 
 I don't know how he came to join in at first, 
 and she doesn't, either ; but it seems that he 
 knew some English, and he began speaking. 
 He was very tall and handsome and distin- 
 guished-looking, and a perfect gentleman in 
 his manners ; and she says that she saw 
 Gazzi looking rather queer, but he didn't say 
 anything, and so she kept on talking. She 
 told him at once that she was an Ameri- 
 can, and that she was coming here to stay 
 with friends ; and, as he was very curious 
 about America, she told him all she could 
 think of. It did her good to talk about 
 home, for she had been feeling a little blue 
 at being so far away from everybody. Now, 
 7 don't see any harm in it ; do you, Owen ?"
 
 42 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " It isn't according to the custom here ; 
 but we needn't care for that. Of course it 
 was imprudent." 
 
 "Of course," Mrs.Elmore admitted. " The 
 officer was very polite ; and when he found 
 that she was from America, it turned out 
 that lie was a great sympathiser with the 
 North, and that he had a brother in our 
 army. Don't you think that was nice ?" 
 
 ' ' Probably some mere soldier of fortune, 
 with no heart in the cause," said Elmore. 
 
 " And very likely he has no brother there, 
 as I told Lily. He told her he was coming 
 to Padua ; but when they reached Padua, he 
 came right on to Venice. That shows you 
 couldn't place any dependence upon what he 
 said. He said he expected to be put under 
 arrest for it ; but he didn't care, he was 
 coming. Do you believe they'll put him 
 under arrest ? " 
 
 "I don't know I don't know," said 
 Elmore, in a voice of grief and apprehension, 
 which might well have seemed anxiety for 
 the officer's liberty. 
 
 " I told her it was one of his jokes. He 
 was very funny, and kept her laughing the 
 whole way, with his broken English and his 
 witty little remarks. She says he's just
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 43 
 
 dying to go to America. Who do you sup- 
 pose it can be, Owen ? " 
 
 "How should I know? We've no ac- 
 quaintance among the Austrians," groaned 
 Elmore. 
 
 " That 's what I told Lily. She 's no idea 
 of the state of things here, and she was quite 
 horrified. But she says he was a perfect 
 gentleman in everything. He belongs to the 
 engineer corps, that's one of the highest 
 branches of the service, he told her, and he 
 gave her his card. " 
 
 " Gave her his card ! " 
 
 Mrs. Elmore had it in the hand which she 
 had been keeping in her pocket, and she now 
 suddenly produced it ; and Elmore read the 
 name and address of Ernst von Ehrhardt, 
 Captain of the Royal -Imperial Engineers, 
 Peschiera. " She says she knows he wanted 
 hers, but she didn't offer to give it to him ; 
 and he didn't ask her where she was going, 
 or anything." 
 
 ' ' He knew that he could get her address 
 from Gaz/i for ten soldi as soon as her back 
 was turned," said Elmore cynically. "What 
 then?" 
 
 "Why, he said and this is the only really 
 bold thing he did do that he must see her
 
 44 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 again, and that he should stay over a day in 
 Venice in hopes of meeting her at the theatre 
 or somewhere." 
 
 " It 's a piece of high-handed impudence ! " 
 cried Elmore. " Now, Celia, you see what 
 these people are ! Do you wonder that the 
 Italians hate them ?" 
 
 "You've often said they only hate their 
 system." 
 
 " The Austrians are part of their system. 
 He thinks he can take any liberty with us 
 because he is an Austrian officer ! Lily 
 must not stir out of the house to-morrow." 
 
 " She will be too tired to do so," said Mrs. 
 Elmore. 
 
 "And if he molests us further, I will 
 appeal to the consul." Elmore began to 
 walk up and down the room again. 
 
 " Well, I don't know whether you could 
 call it molesting, exactly," suggested Mrs. 
 Elmore. 
 
 " What do you mean, Celia ? Do you 
 suppose that she she encouraged this 
 officer?" 
 
 * ' Owen ! It was all in the simplicity and 
 innocence of her heart ! 
 
 "Well, then, that she wishes to see him 
 again ? "
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 45 
 
 "Certainly not! But that's no reason 
 why we should be rude about it." 
 
 "Rude about it? How? Is simply 
 avoiding him rudeness? Is proposing to 
 protect ourselves from his impertinence 
 rudeness ?" 
 
 " No. And if you can't see the matter for 
 yourself, Owen, I don't know how any one is 
 to make you." 
 
 ' ' Why, Celia, one would think that you 
 approved of this man's behaviour, that you 
 wished her to meet him again ! You under- 
 stand what the consequences would be if we 
 received this officer. You know how all the 
 Venetians would drop us, and we should 
 have no acquaintances here outside of the 
 army. " 
 
 ' ' Who has asked you to receive him, 
 Owen ? And as for the Italians dropping us, 
 that doesn't frighten me. But what could 
 he do if he did meet her again ? She needn't 
 look at him. She says he is very intelligent, 
 and that he has read a great many English 
 books, though he doesn't speak it very well, 
 and that he knows more about the war than 
 she does. But of course she won't go out to- 
 morrow. All that I hate is that we should 
 seem to be frightened into staying at home."
 
 46 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " She needn't stay in on his account. You 
 said she would be too tired to go out." 
 
 " I see by the scattering way you talk, 
 Owen, that your mind isn't on the subject, 
 and that you 're anxious to get back to your 
 work. I won't keep you." 
 
 " Celia, Celia ! Be fair, now!" cried 
 Elmore. " You know very well that I 'ra 
 only too deeply interested in this matter, 
 and that I 'm not likely to get back to my 
 work to-night, at least. What is it you 
 wish me to do ? " 
 
 Mrs. Elmore considered a while. ' ' I don't 
 wish you to do anything," she returned, plac- 
 ably. " Of course, you 're perfectly right in 
 not choosing to let an acquaintance begun 
 in that way go any further. We shouldn't 
 at home, and we shan't here. But I don't 
 wish you to think that Lily has been impru- 
 dent, under the circumstances. She doesn't 
 know that it was anything out of the way, 
 but she happened to do the best that any 
 one could. Of course, it was very exciting 
 and very romantic ; girls like such things, 
 and there 's no reason they shouldn't. We 
 must manage," added Mrs. Elmore, " so that 
 she shall see that we appreciate her conduct, 
 and trust in her entirely. I wouldn't do
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 4i 
 
 anything to wound her pride or self-confi- 
 dence. I would rather send her out alone 
 to-morrow." 
 
 " Of course," said Elmore. 
 
 " And if I were with her when she met 
 him, I believe I should leave it entirely to 
 her how to behave. " 
 
 "Well," said Elmore, " you 're not likely 
 to be put to the test. He'll hardly force 
 his way into the house, and she isn't going 
 out." 
 
 "No," said Mrs. Elmore. She added, 
 after a silence, " I 'm trying to think whether 
 I Ve ever seen him in Venice ; he 's here 
 often. But there are so many tall officers 
 with fair complexions and English beards. 
 I should like to know how he looks ! She 
 said he was very aristocratic-looking. " 
 
 "Yes, it's a fine type," said Elmore. 
 " They 're all nobles, I believe." 
 
 "But after all, they're no better-looking 
 than our boys, who come up out of nothing. " 
 
 " Ours are Americans," said Elmore. 
 
 "And they are the best husbands, as I 
 told Lily." 
 
 Elmore looked at his wife, as she turned 
 dreamily to leave the room ; but since the 
 conversation had taken this impersonal turn
 
 48 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 he would not say anything to change its 
 complexion. A conjecture vaguely taking 
 shape in his mind resolved itself to nothing 
 again, and left him with only the ache of 
 something unascertained.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 49 
 
 V. 
 
 IN the morning Lily came to breakfast as 
 blooming as a rose. The sense of her 
 simple, fresh, wholesome loveliness might 
 have pierced even the indifference of a man 
 to whom there was but one pretty woman in 
 the world, and who had lived since their 
 marriage as if his wife had absorbed her 
 whole sex into herself ; this deep, uncon- 
 scious constancy was a noble trait in him, 
 but it is not so rare in men as women would 
 have us believe. For Elmore, Miss Mayhew 
 merely pervaded the place in her finer way, 
 as the flowers on the table did, as the sweet 
 butter, the new eggs, and the morning's 
 French bread did ; he looked at her with a 
 perfectly serene ignorance of her piquant 
 face, her beautiful eyes and abundant hair, 
 and her trim, straight figure. But his wife 
 exulted in every particular of her charm, 
 and was as generously glad of it as if it were 
 her own ; as women are when they are sure 
 D
 
 50 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 that the charm of others has no designs. 
 The ladies twittered and laughed together, 
 and as he was a man without small talk, he 
 soon dropped out of the conversation into a 
 reverie, from which he found himself pre- 
 sently extracted by a question from his 
 wife. 
 
 * ' We had better go in a gondola, hadn't 
 we, Owen ?" She seemed to be, as she put 
 this, trying to look something into him. 
 He, on his part, tried his best to make out 
 her meaning, but failed. 
 
 He simply asked, " Where ? Are you 
 going out ? " 
 
 " Yes. Lily has some shopping she must 
 do. I think we can get it at Pazienti's in 
 San Polo." 
 
 Again she tried to pierce him with her 
 meaning. It seemed to him a sudden ad- 
 vance from the position she had taken the 
 night before in regard to Miss Mayhew's not 
 going out ; but he could not understand his 
 wife's look, and he feared to misinterpret if 
 he opposed her going. He decided that she 
 wished him for some reason to oppose the 
 gondola, so he said, " I think you 'd better 
 walk, if Lily isn't too tired." 
 
 " Oh, I'm not tired at all !" she cried.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 51 
 
 "I can go with you, in that direction, on 
 my way to the library," he added. 
 
 "Well, that will be very nice," said 
 Mrs. Elmore, discontinuing her look, and 
 leaving her husband with an uneasy sense 
 of wantonly assumed responsibility. 
 
 "She can step into the Frari a moment, 
 and see those tombs," he said. " I think it 
 will amuse her." 
 
 Lily broke into a laugh. "Is that the 
 way you amuse yourselves in Venice ? " she 
 asked ; and Mrs. Elmore hastened to reas- 
 sure her. 
 
 " That 's the way Mr. Elmore amuses him- 
 self. You know his history makes every bit 
 of the past fascinating to him." 
 
 "Oh, yes, that history! Everybody is 
 looking out for that," said Lily. 
 
 "Is it possible," said Elmore, with a 
 pensive sarcasm in which an agreeable sense 
 of flattery lurked, ' ' that people still remem- 
 ber me and my history ?" 
 
 ' ' Yes, indeed ! " cried Miss Mayhew. 
 " Frank Halsey was talking about it the 
 night before I left. He couldn't seem to 
 understand why I should be coming to you 
 ' at Venice, because he said it was a history 
 of Florence you were writing. It isn't, is it ?
 
 52 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 You must be getting pretty near the end of 
 it, Professor Elmore." 
 
 " I 'm getting pretty near the beginning,'' 
 said Elmore sadly. 
 
 ' ' It must be hard writing histories ; 
 they're so awfully hard to read," said Lily 
 innocently. "Does it interest you?" she 
 asked, with unaffected compassion. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "far more than it will 
 ever interest anybody else." 
 
 "Oh, I don't believe that!" she cried 
 sweetly, seizing the occasion to get in a little 
 compliment. 
 
 Mrs. Elmore sat silent, while things were 
 thus going against Miss Mayhew, and per- 
 haps she was then meditating the stroke by 
 which she restored the balance to her own 
 favour as soon as she saw her husband alone 
 after breakfast. "Well. Owen," she said, 
 " you Ve done it now." 
 
 ' ' Done what ? " he demanded. 
 
 " Oh, nothing, perhaps ! " she answered, 
 while she got on her things for the walk 
 with unusual gaiety ; and, with the con- 
 sciousness of unknown guilt depressing him, 
 he followed the ladies upon their errand, 
 subdued, distraught, but gradually forget- 
 ting his sin, as he forgot everything but his
 
 A FEARFUL RESPOXSIBILITY. 53 
 
 history. His wife hated to see him so miser- 
 able, and whispered at the shop-door where 
 they parted, "Don't be troubled, Owen ! I 
 didn't mean anything." 
 
 "By what?" 
 
 "Oh, if you've forgotten, never mind!" 
 she cried ; and she and Miss Mayhew disap- 
 peared within. 
 
 It was two hours later when he next saw 
 them, after he had turned over the book he 
 wished to see, and had found the passage 
 which would enable him to go on with his 
 work for the rest of the day at home. He 
 was fitting his key into the house-door when 
 he happened to look up the little street to- 
 ward the bridge that led into it, and there, 
 defined against the sky on the level of the 
 bridge, he saw Mrs. Elmore and Miss May- 
 hew receiving the adieux of a distinguished - 
 looking man in the Austrian uniform. The 
 officer had brought his heels together in the 
 conventional manner, and with his cap in his 
 right hand, while his left rested on the hilt 
 of his sword, and pressed it down, he was 
 bowing from the hips. Once, twice, and he 
 was gone. 
 
 The ladies came down the calle with rapid 
 steps and flushed faces, and Elmore let them
 
 54 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 in. His wife whispered as she brushed by 
 his elbow, " I want to speak with you in- 
 stantly, Owen. "Well, now !" she added, 
 when they were alone in their own room and 
 she had shut the door, " what do you say 
 now ?" 
 
 "What do 7 say now, Celia ? ? ' retorted 
 Elmore, with just indignation. " It seems 
 to me that it is for you to say something or 
 nothing." 
 
 ' ' Why, you brought it on us. " 
 
 Elmore merely glanced at his wife, and 
 did not speak, for this passed all force of 
 language. 
 
 "Didn't you see me looking at you when 
 I spoke of going out in a gondola, at break- 
 fast?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " What did you suppose I meant ?" 
 
 " I didn't know." 
 
 " When I was trying to make you under- 
 stand that if we took a gondola we could go 
 and come without being seen ! Lily had to 
 do her shopping. But if you chose to run 
 off on some interpretation of your own, was 
 / to blame, I should like to know ? No, 
 indeed ! You won't get me to admit it, 
 Owen.'
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 55 
 
 Elmore continued inarticulate, but he 
 made a low, miserable sibillation between 
 _his set teeth. 
 
 ' ' Such presumption, such perfect audacity 
 
 I never saw in my life !" cried Mrs. Elmore, 
 
 fleetly changing the subject in her own mind, 
 
 and leaving her husband to follow her as he 
 
 could. "It was outrageous !" Her words 
 
 were strong, but she did not really look 
 
 affronted ; and it is hard to tell what sort of 
 
 j^ liberty it is that affronts a woman. It seems 
 
 j to depend a great deal upon the person who 
 
 1 takes the liberty. 
 
 "That was the man, I suppose," said 
 Elmore quietly. 
 
 " Yes, Owen," answered his wife, with 
 beautiful candour, "it was." Seeing that 
 he remained unaffected by her display of 
 this virtue, she added, " Don't you think he 
 was very handsome?" 
 
 " I couldn't judge, at such a distance." 
 
 " Well, he is perfectly splendid. And I 
 don't want you to think he was disrespectful 
 at all. He wasn't. He was everything that 
 was delicate and deferential." 
 
 "Did you ask him to walk home with 
 you?" 
 
 Mrs. Elmore remained speechless for some
 
 56 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 moments. Then she drew a long breath, and 
 said firmly : "If you won't interrupt me 
 with gratuitous insults, Owen, I will tell you 
 all about it, and then perhaps you will be 
 ready to do me justice. I ask nothing more." 
 She waited for his contrition, but proceeded 
 without it, in a somewhat meeker strain : 
 " Lily couldn't get her things at Pazienti's, 
 and we had to go to the Merceria for them. 
 Then of course the nearest way home was 
 through St. Mark's Square. I made Lily go 
 on the Florian side, so as to avoid the officers 
 who were sitting at the Quadri, and we had 
 got through the square and past San Moise, 
 as far as the Stadt Gratz. I had never 
 thought of how the officers frequented the 
 Stadt Gratz, but there we met a most mag- 
 nificent creature, and I had just said, 'What 
 a splendid officer ! ' when she gave a sort of 
 stop and he gave a sort of stop, and bowed 
 very low, and she whispered, * It 's my 
 officer.' I didn't dream of his joining us, 
 and I don't think he did, at first ; but 
 after he took a second look at Lily, it 
 really seemed as if he couldn't help it. He 
 asked if he might join us, and I didn't say 
 anything." 
 
 " Didn't say anything !"
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 57 
 
 "No! How could I refuse, in so many 
 words ? And I was frightened and confused, 
 any way. He asked if we were going to the 
 music in the Giardini Pubblici ; and I said 
 No, that Miss Mayhew was not going into 
 society in Venice, but was merely here for 
 her health. That 's all there is of it. Now 
 do you blame me, Owen ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Do you blame her ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Well, I don't see how he was to blame." 
 
 " The transaction was a little irregular, 
 but it was highly creditable to all parties 
 concerned." 
 
 Mrs. Elmore grew still meeker under this 
 irony. Indignation and censure she would 
 have known how to meet ; but his quiet per- 
 plexed her ; she did not know what might 
 not be coming. "Lily scarcely spoke to 
 him," she pursued, " and I was very cold. 
 I spoke to him in German." 
 
 ' ' Is German a particularly repellent 
 tongue ?" 
 
 " No. But I was determined he should 
 get no hold upon us. He was very polite 
 and very respectful, as I said, but I didn't 
 give him an atom of encouragement ; I saw
 
 58 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 that he was dying to be asked to call, but I 
 parted from him very stiffly. " 
 
 "Is it possible?" 
 
 " Owen, what is there so wrong about it 
 all ? He 's clearly fascinated with her ; and 
 as the matter stood, he had no hope of see- 
 ing her or speaking with her except on the 
 street. Perhaps he didn't know it was 
 wrong, -or didn't realise it. " 
 
 "I dare say." 
 
 " What else could the poor fellow have 
 done ? There he was ! He had stayed over 
 a day, and laid himself open to arrest, on 
 the bare chance one in a hundred of see- 
 ing Lily ; and when he did see her, what 
 was he to do?" 
 
 "Obviously, to join her and walk home 
 with her." 
 
 " You are too bad, Owen ! Suppose it 
 had been one of our own poor boys ? He 
 looked like an American." 
 
 " He didn't behave like one. One of ' our 
 own poor boys,' as you call them, would 
 have been as far as possible from thrusting 
 himself upon you. He would have had 
 too much reverence for you, too much self- 
 respect, too much pride." 
 
 " What has pride to do with such things,
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 59 
 
 my dear ? I think he acted very naturally. 
 He acted upon impulse. I 'm sure you 're 
 always crying out against the restraints and 
 conventionalities between young people, over 
 here ; and now, when a European does do 
 a simple, unaffected thing" 
 
 Elmore made a gesture of impatience. 
 " This fellow has presumed upon your being 
 Americans on your ignorance of the customs 
 here to take a liberty that he would not 
 have dreamed of taking with Italian or Ger- 
 man ladies. He has shown himself no gen- 
 tleman. " 
 
 " Now there you are very much mistaken, 
 Owen. That 's what I thought when Lily 
 first told me about his speaking to her in 
 the cars, and I was very much prejudiced 
 against him ; but when I saw him to-day, I 
 must say that I felt that I had been wrong. 
 He is a gentleman ; but he is desperate." 
 
 " Oh, indeed !" 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Elmore, shrinking a 
 little under her husband's sarcastic tone. 
 " Why, Owen," she pleaded, " can't you see 
 anything romantic in it?" 
 
 '" I see nothing but a vulgar impertinence 
 in it. I see it from his standpoint as an ad- 
 venture to be bragged of and laughed over
 
 CO A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 at the mess-table and the caffe. I 'm going 
 to put a stop to it." 
 
 Mrs. Elmore looked daunted and a little 
 bewildered. "Well, Owen," she said, "I 
 put the affair entirely in your hands. " 
 
 Elmore never could decide upon just what 
 theory his wife had acted ; he had to rest 
 upon the fact, already known to him, of her 
 perfect truth and conscientiousness, and his 
 perception that even in a good woman the 
 passion for manoeuvring and intrigue may 4 
 approach the point at which men commit 
 forgery. He now saw her quelled and sub- 
 missive ; but he was by no means sure that 
 she looked at the affair as he did, or that she 
 voluntarily acquiesced. 
 
 "All that I ask is that you won't do any- 
 thing that you '11 regret afterward. And 
 as for putting a stop to it, I fancy it 's put 
 a stop to already. He's going back to 
 Peschiera this afternoon, and that '11 pro- 
 bably be the last of him." 
 
 " Very well," said Elmore, " if that is the 
 last of him, I ask nothing better. I certainly 
 have no wish to take any steps in the 
 matter. " 
 
 But he went out of the house very un- 
 happy and greatly perplexed. He thought
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 61 
 
 at first of going to the Stadt Gratz, where 
 Captain Ehrhardt was probably staying for 
 the tap of Vienna beer peculiar to that 
 hostelry, and of inquiring him out, and re- 
 questing him to discontinue his attentions ; 
 but this course, upon reflection, was less 
 high-handed than comported with his pre- 
 sent mood, and he turned aside to seek 
 advice of his consul. He found Mr. Hoskins 
 in the best humour for backing his quarrel. 
 He had just received a second despatch from 
 Turin, stating that the rumour of the ap- 
 proaching visit of the ' ' Alabama " was un- 
 founded ; and he was thus left with a force 
 of unexpended belligerence on his hands 
 which he was glad to contribute to the 
 defence of Mr. Elmore's family from the 
 pursuit of this Austrian officer. 
 
 "This is a very simple affair, Mr. Elmore," 
 he usually said "Elmore," but in his 
 haughty frame of mind, he naturally threw 
 something more of state into their inter- 
 course, "a very simple affair, fortunately. 
 All that I have to do is to call on the military 
 governor, and state the facts of the case, and 
 this fellow will get his orders quietly and 
 definitively. This war has sapped our influ- 
 ence in Europe, there 's no doubt of it ;
 
 62 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 but I think it 's a pity if an American family 
 living in this city can't be safe from moles- 
 tation ; and if it can't I want to know the 
 reason why." 
 
 This language was very acceptable to 
 Elmore, and he thanked the consul. At the 
 same time he felt his own resentment mode- 
 rated, and he said, "I'm willing to let the 
 matter rest if he goes away this afternoon. " 
 
 " Oh, of course," Hoskins assented, " if he 
 clears out, that 's the end of it. I '11 look in 
 to-morrow, and see how you 're getting 
 along." 
 
 " Don't don't give them the impression 
 that I've profited by your kindness," sug- 
 gested Elmore at parting. 
 
 " You haven't yet. I only hope you may 
 have the chance." 
 
 " Thank you ; I don't think / do." 
 
 Elmore took a long walk, and returned 
 home tranquillised and clarified as to the 
 situation. Since it could be terminated with- 
 out difficulty and without scandal in the way 
 Hoskins had explained, he was not unwilling 
 to see a certain poetry in it. He could not 
 repress a degree of sympathy with the 
 bold young fellow who had overstepped the 
 conventional proprieties in the ardour of a
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 63 
 
 romantic impulse, and he could see how this 
 very boldness, while it had a terror, would 
 have a charm for a young girl. There was 
 no necessity, except for the purpose of hold- 
 ing Mrs. Elmore in check, to look at it in an 
 ugly light. Perhaps the officer had inferred 
 from Lily's innocent frankness of manner 
 that this sort of approach was permissible^, 
 with Americans, and was not amusing him- 
 self with the adventure, but was in love in 
 earnest. Elmore could allow himself this 
 view of a case which he had so completely in 
 his own hands ; and he was sensible of a 
 sort of pleasure in the novel responsibility 
 thrown upon him. Few men at his age were 
 called upon to stand in the place of a parent 
 to a young girl, to intervene in her affairs, and 
 to decide who was and who was not a proper 
 person to pretend to her acquaintance. 
 
 Feeling so secure in his right, he rebelled 
 against the restraint he had proposed to him- 
 self, and at dinner he invited the ladies to go 
 to the opera with him. He chose to show 
 himself in public with them, and to check 
 any impression that they were without due 
 protection. As usual, the pit was full of 
 officers, and between the acts they all rose, 
 as usual, and faced the boxes, which they
 
 64 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 perused through their lorgnettes till the bell 
 rang for the curtain to rise. But Mrs. El- 
 more, having touched his arm to attract his 
 notice, instructed him, by a slow turning of 
 her head, that Captain Ehrhardt was not 
 there. After that he undoubtedly breathed 
 freer, and in the relaxation from his sense of 
 bravado, he enjoyed the last acts of the opera 
 more than the first. Miss Mayhew showed 
 no disappointment ; and she bore herself 
 with so much grace and dignity, and yet 
 so evidently impressed every one with her 
 beauty, that he was proud of having her in 
 charge. He began himself to see that she 
 was pretty.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 65 
 
 VI. 
 
 rilHE next day was Sunday, and in going 
 JL to church they missed a call from 
 Hoskins, whom Elmore felt bound to visit 
 the following morning on his way to the 
 library, and inform of his belief that the 
 enemy had quitted Venice, and that the 
 whole affair was probably at an end. He 
 was strengthened in this opinion by Mrs. 
 Elmore 's fear that she might have been 
 colder than she supposed ; she hoped that 
 she had not hurt the poor young fellow's 
 feelings ; and now that he was gone, and 
 safely out of the way, Elmore hoped so too. 
 On his return from the library, his wife 
 met him with an air of mystery before 
 which his heart sank. "Owen, "she said, 
 " Lily has a letter." 
 
 " Not bad news from home, Celia ! " 
 ' ' No ; a letter which she wishes to show 
 you. It has just come. As I don't wish to 
 influence you, I would rather not be pre-
 
 66 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 sent." Mrs. Elmore slipped out of the room, 
 and Miss Mayhew glided gravely in, holding 
 an open note in her hand, and looking into 
 Elmore's eyes with a certain unfathomable 
 candour, of which she had the secret. 
 
 "Here, "she said, "is a letter which I 
 think you ought to see at once, Professor 
 Elmore ;" and she gave him the note with 
 an air of unconcern, which he afterward 
 recalled without being able to determine 
 whether it was real indifference or only the 
 calm resulting from the transfer of the whole 
 responsibility to him. She stood looking at 
 him while he read : 
 
 Miss, 
 
 In this evening I am just arrived from 
 Venise, 4 hours afterwards I have had the 
 fortune to see you and to speake with you 
 and to favorite me of your gentil acquaint- 
 anceship at rail-away. I never forgeet the 
 moments I have seen you. Your pretty and 
 nice figure had attached my heard so much, 
 that I deserted in the hopiness to see you at 
 Venise. And I was so lukely to speak with 
 you cut too short, and in the possibility to 
 understand all. I wished to go also in this 
 Sonday to Venise, but I am sory that I can- 
 not, beaucause I must feeled now the conse- 
 quences of the deesrtation. Pray Miss to
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 67 
 
 agree the assurance of my lov, and perhaps 
 I will be so lukely to receive a notice from 
 you Miss if I can hop a little (hapiness) 
 sympathie. Tres humble 
 
 E. vox EHRHARDT. 
 
 Elmore was not destitute of the national 
 sense of humour ; but he read this letter 
 not only without amusement in its English, 
 but with intense bitterness and renewed 
 alarm. It appeared to him that the willing- 
 ness of the ladies to put the affair in his 
 hands had not strongly manifested itself till 
 it had quite passed their own control, and 
 had become a most embarrassing difficulty, 
 when, in fact, it was 110 longer a merit in 
 them to confide it to him. In the resent- 
 ment of that moment, his suspicions even 
 accused his wife of desiring, from idle curi- 
 osity and sentiment, the accidental meeting 
 which had resulted in this fresh aggression. 
 
 "Why did you show me this letter?" he 
 asked harshly. 
 
 "Mrs. Elmore told me to do so," Lily 
 answered. 
 
 " Did you wish me to see it ?" 
 
 " I don't suppose I wished you to see it : 
 I thought you ought to see it. " 
 
 Elmore felt himself relenting a little.
 
 b'S A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 "What do you want done about it?" he 
 asked more gently. 
 
 " That is what I wished you to tell me," 
 replied the girl. 
 
 "I can't tell you what you wish me to 
 do, but I can tell you this, Miss Mayhew : 
 this man's behaviour is totally irregular. 
 He would not think of writing to an Italian 
 or German girl in this way. If he desired 
 to to pay attention to her, he would 
 write to her father. " 
 
 * ' Yes, that 's what Mrs. Elmore said. 
 She said she supposed he must think it was 
 the American way." 
 
 " Mrs. Elmore," began her husband ; but he 
 arrested himself there, and said, " Very well. 
 I want to know what I am to do. I want 
 your full and explicit authority before I act. 
 We will dismiss the fact of irregularity. 
 We will suppose that it is fit and becoming 
 for a gentleman who has twice met a young 
 lady by accident, or once by accident, and 
 once by his own insistence to write to her. 
 Do you wish to continue the correspondence ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 Elmore looked into the eyes whicn dwelt 
 full upon him, and, though they were clear 
 as the windows of heaven, he hesitated. " I
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 69 
 
 must do what you say, no matter what you 
 mean, you know ? " 
 
 " I mean what I say." 
 
 "Perhaps," he suggested, " you would 
 prefer to return him this letter with a few 
 lines on your card." 
 
 "No. I should like him to know that I 
 have shown it to you. I should think it a 
 liberty for an American to write to me in 
 that way after such a short acquaintance, 
 and I don't see why I should tolerate it 
 from a foreigner, though I suppose their 
 customs are different." 
 
 " Then you wish me to write to him ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 4 * And make an end of the matter once for 
 all?" 
 
 Yes" 
 
 "Very well, then." Elmore sat down at 
 once, and wrote : 
 
 Sir, Miss Mayhew has handed me your 
 note of yesterday, and begs me to express 
 her very great surprise that you should have 
 ventured to address her. She desires me also 
 to add that you will consider at an end what- 
 ever acquaintance you suppose yourself to 
 have formed with her. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 OWEN ELMORE.
 
 70 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 He handed the note to Lily. " Yes, that 
 will do," she said, in a low, steady voice. 
 She drew a deep breath, and, laying the 
 letter softly down, went out of the room into 
 Mrs. Elmore's. 
 
 Elmore had not had time to kindle his 
 sealing-wax when his wife appeared swiftly 
 upon the scene. 
 
 "I want to see what you have written, 
 Owen," she said. 
 
 "Don't talk to me, Celia," he replied, 
 thrusting the wax into the caudle-light. 
 "You have put this affair entirely in my 
 hands, and Lily approves of what I have 
 written. I am sick of the thing, and I don't 
 want any more talk about it." 
 
 " I must see it," said Mrs. Elmore, with 
 finality, and possessed herself of the note. 
 She ran it through, and then flung it on 
 the table, and dropped into a chair, while 
 the tears started to her eyes. " What 
 a cold, cutting, merciless letter ! " she 
 cried. 
 
 "I hope he will think so," said Elmore, 
 gathering it up from the table, and sealing it 
 securely in its envelope. 
 
 " You 're not going to send it !" exclaimed 
 his wife.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 71 
 
 " Yes, I am." 
 
 "I didn't suppose you could be so heart- 
 less. " 
 
 " Very well, then, I won't send it," said 
 Elmore. " I put the affair in your hands. 
 What are you going to do about it ? " 
 
 " Nonsense ! " 
 
 " On the contrary, I 'in perfectly serious. I 
 don't see why you shouldn't manage the busi- 
 ness. The gentleman is an acquaintance of 
 yours, /don't know him." Elmore rose and 
 put his hands in his pockets. ' ' What do you 
 intend to do ? Do you like this clandestine 
 sort of thing to go on ? I dare say the fellow 
 only wishes to amuse himself by a flirtation 
 with a pretty American. But the question 
 is whether you wish him to do so. I 'm will- 
 ing to lay his conduct to a misunderstanding 
 of our customs, and to suppose that he thinks 
 this is the way Americans do. I take the 
 matter at its best : he speaks to Lily on the 
 train without an introduction ; he joins you 
 in your walk without invitation ; he writes 
 to her without leave, and proposes to get up 
 a correspondence. It is all perfectly right 
 and proper, and will appear so to Lily's 
 friends when they hear of it. But I 'm curi- 
 ous to know how you 're going to manage the
 
 72 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 sequel. Do you wish the affair to go on, and 
 how long do you wish it to go on?" 
 
 "You know very well that I don't wish it 
 to go on." 
 
 "Then you wish it broken off?" 
 
 "Of course I do." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " I think there is such a thing as acting 
 kindly and considerately. I don't see any- 
 thing in Captain Ehrhardt's conduct that 
 calls for savage treatment," said Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 " You would like to have him stopped, 
 but stopped gradually. Well, I don't wish 
 to be savage, either, and I will act upon any 
 suggestion of yours. I want Lily's people to 
 feel that we managed not only wisely but 
 humanely in checking a man who was re- 
 solved to force his acquaintance upon her. " 
 
 Mrs. Elmore thought a long while. Then 
 she said : ' ' Why, of course, Owen, you 're 
 light about it. There is no other way. 
 There couldn't be any kindness in checking 
 him gradually. But I wish," she added sor- 
 rowfully, "that he had not been such a com- 
 plete goose ; and then we could have done 
 something with him." 
 
 "I am obliged to him for the perfection 
 which you regret, my dear. If he had been
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 73 
 
 less complete, he would have been much 
 harder to manage." 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Elinore, rising, "I 
 shall always say that he meant well. But 
 send the letter. " 
 
 Her husband did not wait for a second 
 bidding. He carried it himself to the 
 general post-office that there might be no 
 mistake and no delay about it ; and a man 
 who believed that he had a feeling and 
 tender heart experienced a barbarous joy in 
 the infliction of this pitiless snub. I do not 
 say that it would not have been different if 
 he had trusted at all in the sincerity of 
 Captain Ehrhardt's passion ; but he was 
 glad to discredit it. A misgiving to the 
 other effect would have complicated the 
 matter. But now he was perfectly free to 
 disembarrass himself of a trouble which had 
 so seriously threatened his peace. He was 
 responsible to Miss Mayhew's family, and 
 Mrs. Elmore herself could not say, then or 
 afterward, that there was any other way 
 open to him. I will not contend that his 
 motives were wholly unselfish. No doubt 
 a sense of personal annoyance, of offended 
 decorum, of wounded respectability, quali- 
 fied the zeal for Miss Mayhew's good which
 
 i4 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 prompted him. He was still a young and in- 
 experienced man, confronted with a strange 
 perplexity : he did the best he could, and I 
 suppose it was the best that could be done. 
 At any rate, he had no regrets, and he went 
 cheerfully about the work of interesting Miss 
 Mayhew in the monuments and memories of 
 the city. 
 
 Since the decisive blow had been struck, 
 the ladies seemed to share his relief. The 
 pursuit of Captain Ehrhardt, while it flat- 
 tered, might well have alarmed, and the loss 
 of a not unpleasant excitement was made 
 good by a sense of perfect security. What- 
 ever repining Miss Mayhew indulged was 
 secret, or confided solely to Mrs. Elmore. 
 To Elmore himself she appeared in better 
 spirits than at first, or at least in a more 
 equable frame of mind. To be sure, he did 
 not notice very particularly. He took her 
 to the places and told her the things that 
 she ought to be interested in, and he con- 
 ceived a better opinion of her mind from the 
 quick intelligence with which she entered 
 into his own feelings in regard to them, 
 though he never could see any evidence of 
 the over-study for which she had been 
 taken from school. He made her, like
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 75 
 
 Mrs. Elmore, the partner of his historical 
 researches ; he read his notes to both of 
 them now ; and when his wife was pre- 
 vented from accompanying him, he went 
 with Lily alone to visit the scenes of such 
 events as his researches concerned, and to 
 fill his mind with the local colour which he 
 believed would give life and character to his 
 studies of the past. They also went often 
 to the theatre ; and, though Lily could not 
 understand the plays, she professed to be 
 entertained, and she had a grateful appre- 
 ciation of all his efforts in her behalf that 
 amply repaid him. He grew fond of her 
 society ; he took a childish pleasure in hav- 
 ing people in the streets turn and glance 
 at the handsome girl by his side, of whose 
 beauty and stylishness he became aware 
 through the admiration looked over the 
 shoulders of the Austrians, and openly 
 spoken by the Italian populace. It did 
 not occur to him that she might not enjoy 
 the growth of their acquaintance in equal 
 degree, that she fatigued herself with the 
 appreciation of the memorable and the 
 beautiful, and that she found these long 
 rambles rather dull. He was a man of 
 little conversation ; and, unless Mrs. Elmore
 
 76 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 was of the company, Miss Mayhew pursued 
 his pleasures for the most part in silence. 
 One evening, at the end of the week, his 
 wife asked, " Why do you always take Lily 
 through the Piazza on the side furthest from 
 where the officers sit ? Are you afraid of 
 her meeting Captain Ehrhardt ?" 
 
 " Oh, no ! I consider the Ehrhardt busi- 
 ness settled. But you know the Italians 
 never walk on the officers' side." 
 
 " You are not an Italian. What do you 
 gain by flattering them up ? I should think 
 you might suppose a young girl had some 
 curiosity. " 
 
 "I do ; and I do everything I can to 
 gratify her curiosity. I went to San Pietro 
 di Castello to-day, to show her where the 
 Brides of Venice were stolen." 
 
 " The oldest and dirtiest part of the city ! 
 What could the child care for the Brides of 
 Venice ? Now be reasonable, Owen ! " 
 
 " It 's a romantic story. I thought girls 
 liked such things, about getting married." 
 
 "And that's the reason you took her 
 yesterday to show her the Bucentaur that 
 the doges wedded the Adriatic in ! Well, 
 what was your idea in going with her to the 
 Cemetery of San Michele ?"
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 77 
 
 " I thought she would be interested. I 
 had never been there before myself, and I 
 thought it would be a good opportunity to 
 verify a passage I was at work on. We 
 always show people the cemetery at home." 
 
 ' ' That was considerate. And why did 
 you go to Canarregio on Wednesday ? " 
 
 "I wished her to see the statue of Sior 
 Antonio Rioba ; you know it was the Vene- 
 tian Pasquino in the Revolution of '48" 
 
 " Charming !" 
 
 " And the Campo di Giustizia, where the 
 executions used to take place." 
 
 "Delightful!" 
 
 "And and the house of Tintoretto," 
 faltered Elmore. 
 
 "Delicious ! She cares so much for Tin- 
 toretto ! And you've been with her to the 
 Jewish burying-ground at the Lido, and the 
 Spanish synagogue in the Ghetto, and the 
 fish-market at the Rialto, and you Ve shown 
 her the house of Othello and the house of 
 Desdemona, and the prisons in the ducal 
 palace ; and tfrree nights you Ve taken us to 
 the Piazza, as soon as the Austrian band 
 stopped playing, and all the interesting 
 promenading was over, and those stuffy old 
 Italians began to come to the caffes. Well,
 
 78 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 I can tell you that 's no way to amuse u 
 young girl. We must do something for her, 
 or she will die. She has come here from a 
 country where girls have always had the 
 best time in the world, and where the times 
 are livelier now than they ever were, with 
 all this excitement of the war going on ; and 
 here she is dropped down in the midst of 
 this absolute deadness : no calls, no pic-nics, 
 no parties, no dances nothing ! We must 
 do something for her." 
 
 ' ' Shall we give her a ball ? " asked Elmore, 
 looking round the pretty little apartment. 
 
 "There's nothing going on among the 
 Italians. But you might get us invited to 
 the German Casino. " 
 
 " I dare say. But I will not do that." 
 
 " Then we could go to the Luogotenenza, 
 to the receptions. Mr. Hoskins could call 
 with us, and they would send us cards!" 
 
 ' ' That would make us simply odious to 
 the Venetians, and our house would be 
 thronged with officers. What I Ve seen of 
 them doesn't make me particiilarly anxious 
 for the honour of their further acquaint- 
 ance." 
 
 " Well, I don't ask you to do any of these 
 things," said Mrs. Elmore, who had, in
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 79 
 
 fact, mentioned them with the intention of 
 insisting upon an abated claim. "But I 
 think you might go and dine at one of the 
 hotels at the Danieli instead of that 
 Italian restaurant ; and then Lily could see 
 somebody at the table-d'h6te, and not sim- 
 ply perish of despair. " 
 
 " I I didn't suppose it was so bad as 
 that," said Elmore. 
 
 "Why, of course, she hasn't said any- 
 thing, she 's far too well-bred for that ; 
 but I can tell from my own feelings how she 
 must suffer. I have you, Owen," she said 
 tenderly, " but Lily has nobody. She has 
 gone through this Ehrhardt business so well 
 that I think we ought to do all we can to 
 divert her mind. " 
 
 " Well, now, Celia, you see the difficulty 
 of our position, the nature of the responsi- 
 bility we have assumed. How are we pos- 
 sibly, here in Venice, to divert the mind of 
 a young lady fresh from the parties and pic- 
 nics of Patmos?" 
 
 " We can go and dine at the Danieli," 
 replied Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 " Very well, let us go, then. But she 
 will learn no Italian there. She will hear 
 nothing but English from the travellers and
 
 80 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 bad French from the waiters ; while at our 
 restaurant " 
 
 "Pshaw!" cried Mrs. Elmore, "what 
 does Lily care for Italian ? I 'm sure / 
 never want to hear another word of it." 
 
 At this desperate admission, Elmore quite 
 gave way ; he went to the Danieli the next 
 morning, and arranged to begin dining there 
 that day. There is no denying that Miss 
 Mayhew showed an enthusiasm in prospect 
 of the change that even the sight of the 
 pillar to which Foscarini was hanged head 
 downwards for treason to the Republic had 
 not evoked. She made herself look very 
 pretty, and she was visibly an impression at 
 the table-d'h&te when she sat down there. 
 Elmore had found places opposite an elderly 
 lady and quite a young gentleman, of Eng- 
 lish speech, but of not very English effect 
 otherwise, who bowed to Lily in acknow- 
 ledgment of some former meeting. The 
 old lady said, "So you've reached Venice 
 at last ? I 'm very pleased, for your sake," 
 as if at some point of the progress thither 
 she had been privy to anxieties of Lily 
 about arriving at her destination ; and, in 
 fact, they had been in the same hotels at 
 Marseilles and Genoa. The young gentle-
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 81 
 
 man said nothing, but he looked at Lily 
 throughout the dinner, and seemed to take 
 his eyes from her only when she glanced at 
 him ; then he dropped his gaze to his 
 neglected plate and blushed. When they 
 left the table, he made haste to join the 
 Elmores in the reading-room, where he con- 
 trived, with creditable skill, to get Lily 
 apart from them for the examination of an 
 illustrated newspaper, at which neither of 
 them looked ; they remained chatting and 
 laughing over it in entire irrelevancy till 
 the elderly lady rose and said, ' ' Herbert, 
 Herbert ! I am ready to go now, 5 * upon 
 which he did not seem at all so, but went 
 submissively. 
 
 "Who are those people, Lily?" asked 
 Mrs. Elm ore, as they walked towards Flo- 
 rian's for their after-dinner coffee. The Aus- 
 trian band was playing in the centre of the 
 Piazza, and the tall, blonde German officers 
 promenaded back and forth with dark Hun- 
 garian women, who looked each like a prin- 
 cess of her race. The lights glittered upon 
 them, and on the brilliant groups spread 
 fan-wise out into the Piazza before the 
 caffes ; the scene seemed to shake and waver 
 in the splendour, like something painted.
 
 82 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " Oh, their name is Andersen, or some- 
 thing like that ; and they 're from Helgo- 
 land, or some such place. I saw them first 
 in Paris, but we didn't speak till we got to 
 Marseilles. That 's his aunt ; they 're Eng- 
 lish subjects, someway ; and he 's got an 
 appointment in the civil service I think he 
 called it in India, and he doesn't want to 
 go ; and I told him he ought to go to 
 America. That 's what I tell all these 
 Europeans. " 
 
 "It's the best advice for them," said 
 Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 "They don't seem in any great haste to 
 act upon it," laughed Miss Mayhew. " Who 
 was the red-faced young man that seemed 
 to know you, and stared so ?" 
 
 " That 's an English artist who is staying 
 here. He has a curious name, Rose-Black ; 
 and he is the most impudent and pushing 
 man in the world. I wouldn't introduce 
 him, because I saw he was just dying for 
 it." 
 
 Miss Mayhew laughed, as she laughed at 
 everything, not because she was amused, 
 but because she was happy ; this child-like 
 gaiety of heart was great part of her charm. 
 
 Elmore had quieted his scruples as a good
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 83 
 
 Venetian by coming inside of the caffe while 
 the band played, instead of sitting outside 
 with the bad patriots ; but he put the ladies 
 next the window, and so they were not alto- 
 gether sacrificed to his sympathy with the 
 dimostrazione.
 
 84 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE next morning Elmore was called from 
 his bed at no very early hour, it must 
 be owned, but at least before a nine o'clock 
 breakfast to see a gentleman who was wait- 
 ing in the parlour. He dressed hurriedly, 
 with a thousand exciting speculations in his 
 mind, and found Mr. Rose-Black looking 
 from the balcony window. "You have a 
 pleasant position here," he said easily, as he 
 turned about to meet Elmore's look of indig- 
 nant demand. " I Ve come to ask all about 
 our friends the Andersens/' 
 
 " I don't know anything about them," an- 
 swered Elmore. " I never saw them before. " 
 
 "Aoh!" said the painter. Elmore had 
 not invited him to sit down, but now he 
 dropped into a chair, with the air of asking 
 Elmore to explain himself. "The young 
 lady of your party seemed to know them. 
 How uncommonly pretty all your American 
 young girls are ! But I 'in told they fade
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 85 
 
 very soon. I should like to make up a pic- 
 nic party with you all for the Lido." 
 
 "Thank you," replied Elmore stiffly. 
 " Miss Mayhew has seen the Lido." 
 
 " Aoh ! That 's her name. It 's a pretty 
 name." He looked through the open door 
 into the dining-room, where the table was 
 set for breakfast, with the usual water- 
 goblet at each plate. " I see you have beer 
 for breakfast. There 's nothing so nice, you 
 know. Would you would you mind giv- 
 ing me a glahs ?" 
 
 Through an undefined sense of the duties 
 of hospitality, Elmore was surprised by this 
 impudence into sending out to the next caffe 
 for a pitcher of beer. Rose-Black poured 
 himself out one glass and another till he 
 had emptied the pitcher, conversing affably 
 meanwhile with his silent host. 
 
 " Why didn't you turn him out of doors?" 
 demanded Mrs. Elmore, as soon as the 
 painter's departure allowed her to slip from 
 the closed door behind which she had been 
 imprisoned in her room. 
 
 " I did everything but that," replied her 
 husband, whom this interview had saddened 
 more than it had angered. 
 
 " You sent out for beer for him ! "
 
 86 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " I didn't know but it might make him 
 sick. Really, the thing is incredible. I 
 think the man is cracked." 
 
 " He is an Englishman, and he thinks he 
 can take any kind of liberty with us because 
 we are Americans. " 
 
 "That seems to be the prevalent impres- 
 sion among all the European nationalities," 
 said Elmore. "Let's drop him for the 
 present, and try to be more brutal in the 
 future. " 
 
 Mrs. Elmore, so far from dropping him, 
 turned to Lily, who entered at that moment, 
 and recounted the extraordinary adventure 
 of the morning, which scarcely needed the 
 embellishment of her fancy ; it was not 
 really a gallon of beer, but a quart, that 
 Mr. Rose-Black had drunk. She enlarged 
 upon previous aggressions of his, and said 
 finally that they had to thank Mr. Ferris 
 for his acquaintance. 
 
 "Ferris couldn't help himself," said 
 Elmore. ' ' He apologised to me afterward. 
 The man got him into a corner. But he 
 warned us about him as soon as he could. 
 And Rose-Black would have made our 
 acquaintance, any way. I believe he 's 
 crazy. "
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 87 
 
 " I don't see how that helps the matter." 
 
 "It helps to explain it," concluded Elmore, 
 with a sigh. " We can't refer everything to 
 our being American lambs, and his being a 
 ravening European wolf." 
 
 "Of course he came round to find out 
 about Lily," said Mrs. Elmore. "The 
 Andersens were a mere blind. " 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Elmore !" cried Lily in depre- 
 cation. 
 
 The bell jangled. ' ' That is the postman, ' ' 
 said Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 There was a home-letter for Lily, and one 
 from Lily's sister enclosed to Mrs. Elmore. 
 The ladies rent them open, and lost them- 
 selves in the cross-written pages ; and neither 
 of them saw the dismay with which Elmore 
 looked at the handwriting of the envelope 
 addressed to him. His wife vaguely knew 
 that he had a letter, and meant to ask him 
 for it as soon as shs should have finished her 
 own. When she glanced at him again, he 
 was staring at the smiling face of Miss May- 
 hew, as she read her letter, with the wild 
 regard of one who sees another in mortal 
 peril, and can do nothing to avert the coming 
 doom, but must dumbly await the catas- 
 trophe.
 
 88 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " What is it, Owen ?" asked his wife in a 
 low voice. 
 
 He started from his trance, and struggled 
 to answer quietly. "I've a letter here 
 which I suppose I 'd better show to you first. '' 
 
 They rose and went into the next room, 
 Miss Mayhew following them with a bright, 
 absent look, and then dropping her eyes 
 again to her letter. 
 
 Elmore put the note he had received into 
 his wife's hands without a word. 
 
 Sir, My position permitted me to take a 
 woman. I am a soldier, but I am an engin- 
 eer operateous, and I can exercise wherever 
 my profession in the civil life. I have seen 
 Miss Mayhew, and I have great sympathie 
 for she. I think I will be lukely with her, 
 if Miss Mayhew would be of the same inten- 
 tion of me. 
 
 If you believe, Sir, that my open and realy 
 proposition will not offendere Miss Mayhew, 
 pray to handed to her this note. Pray sir to 
 excuse me the liberty to fatigue you, and to 
 go over with silence if you would be of 
 another intention. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 E. vox EHRHARDT. 
 
 Mrs. Elmore folded the letter carefully up 
 and returned it to her husband. If he had
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 89 
 
 perhaps dreaded some triumphant outburst 
 from her, he ought to have been content with 
 the thoroughly daunted look which she lifted 
 to his, and the silence in which she suffered 
 him to do justice to the writer. 
 
 " This is the letter of a gentleman, Celia," 
 he said. 
 
 " Yes," she responded faintly. 
 
 " It puts another complexion on the affair 
 entirely." 
 
 " Yes. Why did he wait a whole week ? " 
 she added. 
 
 " It is a serious matter with him. He had 
 a right to take time for thinking it over." 
 Elmore looked at the date of the Peschiera 
 postmark, and then at that of Venice on the 
 back of the envelope. "No, he wrote at 
 once. This has been kept in the Venetian 
 office, and probably read there by the autho- 
 rities." 
 
 His wife did not heed the conjecture. 
 " He began all wrong," she grieved. "Why 
 couldn't he have behaved sensibly?" 
 
 ' ' We must look at it from another point 
 of view now, " replied Elmore. ' ' He has 
 repaired his error by this letter." 
 
 "No, no ; he hasn't." 
 
 " The question is now what to do about
 
 1)0 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 the changed situation. This is an offer of 
 marriage. It conies in the proper way. It 's 
 a very sincere and manly letter. The man 
 has counted the whole cost : he 's ready to 
 leave the army and go to America, if she 
 says so. He 's in love. How can she refuse 
 him?" 
 
 " Perhaps she isn't in love with him," 
 said Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 " Oh ! That 's true. I hadn't thought of 
 that. Then it 's very simple." 
 
 " But I don't know that she isn't," mur- 
 mured Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 "Well, ask her." 
 
 " How could she tell ?" 
 
 " How could she tell ?" 
 
 " Yes. Do you suppose a child like that 
 can know her own mind in an instant ?" 
 
 ' ' I should think she could. " 
 
 "Well, she couldn't. She liked the ex- 
 citement, the romanticality of it ; but she 
 doesn't know any more than you or I whether 
 she cares for him. I don't suppose marriage 
 with anybody has ever seriously entered her 
 head yet." 
 
 " It will have to do so now," said Elmore 
 firmly. " There 's no help for it." 
 
 " I think the American plan is much
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. . 91 
 
 better," pouted Mrs. Elmore. " It 's horrid 
 to know that a man 's in love with you, and 
 wants to marry you, from the very start. Of 
 course it makes you hate him." 
 
 " I dare say the American plan is better 
 in this as in most other things. But we 
 can't discuss abstractions, Celia. We must 
 come down to business. What are we to do? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " We must submit the question to her." 
 
 " To that innocent, unsuspecting little 
 thing ? Never ! " cried Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 " Then we must decide it, as he seems to 
 expect we may, without reference to her," 
 said her husband. 
 
 "No, that won't do. Let me think." 
 Mrs. Elmore thought to so little purpose that 
 she left the word to her husband again. 
 
 " You see we must lay the matter before 
 her." 
 
 " Couldn't couldn't we let him come to 
 see us a while ? Couldn't we explain our ways 
 to him, and allow him to pay her attentions 
 without letting her know about this letter ? " 
 
 "I'm afraid he wouldn't understand, 
 that we couldn't make it clear to him," said 
 Elmore. " If we invited him to the house he 
 would consider it as an acceptance. He
 
 92 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 wants a categorical answer, and he has a 
 right to it. It would be no kindness to a 
 man with his ideas to take him on probation. 
 He has behaved honourably, and we 're 
 bound to consider him." 
 
 " Oh, I don't think he 's done anything so 
 very great, " said Mrs. Elmore, with that dis- 
 position we all have to disparage those who 
 put us in difficulties. 
 
 " He 's done everything he could do," said 
 Elmore. " Shall I speak to Miss Mayhew ?" 
 
 "No, you had better let me," sighed his 
 wife. "I suppose we must. But I think it 's 
 horrid ! Everything could have gone on so 
 nicely if he hadn't been so impatient from 
 the beginning. Of course she won't have him 
 now. She will be scared, and that will be 
 the end of it." 
 
 " I think you ought to be just to him, 
 Celia. I can't help feeling for him. He has 
 thrown himself iipon our mercy, and he has 
 a claim to right and thoughtful treatment." 
 
 " She won't have anything to do with him. 
 You '11 see." 
 
 " I shall be very glad of that," Elmore 
 began. 
 
 " Why should you be glad of it?" de- 
 manded his wife.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 93 
 
 He laughed. ' ' I think I can safely leave 
 his case in your hands. Don't go to the 
 other extreme. If she married a German, 
 he would let her black his boots, like that 
 general in Munich." 
 
 "Who is talking of marriage?" retorted 
 Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 "Captain Ehrhardt and I. That 's what it 
 comes to ; and it can't come to anything else. 
 I like his courage in writing English, and 
 it' s wonderful how he hammers his meaning 
 into it. ' Lukely ' isn't bad, is it? And 'my 
 position permitted me to take a woman ' I 
 suppose he means that he has money enough 
 to marry on is delicious. Upon my word, 
 I have a good deal of sympathie for he ! " 
 
 "For shame, Owen ! It 's wicked to make 
 fun of his English." 
 
 " My dear, I respect him for writing in 
 English. The whole letter is touchingly 
 brave and fine. Confound him ! I wish I 
 had never heard of him. What does he come 
 bothering across my path for ? " 
 
 "Oh, don't feel that way about it, Owen !" 
 cried his wife. " It 's cruel." 
 
 " I don't. I wish to treat him in the most 
 generous manner ; after all, it isn't his fault. 
 But you must allow, Celia, that it 's very
 
 94 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 annoying and extremely perplexing. WK 
 can't make up Miss Mayhew's mind for her. 
 Even if we found out that she liked him, it 
 would be only the beginning of our troubles. 
 We 've no right to give her away in marriage, 
 or let her involve her affections here. But be 
 judicious, Celia." 
 
 " It 's easy enough to say that !" 
 
 "I'll be back in an hour," said Elmore. 
 " I 'm going to the square. We mustn't lose 
 time." 
 
 As he passed out through the breakfast - 
 room, Lily was sitting by the window with 
 her letter in her lap, and a happy smile on 
 her lips. When he came back she happened 
 to be seated in the same place ; she still had 
 a letter in her lap, but she was smiling no 
 longer ; her face was turned from him as he 
 entered, and he imagined a wistful droop in 
 that corner of her mouth which showed on 
 her profile. 
 
 But she rose very promptly, and with a 
 heightened colour said, "I 'm sorry to trouble 
 you to answer another letter for me, Pro- 
 fessor Elmore. I manage my correspondence 
 at home myself, but here it seems to be dif- 
 ferent." 
 
 "It needn't be different here, Lily," said
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 95 
 
 Elmore kindly. " You can answer all the 
 letters you receive in just the way you like. 
 We don't doubt your discretion in the least. 
 We will abide by any decision of yours, on 
 any point that concerns yourself." 
 
 "Thank you," replied the girl ; "but in this 
 case I think you had better write. " She kept 
 slipping Ehrhardt's letter up and down be- 
 tween her thumb and finger against the palm 
 of her left hand, and delayed giving it to him, 
 as if she wished him to say something first. 
 
 " I suppose you and Celia have talked the 
 matter over ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And I hope you have determined upon 
 the course you are going to take, quite un- 
 influenced ?" 
 
 " Oh, quite so." 
 
 " I feel bound to tell you," said Elmore, 
 " that this gentleman has now done every- 
 thing that we could expect of him, and has 
 fully atoned for any error he committed in 
 making your acquaintance." 
 
 " Yes, I understand that. Mrs. Elmore 
 thought he might have written because he 
 saw he had gone too far, and couldn't think 
 of any other way out of it. " 
 
 " That occurred to me, too, though I didn't
 
 96 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 mention it. But we 're bound to take the 
 letter on its face, and that 's open and hon- 
 ourable. Have you made up your mind ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Do you wish for delay ? There is no 
 reason for haste. " 
 
 "There's no reason for delay, either," 
 said the girl. Yet she did not give up the 
 letter, or show any signs of intending to ter- 
 minate the interview. " If I had had more 
 experience, I should know how to act better ; 
 but I must do jbhe best I can, without the 
 experience. I think that even in a case like 
 this we should try to do right, don't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, above all other cases," said Elmore, 
 with a laugh. 
 
 She flushed in recognition of her absurdity. 
 " I mean that we oughtn't to let our feelings 
 carry us away. I saw so many girls carried 
 away by their feelings, when the first regi- 
 ments went off, that I got a horror of it. I 
 think it 's wicked : it deceives both ; and 
 then you don't know how to break the en- 
 gagement afterward." 
 
 "You're quite right, Lily," said Elmore, 
 with a rising respect for the girl. 
 
 " Professor Elmore, can you believe that 
 with all the attentions I 've had, I Ve never
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 97 
 
 seriously thought of getting married as the 
 end of it all ?" she asked, looking him freely 
 in the eyes. 
 
 " I can't understand it, no man could, I 
 suppose, but I do believe it. Mrs. Ehnore 
 has often told me the same thing." 
 
 "And this letter it means marriage." 
 
 " That and nothing else. The man who 
 wrote it would consider himself cruelly 
 wronged if you accepted his attentions with- 
 out the distinct purpose of marrying him." 
 
 She drew a deep breath. "I shall have 
 to ask you to write a refusal for me. 53 But 
 still she did not give him the letter. 
 
 ' ' Have you made up your mind to that ? " 
 
 "I can't make up my mind to anything 
 else." 
 
 Ehnore walked unhappily back and forth 
 across the room. ' ' I have seen something 
 of international marriages since I 've been 
 in Europe," he said. " Sometimes they 
 succeed ; but generally they 're wretched 
 failures. The barriers of different race, 
 language, education, religion, they 're ter- 
 rible barriers. It's very hard for a man 
 and woman to understand each other at 
 the best ; with these differences added, it 's 
 almost a hopeless case." 
 
 G
 
 98 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " Yes ; that 's what Mrs. Elmore said." 
 
 " And suppose you were married to an 
 Austrian officer stationed in Italy. You 
 would have no society outside of the garrison. 
 Every other human creature that looked at 
 you would hate you. And if you were 
 ordered to some of those half barbaric prin- 
 cipalities, Moldavia or Wallachia, or into 
 Hungary or Bohemia, everywhere your 
 husband would be an instrument for the 
 suppression of an alien or disaffected popu- 
 lation. What a fate for an American girl ! " 
 
 " If he were good," said the girl, replying 
 in the abstract, " she needn't care." 
 
 " If he were good, you needn't care. No. 
 And he might leave the Austrian service, 
 and go with you to America, as he hints. 
 What could he do there ? He might get an 
 appointment in our army, though that 's not 
 so easy now ; or he might go to Patmos, and 
 live upon your friends till he found some- 
 thing to do in civil life." 
 
 Lily began a laugh. "Why, Professor 
 Elmore, / don't want to marry him ! What 
 in the world are you arguing with me for ?" 
 
 " Perhaps to convince myself. I feel that 
 I oughtn't to let these considerations weigh 
 as a feather in the balance if you are at all
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 99 
 
 at all ahem ! excuse me ! attached to him. 
 That, of course, outweighs everything else." 
 
 "But I'm not!" cried the girl. "How 
 could I be ? I've only met him twice. It 
 would be perfectly ridiculous. I know I 'm 
 not. I ought to know that if I know any- 
 thing. " 
 
 Years afterward it occurred to Elmore, 
 when he awoke one night, and his mind 
 without any reason flew back to this period 
 in Venice, that she might have been referring 
 the point to him for decision. But now it 
 only seemed to him that she was adding 
 force to her denial ; and he observed nothing 
 hysterical in the little laugh she gave. 
 
 "Well, then, we can't have it over too 
 soon. I'll write now, if you will give me 
 his letter." 
 
 She put it behind her. "Professor 
 Elmore," she said, " I am not going to have 
 you think that he ever behaved in the least 
 presumingly. And whatever you think of 
 me, I must tell you that I suppose I talked 
 very freely with him, just as freely, as I 
 should with an American. I didn't know 
 . any better. He was very interesting, and I 
 was home-sick, and so glad to see any one 
 who could speak English. I suppose I was
 
 100 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 a goose ; but I felt very far away from all 
 my friends, and I was grateful for his kind- 
 ness. Even if he had never written this 
 last letter, I should always have said that 
 he was a true gentleman." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "That is all. I can't have him treated 
 as if he were an adventurer." 
 
 " You want him dismissed ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " A man can't distinguish as to the terms 
 of a dismissal. They 're always insolent, 
 more insolent than ever if you try to make 
 them kindly. I should merely make this as 
 short and sharp as possible." 
 
 " Yes," she said breathlesslj 7 , as if the 
 idea affected her respiration. 
 
 " But I will show it to you, and I won't 
 send it without your approval." 
 
 " Thank you. But I shall not want to 
 see it. I 'd rather not." She was going out 
 of the room. 
 
 " Will you leave me this letter ? You 
 can have it again." 
 
 She turned red in giving it hhn. "I 
 forgot. Why, it 's written to you, anyway !" 
 she cried, with a laugh, and put the letter 
 on the table.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 101 
 
 The two doors opened and closed : one 
 excluded Lily, and the other admitted Mrs. 
 Elmore. 
 
 " Owen, I approve of all you said, except 
 that about the form of the refusal. / will 
 read what you say. I intend that it shall 
 be made kindly." 
 
 1 ' Very well. I '11 copy a letter of yours, 
 or write from your dictation." 
 
 " No ; you write it, and I '11 criticise it." 
 
 " Oh, you talk as if I were eager to write 
 the letter ! Can't you imagine it 's being a 
 very painful thing to me ?" he demanded. 
 
 "It didn't seem to be so before." 
 
 " Why, the situation wasn't the same 
 before he wrote this letter ! " 
 
 " I don't see how. He was as much in 
 earnest then as he is now, and you had no 
 pity for him." 
 
 "Oh, my goodness!" cried Elmore de- 
 sperately. "Don't you see the difference? 
 He hadn't given any proof before " 
 
 " Oh, proof, proof ! You men are always 
 wanting proof ! What better proof could 
 he have given than the way he followed her 
 about ? Proof, indeed ! I suppose you 'd 
 like to have Lily prove that she doesn't care 
 for him ! "
 
 102 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " Yes," said Elmore sadly, " I should like 
 very much to have her prove it." 
 
 "Well, you won't get her to. What 
 makes you think she does ? " 
 
 " I don't. Do you?" 
 
 " N-o," answered Mrs. Elmore reluctantly. 
 
 "Celia, Celia, you will drive me mad if 
 you go on in this way ! The girl has told 
 me, over and over, that she wishes him dis- 
 missed. Why do you think she doesn't ?" 
 
 " I don't. Who hinted such a thing ? But 
 I don't want you to enjoy doing it." 
 
 " Enjoy it ? So you think I enjoy it ! 
 What do you suppose I 'm made of ? Per- 
 haps you think I enjoyed catechising the 
 child about her feelings toward him ? Per- 
 haps you think I enjoy the whole confounded 
 affair? Well, I give it up. I will let it 
 go. If I can't have your full and hearty 
 support, I '11 let it go. I '11 do nothing 
 about it." 
 
 He threw Ehrhardt's letter on the table, 
 and went and sat down by the window. His 
 wife took the letter up and read it over. 
 " Why, you see he asks you to pass it over 
 in silence if you don't consent." 
 
 "Does he?" asked Elmore. "I hadn't 
 noticed that."
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 103 
 
 " Perhaps you 'd better read some of your 
 letters, Owen, before you answer them !" 
 
 "Really, I had forgotten. I had forgotten 
 that the letter was written to me at all. I 
 thought it was to Lily, and she had got to 
 thinking so too. Well, then, I won't do any- 
 thing about it." He drew a breath of relief. 
 
 " Perhaps," suggested his wife, " he asked 
 that so as to leave himself some hope if he 
 should happen to meet her again. " 
 
 "And we don't wish him to have any 
 hope." 
 
 Mrs. Elmore was silent. 
 
 "Celia," cried her husband indignantly, 
 4 ' I can't have you playing fast and loose 
 with me in this matter ! " 
 
 "I suppose I may have time to think?" 
 she retorted. 
 
 " Yes, if you will tell me what you do 
 think ; but that I must know. It 's a thing 
 too vital in its consequences for me to act 
 without your full concurrence. I won't take 
 another step in it till I know just how far 
 you have gone with me. If I may judge of 
 what this man's influence upon Lily would 
 be by the fact that he has brought us to the 
 verge of the only real quarrel we've ever 
 had"^
 
 104 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " Who's quarrelling, Owen ?" asked Mrs. 
 Elmore meekly. " I 'm not." 
 
 ' ' Well, well ! we won't dispute about that. 
 I want to know whether you thought with 
 me that it was improper for him to address 
 her in the car ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And still more improper for him to join 
 you in the street ? " 
 
 " Yes. But he was very gentlemanly." 
 
 " No matter about that. You were just 
 as much annoyed as I was by his letter to 
 her?" 
 
 " I don't know about annoyed. It scared 
 me." 
 
 " Very well. And you approved of my 
 answering it as I did ?" 
 
 " I had nothing to do with it. I thought 
 you were acting conscientiously. I '11 say 
 that much." 
 
 " You Ve got to say more. You have got 
 to say you approved of it ; for you know 
 you did." 
 
 " Oh approved of it ? Yes ! " 
 
 "That's all I want. Now I agree with 
 you that if we pass this letter in silence, it 
 will leave him with some hope. You agree 
 with me that in a marriage between an
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 105 
 
 American girl and an Austrian officer the 
 chances would be ninety-nine to a hundred 
 against her happiness at the best. " 
 
 " There are a great many unhappy mar- 
 riages at home," said Mrs. Elmore impar- 
 tially. 
 
 ' ' That isn't the point, Celia, and you know 
 it. The point is whether you believe the 
 chances are for or against her in such a mar- 
 riage. Do you ? " 
 
 "Do I what?" 
 
 " Agree with me ?" 
 
 " Yes ; but I say they might be very happy. 
 I shall always say that. " 
 
 Elmore flung up his hands in despair. 
 " Well, then, say what shall be done now." 
 
 This was perhaps just what Mrs. Elmore 
 did not choose to say. She was silent a 
 long time, so long that Elmore said, "But 
 there 's really no haste about it," and took 
 some notes of his history out of a drawer, 
 and began to look them over, with his back 
 turned to her. 
 
 "I never knew anything so heartless !" 
 she cried. "Owen, this must be attended 
 to at once ! I can't have it hanging over 
 me any longer. It will make me sick." 
 
 He turned abruptly round, and, seating
 
 106 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 himself at the table, wrote a note, which he 
 pushed across to her. It acknowledged the 
 receipt of Captain von Ehrhardt's letter, and 
 expressed Miss Mayhew's feeling that there 
 was nothing in it to change her wish that the 
 acquaintance should cease. In after years, 
 the terms of this note did not always appear 
 to Elmore wisely chosen or humanely con- 
 sidered ; but he stood at bay, and he struck 
 mercilessly. In spite of the explicit concur- 
 rence of both Miss Mayhew and his wife, he 
 felt as if they were throwing wholly upon 
 him a responsibility whose fearfulness he did 
 not then realise. Even in his wife's " Send 
 it ! " he was aware of a subtle reservation on 
 her part.
 
 A FEARFUL KE6PONSIBILITY. 107 
 
 VIII. 
 
 MRS. ELMORE and Lily again rose buoy- 
 antly from the conclusive event, but 
 he succumbed to it. For the delicate and 
 fastidious invalid, keeping his health evenly 
 from day to day upon the condition of a free 
 and peaceful mind, the strain had been too 
 much. He had a bad night, and the next 
 day a gastric trouble declared itself which 
 kept him in bed half the week, and left him 
 very weak and tremulous. His friends did 
 not forget him during this time. Hoskins 
 came regularly to see him, and supplied his 
 place at the table-d'h6te of the Danieli, going 
 to and fro with the ladies, and efficiently 
 protecting them from the depredations of 
 the Austrian soldiery. From Mr. Rose-Black 
 he could not protect them ; and both the 
 ladies amused Elmore with a dramatisation 
 of how the Englishman had boldly outwitted 
 them, and trampled all their finessing under 
 foot, by simply walking up to them in the
 
 108 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 reading-room, and saying, "This is Miss 
 Mayhew, I suppose," and putting himself at 
 once on the footing of an old family friend. 
 They read to Elmore, and they put his 
 papers in crder, so that he did not know 
 where to find anything when he got well ; 
 but they always came home from the hotel 
 with some lively gossip, and this he liked. 
 They professed to recognise an anxiety on 
 the part of Mr. Andersen's aunt that his 
 mind should not be diverted from the civil 
 service in India by thoughts of young Ameri- 
 can ladies ; but she sent some delicacies to 
 Elmore, and one day she even came to call 
 with her nephew, in extreme reluctance and 
 anxiety as they pretended to him. 
 
 The next afternoon the young man called 
 alone, and Elmore, who was now on foot, 
 received him in the parlour, before the ladies 
 came in. Mr. Andersen had a bunch of 
 flowers in one hand, and a small wooden box 
 containing a little turtle on a salad-leaf in 
 the other ; the poor animals are sold in the 
 Piazza at Venice for souvenirs of the city, 
 and people often carry them away. Elmore 
 took the offerings simply, as he took every- 
 thing in life, and interpreted them as an 
 expression, however odd, of Mr. Andersen's
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 109 
 
 sympathy with his recent sufferings, of which 
 he gave him some account ; but he practised 
 a decent self-denial here, and they were 
 already talking of the weather when the 
 ladies appeared. He hastened to exhibit 
 the tokens of Mr. Andersen's kind remem- 
 brance, and was mystified by the young 
 man's confusion, and the impatient, almost 
 contemptuous, air with which his wife lis- 
 tened to him. Hoskins came in at that 
 moment to ask about Elmore 's health, and 
 showed the hostile civility to Andersen 
 which young men use toward each other 
 in the presence of ladies ; and then, seeing 
 that the latter had secured the place at Miss 
 Mayhew's side on the sofa, he limped to the 
 easy chair near Mrs. Elmore, and fell into 
 talk with her about Rose-Black's pictures, 
 which he had just seen. They were based 
 upon an endeavour to trace the moral prin- 
 ciples believed by Mr. Ruskin to underlie 
 Venetian art, and they were very queer, so 
 Hoskins said ; he roughly sketched an idea 
 of some of them on a block he took from his 
 pocket. 
 
 Mr. Andersen and Lily went out upon one 
 of the high-railed balconies that overhung 
 the canal, and stood there, with their backs
 
 110 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 to the others. She seemed to be listening, 
 with averted face, while he, with his cheek 
 leaning upon one hand and his elbow resting 
 on the balcony rail, kept a pensive attitude 
 after they had apparently ceased to speak. 
 Something in their pose struck the sculptor's 
 fancy, and he made a hasty sketch of them, 
 and was showing it to the Elmores when 
 Lily suddenly descended into the room again, 
 and, saying something about its being quite 
 dark, went out, and left Mr. Andersen to 
 make his adieux to the others. He startled 
 them by saying that he was to set off for 
 India in the morning, and he went away 
 very melancholy. 
 
 "Well, I don't know," said Hoskins, 
 thoughtfully retouching his sketch, " that I 
 should feel very lively about going out to 
 India myself. " 
 
 " He seems to be a very affectionate young 
 fellow, " observed Elmore, ' ' and I 've no 
 doubt he will feel the separation from his 
 friends. But I really don't know why he 
 should have brought me a bouquet, and a 
 small turtle in a box, on the eve of his de- 
 parture." 
 
 "What?" cried Hoskins, with a rude 
 guffaw ; and when Elmore had showed his
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. Ill 
 
 gifts, Hoskins threw back his head and 
 laughed indecently. His behaviour nettled 
 Elmore, and it sent Mrs. Elmore prematurely 
 out of the room ; for, not content with his 
 explosions of laughter, he continued for some 
 time to amuse himself by touching up with 
 the point of his pencil the tail of the turtle 
 which he had turned out of its box upon 
 the table. At Mrs. Elmore's withdrawal he 
 stopped, and presently said good-night rather 
 soberly. 
 
 Then she returned. "Owen," she asked 
 sadly, " did you really think these flowers 
 and that turtle were for you ?" 
 
 "Why, yes," he answered. 
 
 " Well, I don't know whether I wouldn't 
 almost rather it had been a joke. I believe 
 that I would rather despise your heart than 
 your head. Why should Mr. Andersen 
 bring you flowers and a turtle ?" 
 
 " Upon my word, I don't know." 
 
 " They were for Lily ! And your mistake 
 has added another pang to the poor young 
 fellow's suffering. She has just refused him. " 
 she said ; and as Elmore continued to glare 
 blankly at her, she added: "She was re- 
 fusing him there on the balcony while that 
 disgusting Mr. Hoskins was sketching them ;
 
 112 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 and he had his hand up, that way, .because 
 lie was crying. " 
 
 " This is horrible, Celia !" cried Elmore. 
 The scent of the flowers lying on the table 
 seemed to choke him ; the turtle clawing 
 about on the smooth surface looked demoni- 
 acal. "Why" 
 
 " Now, don't ask me why she refused 
 him, Owen. Of course she couldn't care for 
 a boy like that. But he can't realise it, and 
 it 's just as miserable for him as if he were a 
 thousand years old. " 
 
 Elmore hung his head. "It was all a 
 mistake. But how should I know any 
 better ? I am a straightforward man, 
 Celia ; and I am unfit for the care that has 
 been thrown upon me. It's more than I 
 can bear. No, I 'm not fit for it ! " he cried 
 at last ; and his wife, seeing him so crushed, 
 now said something to console him. 
 
 " I know you're not. I see it more and 
 more. But I know that you will do the 
 best you can, and that you will always act 
 from a good motive. Only do try to be 
 more on your guard." 
 
 " I will I will," he answered humbly. 
 
 He had a temptation, the next time he 
 visited Hoskins, to tell him the awful secret,
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 113 
 
 and to see how the situation of that night, 
 with this lurid light upon it, affected him : 
 it could do poor Andersen, now on his way 
 to India, no harm. He yielded to his temp- 
 tation, at the same time that he confessed 
 his own blunder about the flowers. 
 
 Hoskins whistled. "I tell you what," 
 he said, after a long pause, " there are some 
 things in history that I never could realise, 
 like Mary, Queen of Scots, for instance, 
 putting on her best things, and stepping 
 down into the front parlour of that castle to 
 have her head off. But a thing like this, 
 happening on your own balcony, helps you 
 to realise it." 
 
 " It helps you to realise it," assented 
 Elmore, deeply oppressed by the tragic 
 parallel. 
 
 " He 's just beginning to feel it about 
 now," said Hoskins, with strange sangfroid. 
 ' ' I reckon it 's a good deal like being shot. 
 I didn't fully appreciate my little hit under 
 a couple of days. Then I began to find out 
 that something had happened. Look here," 
 he added, " I want to show you something ; " 
 and he pulled the wet cloth off a breadth of 
 clay which he had set up on a board stayed 
 against the wall. It was a bas-relief repre- 
 H
 
 114 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 senting a female figure advancing from the 
 left corner over a stretch of prairie towards a 
 bulk of forest on the right ; bison, bear, and 
 antelope fled before her ; a lifted hand 
 shielded her eyes ; a star lit the fillet that 
 bound her hair. 
 
 "That's the best thing you've done, 
 Hoskins," said Elmore. " What do you call 
 it?" 
 
 "Well, I haven't settled yet. I have 
 thought of * Westward the Star of Empire, ' 
 but that 's rather long ; and I Ye thought of 
 * American Enterprise. ' I ain't in any hurry 
 to name it. You like it, do you ?" 
 
 "I like it immensely!" cried Elmore. 
 " You must let me bring the ladies to see 
 it." 
 
 " Well, not just yet," said the sculptor, in 
 some confusion. " I want to get it a little 
 further along first." 
 
 They stood looking together at the figure ; 
 and when Elmore went away he puzzled 
 himself about something in it, he could not 
 tell exactly what. He thought he had seen 
 that face and figure before, but this is what 
 often occurs to the connoisseur of modern 
 sculpture. His mind heavily reverted to 
 Lily and her suitors. Take her in one way,
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 115 
 
 especially in her subordination to himself, 
 the girl was as simply a child as any in the 
 world, good-hearted, tender, and sweet, 
 and, as he could see, without tendency to 
 flirtation. Take her in another way, con- 
 front her with a young and marriageable 
 man, and Elmore greatly feared that she 
 unconsciously set all her beauty and grace at 
 work to charm him ; another life seemed to 
 inform her, and irradiate from her, apart 
 from which she existed simple and childlike 
 still. In the security of his own deposited 
 affections, it appeared to him cruelly absurd 
 that a passion which any other pretty girl 
 might, and some other pretty girl in time 
 must, have kindled, should cling, when once 
 awakened, so inalienably to the pretty girl 
 who had, in a million chances, chanced to 
 awaken it. He wondered how much of this 
 constancy was natural, and how much merely 
 attributive and traditional, and whether hu- 
 man happiness or misery were increased by 
 it on the whole.
 
 116 A FEAKFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 IX. 
 
 IN the respite which followed the dismissal 
 of Andersen, the English painter Rose- 
 Black visited the Elmores as often as the 
 servant, who had orders in his case to say 
 that they were impediti, failed of her duty. 
 They could not always escape him at the 
 caffe, and they would have left off dining at 
 the hotel but for the shame of feeling that he 
 had driven them away. If he had been an 
 Englishman repelling their advances, instead 
 of an Englishman pursuing them, he could 
 not have been more offensive. He affronted 
 their national as well as personal self-esteem ; 
 lie early declared himself a sympathiser with 
 the Southrons (as the London press then 
 called them), and he expressed the current 
 belief of his compatriots, that we were going 
 to the dogs. 
 
 "What do you really make of him, Owen?" 
 asked Mrs. Elmore, after an evening that, in 
 its improbable discomfort, had passed quite 
 like a nightmare.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 117 
 
 ' ' Well, I Ve been thinking a good deal 
 about him. I have been wondering if, in his 
 phenomenal way, he is not a final expression 
 of the national genius, the stupid contempt 
 for the rights of others ; the tacit denial of 
 the rights of any people who are ac English 
 mercy ; the assumption that the courtesies 
 and decencies of life are for use exclusively 
 towards Englishmen." 
 
 This was in that embittered old war-time : 
 we have since learned how forbearing and 
 generous and amiable Englishmen are ; how 
 they never take advantage of any one they 
 believe stronger than themselves, or fail in 
 consideration for those they imagine their 
 superiors ; how you have but to show your- 
 self successful in order to win their respect, 
 and even affection. 
 
 But for the present Mrs. Elmore replied to 
 her husband's perverted ideas, "Yes, it must 
 be so," and she supported him in the ineffec- 
 tual experiment of deferential politeness, 
 Christian charity, broad humanity, and sav- 
 age rudeness upon Rose-Black. It was all 
 one to Rose-Black. 
 
 He took an air of serious protection to- 
 wards Mrs. Elmore, and often gave her ad- 
 vice, while he practised an easy gallantry
 
 118 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 with Lily, and ignored Elmore altogether. 
 His intimacy was superior to the accidents 
 of their moods, and their slights and snubs 
 were accepted apparently as interesting ex- 
 pressions of a civilisation about which he 
 was insatiably curious, especially as re- 
 garded the relations of young people. There 
 was no mistaking the fact that Rose-Black 
 in his way had fallen under the spell which 
 Elmore had learned to dread ; but there 
 was nothing to be done, and he helplessly 
 waited. He saw what must come ; and one 
 evening it came, when Rose-Black, in more 
 than usually offensive patronage, lolled back 
 upon the sofa at Miss Mayhew's side, and 
 said, " About flirtations, now, in America, 
 tell ine something about flirtations. We Ve 
 heard so much about your American flirta- 
 tions. We only have them with married 
 ladies, on the Continent, and I don't suppose 
 Mrs. Elmore would think of one." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," said 
 Lily. " I don't know anything about flirta- 
 tions. " 
 
 This seemed to amuse Rose -Black as an 
 uncommonly fine piece of American humour, 
 which was then just beginning to make its 
 way with the English. "Oh, but come,
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 119 
 
 now, you don't expect me to believe that, 
 you know. If you won't tell me, suppose 
 you show me what an American flirtation is 
 like. Suppose we get up a flirtation. How 
 should you begin ? " 
 
 The girl rose with a more imposing air 
 than Elmore could have imagined of her 
 stature ; but almost any woman can be 
 awful in emergencies. ' ' I should begin by 
 bidding you good-evening," she answered, 
 and swept out of the room. 
 
 Elmore felt as if he had been left alone 
 with a man mortally hurt in combat, and 
 were likely to be arrested for the deed. He 
 gazed with fascination upon Rose-Black, 
 and wondered to see him stir, and at last 
 rise, and with some incoherent words to 
 them, get himself away. He dared not lift 
 his gaze to the man's eyes, lest he should 
 see there some reflection of the pain that 
 filled his own. He would have gone after 
 him, and tried to say something in con- 
 dolence, but he was quite helpless to move ; 
 and as he sat still, gazing at the door through 
 which Rose-Black disappeared, Mrs. Elmore 
 said quietly : 
 
 " Well, really, I think that ought to be 
 the last of him. You see, she 's quite able
 
 120 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 to take care of herself when she knows her 
 ground. You can't say that she has thrown 
 the brunt of this affair upon you, Owen." 
 
 " I am not so sure of that," sighed Elmore, 
 "I think I suffer less when I do it than 
 when I see it. It 's horrible. " 
 
 " He deserved it, every bit," returned his 
 wife. 
 
 " Oh, I dare say," Elmore granted. " But 
 the sight even of justice isn't pleasant, I 
 find." 
 
 "I don't understand you, Owen. How 
 can you care so much for this impudent 
 wretch's little snub, and yet be so indifferent 
 about refusing Captain Ehrhardt?" 
 
 " I 'm not indifferent about it, my dear. 
 I know that I did right, but I don't know 
 that I could do right under the same circum- 
 stances again." 
 
 In fact there were times when Elmore 
 found almost insupportable the absolute 
 conclusion to which that business had come. 
 It is hard to believe that anything has come 
 to an end in this world. For a time, death 
 itself leaves the ache of an unsatisfied ex- 
 pectation, as if somehow the interrupted life 
 must go on, and there is no change we make 
 or suffer which is not denied by the sensa-
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 121 
 
 tion of daily habit. If Ehrhardt had really 
 come back from the vague limbo to which 
 he had been so inexorably relegated, he 
 might only have restored the original situa- 
 tion in all its discomfort and apprehension ; 
 yet maintaining, as he did, this perfect 
 silence and absence, he established a hold 
 upon Elmore's imagination which deepened 
 because he could not discuss the matter 
 frankly with his wife. He weakly feared 
 to let her know what was passing in his 
 thoughts, lest some misconception of hers 
 should turn them into self-accusal or urge 
 him to some attempt at the reparation to- 
 wards which he wavered. He really could 
 have done nothing that would not have 
 made the matter worse, and he confined 
 himself to speculating upon the character 
 and history of the man whom he knew only 
 by the incoherent hearsay of two excited 
 women, and by the brief record of hope and 
 passion left in the notes which Lily treasured 
 somewhere among the archives of a young 
 girl's triumphs. He had a morbid curiosity 
 to see these letters again, but he dared not 
 ask for them ; and indeed it would have 
 been an idle self-indulgence : he remembered 
 them perfectly well. Seeing Lily so in-
 
 122 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 different, it was characteristic of him, in 
 that safety from consequences which he 
 chiefly loved, that he should tacitly consti- 
 tute himself, in some sort, the champion of 
 her rejected suitor, whose pain he luxuri- 
 ously fancied in all its different stages and 
 degrees. His indolent pity even developed 
 into a sort of self-righteous abhorrence of 
 the girl's hardness. But this was wholly 
 within himself, and could work no sort of 
 harm. If he never ventured to hint these 
 feelings to his wife, he was still further 
 from confessing them to Lily ; but once he 
 approached the subject with Hoskins in 
 a well-guarded generality relating to the 
 different kinds of sensibility developed by 
 the European and American civilisation. A 
 recent suicide for love which excited all 
 Venice at that time an Austrian officer 
 hopelessly attached to an Italian girl had 
 shot himself had suggested their talk, and 
 given fresh poignancy to the misgivings in 
 Elmore's mind. 
 
 "Well," said Hoskins, " those Dutch are 
 queer. They don't look at women as respect- 
 fully as we do, and they mix up so much cab- 
 bage with their romance that you don't know 
 exactly how to take them ; and yet here you
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 123 
 
 lind this fellow suffering just as much as a 
 white man because the girl's folks won't let 
 her have him. In fact, I don't know but he 
 suffered more than the average American 
 citizen. I think we have a great deal more 
 common sense in our love-affairs. We respect 
 women more than any other people, and I 
 think we show them more true politeness ; 
 we let 'em have their way more, and get 
 their finger into the pie right along, and it 's 
 right we should : but we don't make fools of 
 ourselves about them, as a general rule. 
 We know they 're awfully nice, and they 
 know we know it ; and it 's a perfectly under- 
 stood thing all round. We 've been used to 
 each other all our lives, and they 're just as 
 sensible as we are. They like a fellow, when 
 they do like him, about as well as any of 'em, 
 but they know he 's a man and a brother after 
 all, and he's got ever so much human nature 
 in him. Well, now, I reckon one of these 
 Dutch chaps, the first time he gets a chance 
 to speak with a pretty girl, thinks he 's got 
 hold of a goddess, and I suppose the girl feels 
 just so about him. Why, it 's natural they 
 should they 've never had any chance to 
 know any better, and you 're feelings are apt 
 to get the upper hand of you, at such times,
 
 124 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 any way. I don't blame 'em. One of 'em 
 goes off and shoots himself, and the other one 
 feels as if she was never going to get over it. 
 Well, now, look at the way Miss Lily acted 
 in that little business of hers : one of these 
 girls over here would have had her head 
 completely turned by that adventure ; but 
 when she couldn't see her way exactly clear, 
 she puts the case in your hands, and then 
 stands by what you do, as calm as a clock." 
 
 ' ' It was a very perplexing thing. I did 
 the best I knew," said Elmore. 
 
 " Why, of course you did," cried Hoskins, 
 "and she sees that as well as you or I do, 
 and she stands by you accordingly. I tell 
 you, that girl 's got a cool head." 
 
 In his soul Elmore ungratefully and incon- 
 sistently wished that her heart were not 
 equally cool ; but he only said, " Yes, she is 
 a good and sensible girl. I hope the the 
 other one is equally resigned." 
 
 " Oh, /ie'll get along," answered Hoskins, 
 with the indifference of one man for the 
 sufferings of another in such matters. We 
 are able to offer a brother very little comfort 
 and scarcely any sympathy in those unhappy 
 affairs of the heart which move women to a 
 pretty compassion for a disappointed sister.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 125 
 
 A man in love is in 110 wise interesting to us 
 for that reason ; and if he is unfortunate, we 
 hope at the furthest that he will have better 
 luck next time. It is only here and there 
 that a sentimentalist like Elmore stops to 
 pity him ; and it is not certain that even 
 he would have sighed over Captain Ehrhardt 
 if he had not been the means of his disap- 
 pointment. As it was, he came away, feeling 
 that doubtless Ehrhardt had "got along," 
 and resolved at least to spend no more un- 
 availing regrets upon him. 
 
 The time passed very quietly now, and if 
 it had not been for Hoskins, the ladies must 
 have found it dull. He had nothing to do, 
 except as he made himself occupation with 
 his art, and he willingly bestowed on them 
 the leisure which Elmore could not find. 
 They went everywhere with him, and saw 
 the city to advantage through his efforts. 
 Doors, closed to ordinary curiosity, opened 
 to the magic of his card, and he showed a 
 pleasure in using such little privileges as his 
 position gave him, for their amusement. He 
 went upon errands for them ; he was like a 
 brother, with something more than a brother's 
 pliability ; he came half the time to breakfast 
 with them, and was always welcome to all.
 
 126 A FEARFUL EESPOXSIBILITY. 
 
 He had the gift of extracting comfort from 
 the darkest news about the war ; he was a 
 prophet of unfailing good to the Union cause, 
 and in many hours of despondency they 
 willingly submitted to the authority of his 
 greater experience, and took heart again. 
 
 " I like your indomitable hopefulness, 
 Hoskins," said Elmore, on one of those 
 occasions when the consul was turning defeat 
 into victory. "There's a streak of uncon- 
 scious poetry in it, just as there is in your 
 taking up the subjects you do. I imagine 
 that, so far as the judgment of the world' 
 goes, our fortunes are at the lowest ebb just 
 now" 
 
 " Oh, the world is wrong ! " interrupted 
 the consul. * ' Those London papers are all 
 in the pay of the rebels." 
 
 "I mean that we have no sort of sym- 
 pathy in Europe ; and yet here you are, em- 
 bodying in your conception of ' Westward ' 
 the arrogant faith of the days when our 
 destiny seemed iiniversal union and univer- 
 sal dominion. There is something sublime 
 to me in your treatment of such a work at 
 such a time. I think an Italian, for instance, 
 if his country were involved in a life and 
 death struggle like this of ours, would have
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 127 
 
 expressed something of the anxiety and ap- 
 prehension of the time in it ; but this con- 
 ception of yours is as serenely undisturbed 
 by the facts of the war as if secession had 
 taken place in another planet. There is 
 something Greek in that repose of feeling, 
 triumphant over circumstance. It is like 
 the calm beauty which makes you forget 
 the anguish of the Laocodn." 
 
 "Is that so, Professor?" said Hoskins, 
 blushing modestly, as an artist often must 
 in these days of creative criticism. He 
 seemed to reflect a while before he added, 
 ' ' Well, I reckon you 're partly right. If we 
 ever did go to smash, it would take us a 
 whole generation to find it out. We have 
 all been raised to put so much dependence 
 on Uncle Sam, that if the old gentleman 
 really did pass in his checks we should only 
 think he was lying low for a new deal, 
 never happened to think it out before, but 
 I 'm pretty sure it 's so." 
 
 " Your work wouldn't be worth half so 
 much to me if you had 'thought it out,'" 
 said Elmore. " It 's the unconsciousness of 
 the faith that makes its chief value, as I said 
 before ; and there is another thing about it 
 that interests and pleases me still more."
 
 128 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 "What 's that ?" asked the sculptor. 
 
 "The instinctive way in which you have 
 given the figure an entirely American quality. 
 There was something very familiar to me in 
 it, the first time you showed it, but I ; ve 
 only just been able to formulate my impres- 
 sion : I see now that while the spirit of your 
 conception is Greek, you have given it, as 
 you ought, the purest American expression. 
 Your 'Westward' is no Hellenic goddess: 
 she is a vivid and self-reliant American girl." 
 
 At these words, Hoskins reddened deeply, 
 and seemed not to know where to look. 
 Mrs. Elmore had the effect of escaping 
 through the door into her own room, and 
 Miss Mayhew ran out upon the balcony. 
 Hoskins followed each in turn with a queer 
 glance, and sat a moment in silence. Then 
 he said, "Well, I reckon I must be going," 
 and went rather abruptly, without offering 
 to take leave of the ladies. 
 
 As soon as he was gone, Lily came m from 
 the balcony, and whipped into Mrs. Elmore's 
 room, from which she flashed again in swift 
 retreat to her own, and was seen no more ; 
 and then Mrs. Elmore came back, with a 
 flushed face, to where her husband sat mys- 
 tified.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 129 
 
 " My dear," he said gravely, " I 'm afraid 
 you Ve hurt Mr. Hoskins's feelings. " 
 
 " Do you think so ?" she asked ; and then 
 she burst into a wild cry of laughter. " Oh, 
 Owen, Owen ! you will kill me yet !" 
 
 "Really," he replied with dignity, "I 
 don't see any occasion in what I said for this 
 extraordinary behaviour." 
 
 "Of course you don't, and that's just 
 what makes the fun of it. So you found 
 something familiar in Mr. Hoskins's statue 
 from the first, did you ?" she asked. " And 
 you didn't notice anything particular in it?" 
 
 "Particular, particular?" he demanded, 
 beginning to lose his patience at this. 
 
 " Oh," she exclaimed, "couldn't you see 
 that it was Lily, all over again ? " 
 
 Elmore laughed in turn. " Why, so it is; 
 so it is ! That accounts for everything that 
 puzzled me. I don't wonder my maunder- 
 ings amused you. It was ridiculous, to be 
 sure ! When in the world did she give him 
 the sittings, and how did you manage to 
 keep it from me so well ? " 
 
 "Owen ! " cried his wife, with terrible seve- 
 rity. " You don't think that Lily would let 
 him put her into it ? " 
 
 "Why, I supposed I didn't know I
 
 130 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 don't see how he could have done it un- 
 less " 
 
 * ' He did it without leave or licence, " said 
 Mrs. Elmore. c ' We saw it all along, but he 
 never ' let on,' as he would say, about it, and 
 we never meant to say anything, of course." 
 
 "Then," replied Elmore, delighted with 
 the fact, " it has been a purely unconscious 
 piece of cerebration." 
 
 ' Cerebration ! " exclaimed Mrs. Elmore, 
 with more scorn than she knew how to ex- 
 press. " I should think as much ! ' 
 
 " Well, I don't know," said Elmore, with 
 the pique of a man who does not care to be 
 quite trampled under foot. ' ' I don't see 
 that the theory is so very unphilosophical. " 
 
 " Oh, not at all ! " mocked his wife. "It 's 
 philosophical to the last degree. Be as philo- 
 sophical as you please, Owen ; I shall love 
 you still the same." She came up to him 
 where he sat, and twisting her arm round 
 his face, patronisingly kissed him on top of 
 the head. Then she released him, and left 
 him with another burst of derision.
 
 A FEARFUL KESPONSIBILITY. 131 
 
 AFTER this Elmore had such an uncom- 
 fortable feeling that he hated to see 
 Hoskins again, and he was relieved when the 
 sculptor failed to make his usual call, the 
 next evening. He had not been at dinner 
 either, and he did not reappear for several 
 days. Then he merely said that he had been 
 spending the time at Chioggia, with a French 
 painter who was making some studies down 
 there, and they all took up the old routine 
 of their friendly life without embarrassment. 
 At first it seemed to Elmore that Lily was 
 a little shy of Hoskins, and he thought that 
 she resented his using her charm in his art ; 
 but before the evening wore away, he lost 
 this impression. They all got into a long talk 
 about home, and she took her place at the 
 piano and played some of the war-songs that 
 had begun to supersede the old negro melo- 
 dies. Then she wandered back to them, 
 with fingers that idly drifted over the keys, 
 and ended with "Stop dat knockin'," in
 
 132 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 which Hoskins joined with his powerful bas.s 
 in the recitative "Let me in," and Elmore 
 himself had half a mind to attempt a part. 
 The sculptor rose as she struck the keys 
 with a final crash, but lingered, as his fashion 
 was when he had something to propose : if 
 he felt pretty sure that the thing would be 
 liked, he brought it in as if he had only hap- 
 pened to remember it. He now drew out a 
 large, square, ceremonious -looking envelope, 
 at which he glanced as if, after all, he was 
 rather surprised to see it, and said, "Oh, by- 
 the-by, Mrs. Elmore, I wish you 'd tell me 
 what to do about this thing. Here 's some- 
 thing that 's come to me in my official capa- 
 city, but it isn't exactly consular business, 
 if it was, I don't believe I should ask any 
 lady for instructions, and I don't know ex- 
 actly what to do. It 's so long since I cor- 
 responded with a princess that I don't even 
 know how to answer her letter." 
 
 The ladies perhaps feared a hoax of some 
 sort, and would not ask to see the letter ; 
 and then Hoskins recognised his failure to 
 play upon their curiosity with a laugh, and 
 gave the letter to Mrs. Elmore. It was an 
 
 V invitation to a mask ball, of which all Venice 
 had begun to speak. A great Russian lady,
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 133 
 
 who had come to spend the winter in the 
 Lagoons, and had taken a whole floor at one 
 of the hotels, had sent out her cards, appa- 
 rently to all the available people in the city, 
 for the event which was to take place a fort- 
 night later. In the meantime, a thrill of pre- 
 paration was felt in various quarters, and the 
 ordinary course of life was interrupted in a 
 way that gave some idea of the old times, 
 when Venice was the capital of pleasure, and 
 everything yielded there to the great busi- 
 ness of amusement. Mrs. Elmore had found 
 it impossible to get a pair of fine shoes 
 finished until after the ball ; a dress which 
 Lily had ordered could not be made ; their 
 laundress had given notice that for the pre- 
 sent all fluting and quilling was out of the 
 question ; one already heard that the chief 
 Venetian perruquier and his assistants were 
 engaged for every moment of the forty-eight 
 hours before the ball, and that whoever had 
 him now must sit up with her hair dressed 
 for two nights at least. Mrs. Elmore had a 
 fanatical faith in these stories ; and while 
 agreeing with her husband, as a matter of 
 principle, that mask balls were wrong, and 
 that it was in bad taste for a foreigner to 
 insult the sorrow of Venice by a festivity of
 
 134 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 the sort at such a time, she had secretly in- 
 dulged longings which the sight of Hoskins's 
 invitation rendered almost insupportable. 
 Her longings were not for herself, but for 
 Lily : if she could provide Lily with the 
 experience of a masquerade in Venice, she 
 could overpay all the kindnesses that the 
 Mayhews had ever done her. It was an 
 ambition neither ignoble nor ungenerous, 
 and it was with a really heroic effort that 
 she silenced it in passing the invitation to 
 her husband, and simply saying to Hoskins, 
 " Of course you will go." 
 
 * ' I don't know about that, " he answered. 
 "That's the point I want some advice on. 
 You see this document calls for a lady to fill 
 out the bill." 
 
 " Oh," returned Mrs. Elmore, "you will 
 find some Americans at the hotels. You can 
 take them." 
 
 ' ' Well, now, I was thinking, Mrs. Elmore, 
 that I should like to take you." 
 
 "Take me!" she echoed tremulously. 
 " What an idea ! I 'm too old to go to mask 
 balls." 
 
 " You don't look it," suggested Hoskins. 
 
 "Oh, I couldn't go," she sighed. "But 
 it's very, very kind."
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 135 
 
 Hoskins dropped his head, and gave the 
 low chuckle with which he confessed any 
 little bit of humbug. "Well, you or Miss 
 Lily." 
 
 Lily had retired to the other side of the 
 room as soon as the parley about the invi- 
 tation began. Without asking or seeing, 
 she knew what was in the note, and now she 
 felt it right to make a feint of not knowing 
 what Mrs. Elmore meant when she asked, 
 " What do you say, Lily ?" 
 
 When the question was duly explained to 
 her, she answered languidly, ' ' I don't know. 
 Do you think I 'd better ? " 
 
 " I might as well make a clean breast of 
 it, first as last, " said Hoskins. ' ' I thought 
 perhaps Mrs. Elmore might refuse, she 's so 
 stiff about some things," here he gave that 
 chuckle of his, " and so I came prepared 
 for contingencies. It occurred to me that 
 it mightn't be quite the thing, and so I went 
 round to the Spanish consul and asked him 
 how he thought it would do for me to 
 matronise a young lady if I could get one, 
 and he said he didn't think it would do at 
 all." Hoskins let this adverse decision sink 
 into the breasts of his listeners before he 
 added : " But he said that he was going
 
 136 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 with his wife, and that if we would come 
 along she could matronise us both. I don't 
 know how it would work," he concluded im- 
 partially. 
 
 They all looked at Elmore, who stood 
 holding the princess's missive in his hand, 
 and darkly forecasting the chances of con- 
 sent and denial. At the first suggestion of 
 the matter, a reckless hope that this ball 
 might bring Ehrhardt above their horizon 
 again sprang up in his heart, and became a 
 desperate fear when the whole responsibility 
 of action was, as usual, left with him. He 
 stood, feeling that Hoskins had used him 
 very ill. 
 
 " I suppose," began Mrs. Elmore very 
 thoughtfully, " that this will be something 
 quite in the style of the old masquerades 
 under the Republic. " 
 
 " Regular Ridotto business, the Spanish 
 consul says," answered Hoskins. 
 
 " It might be very useful to you, Owen," 
 she resumed, "in an historical way, if Lily 
 were to go and take notes of everything ; so 
 that when you came to that period you could 
 describe its corruptions intelligently." 
 
 Elmore laughed. "I never thought of 
 that, my dear," he said, returning the in-
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 137 
 
 vitation to Hoskins. ' ' Your historical sense 
 has been awakened late, but it promises to 
 be very active. Lily had better go, by all 
 means, and I shall depend upon her coming 
 home with very full notes upon her dance- 
 list." 
 
 They laughed at the professor's sarcasm, 
 and Hoskins, having undertaken to see that 
 the last claims of etiquette were satisfied by 
 getting an invitation sent to Miss Mayhew 
 through the Spanish consul, went off, and left 
 the ladies to the discussion of ways and means. 
 Mrs. Elmore said that of course it was now too 
 late to hope to get anything done, and then 
 set herself to devise the character that Lily 
 would have appeared in if there had been 
 time to get her ready, or if all the work- 
 people had not been so busy that it was 
 merely frantic to think of anything. She 
 first patriotically considered her as Columbia, 
 with the customary drapery of stars and 
 stripes and the cap of liberty. But while 
 holding that she would have looked very 
 pretty in the dress, Mrs. Elmore decided 
 that it would have been too hackneyed ; and 
 besides, everybody would have known in- 
 stantly who it was. 
 
 " Why not have had her go in the char-
 
 138 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 acter of Mr. Hoskins's 'Westward'?" sug- 
 gested Elmore, with lazy irony. 
 
 " The very thing ! " cried his wife. "Owen, 
 you deserve great credit for thinking of that ; 
 no one else would have done it ! No one 
 will dream what it means, and it will be 
 great fun, letting them make it out. We 
 must keep it a dead secret from Mr. Hoskins, 
 and let her surprise him with it when he 
 comes for her that evening. It will be a 
 very pretty way of returning his compliment, 
 and it will be a sort of delicate acknowledg- 
 ment of his kindness in asking her, and in 
 so many other ways. Yes, you 've hit it 
 exactly, Owen ; she shall go as * Westward.' " 
 
 " Go?" echoed Elmore, who had with dif- 
 ficulty realised the rapid change of tense. 
 " I thought you said you couldn't get her 
 
 "We must manage somehow," replied 
 Mrs. Elmore. And somehow a shoemaker 
 for the sandals, a seamstress for the delicate 
 flowing draperies, a hair-dresser for the ad- 
 justment of the young girl's rebellious abun- 
 dance of hair beneath the star-lit fillet, were 
 actually found, with the help of Hoskins, 
 as usual, though he was not suffered to know 
 anything of the character to whose make-up
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 139 
 
 he contributed. The perruquier, a personage 
 of lordly address naturally, and of a dignity 
 heightened by the demand in which he found 
 himself, came early in the morning, and was 
 received by Elmore with a self-possession 
 that ill-comported with the solemnity of the 
 occasion. " Sit down," said Elmore easily, 
 pushing him a chair. "The ladies will be 
 here presently." 
 
 " But I have no time to sit down, signore ! " 
 replied the artist, with an imperious bow, 
 " and the ladies must be here instantly." 
 
 Mrs. Elmore always said that if she had 
 not heard this conversation, and hurried in 
 at once, the perruquier would have left them 
 at that point. But she contrived to appease 
 him by the manifestation of an intelligent 
 sympathy ; she made Lily leave her break- 
 fast untasted, and submit her beautiful head 
 to the touch of this man, with whom it was 
 but a head of hair and nothing more ; and 
 in an hour the work was done. The artist 
 whisked away the cloth which covered her 
 shoulders, and crying, "Behold!" bowed 
 splendidly to the spectators, and without 
 waiting for criticism or suggestion, took his 
 napoleon and went his way. All that day 
 the work of his 'skill was sacredly guarded,
 
 140 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 and the custodian of the treasure went about 
 with her head on her shoulders, as if it had 
 been temporarily placed in her keeping, and 
 were something she was not at all used to 
 taking care of. More than once Mrs. Elmore 
 had to warn her against sinister accidents. 
 " Remember, Lily," she said, " that if any- 
 thing did happen, NOTHING could be done to 
 save you ! " In spite of himself Elmore shared 
 these anxieties, and in the depths of his 
 wonted studies he found himself pursued and 
 harassed by vague apprehensions, which upon 
 analysis proved to be fears for Miss Lily's 
 hair. It was a great moment when the robe 
 came home rather late from the dress- 
 maker's, and was put on over Lily's head ; but 
 from this thrilling rite Elmore was of course 
 excluded, and only knew of it afterwards by 
 hearsay. He did not see her till she came 
 out just before Hoskins arrived to fetch her 
 away, when she appeared radiantly perfect 
 in her dress, and in the air with which she 
 meant to carry it off. At Mrs. Elmore's direc- 
 tion she paraded dazzlingly up and down the 
 room a number of times, bending over to see 
 how her dress hung, as she walked. Mrs. 
 Elmore, with her head on one side, scruti- 
 nised her in every detail, and Elmore regarded
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 141 
 
 her young beauty and delight with a pride 
 as innocent as her own. A dim regret, evap- 
 orating in a long sigh, which made the others 
 laugh, recalled him to himself, as the bell rang 
 and Hoskins appeared. He was received in a 
 preconcerted silence, and he looked from one 
 to the other with his queer, knowing smile, 
 and took in the whole affair without a word. 
 
 " Isn't it a pretty idea? " said Mrs. Elmore. 
 " Studied from an antique bas-relief, or just 
 the same as an antique, full of the anguish 
 and the repose of the Laocoon." 
 
 "Mrs. Elmore," said the sculptor, "you 're 
 too many for me. I reckon the procession had 
 better start before I make a fool of myself. 
 Well !" This was all Hoskins could say ; 
 but it sufficed. The ladies declared after- 
 wards that if he had added a word more, it 
 would have spoiled it. They had expected 
 him to go to the ball in the character of a 
 miner perhaps, or in that of a trapper of the 
 great plains ; but he had chosen to appear 
 more naturally as a courtier of the time of 
 Louis xiv. " When you go in for a dis- 
 guise," he explained, " you can't make it too 
 complete ; and I consider that this limp of 
 mine adds the last touch." 
 
 "It's no use to sit up for them," Mrs.
 
 142 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 Elmore said, when she and her husband had 
 come in from calling good wishes and last 
 instructions after them from the balcony, as 
 their gondola pushed away. ""We shan't 
 see anything more of them till morning. Now 
 this," she added, "is something like the 
 gaiety that people at home are always fancy- 
 ing in Europe. Why, I can remember when 
 I used to imagine that American tourists 
 figured brilliantly in salons and conversa- 
 zioni, and spent their time in masking and 
 throwing confetti in carnival, and going to 
 balls and opera. I didn't know what Ameri- 
 can tourists were, then, and how dismally 
 they moped about in hotels and galleries and 
 churches. And I didn't know how stupid 
 Europe was socially, how perfectly dead 
 and buried it was, especially for young 
 people. It would be fun if things happened 
 so that Lily never found it out ! I don't 
 think two offers already, or three, if you 
 count Rose-Black, are very bad for any 
 girl ; and now this ball, coming right on 
 top of it, where she will see hundreds of 
 handsome officers ! Well, she '11 never miss 
 Patmos, at this rate, will she ?" 
 
 " Perhaps she had better never have left 
 Patmos," suggested Elmore gravely.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY'. 14o 
 
 " I don't know what you mean, Owen," 
 said his wife, as if hurt. 
 
 ' ' I mean that it 's a great pity she should 
 give herself up to the same frivolous amuse- 
 ments here that she had there. The only 
 good that Europe can do American girls 
 who travel here is to keep them in total 
 exile from what they call a good time, 
 from parties and attentions and flirtations ; 
 to force them, through the hard discipline 
 of social deprivation, to take some interest 
 in the things that make for civilisation, in 
 history, in art, in humanity." 
 
 "Now, there I differ with you, Owen. I 
 think American girls are the nicest girls in 
 the world, just as they are. And I don't 
 see any harm in the things you think are so 
 awful. You Ve lived so long here among 
 your manuscripts that you Ve forgotten there 
 is any such time as the present. If you are 
 getting so Europeanised, I think the sooner 
 we go home the better." 
 
 " / getting Europeanised ! " began Elmore 
 indignantly. 
 
 ' ' Yes, Europeanised ! And I don't want 
 you to be so severe with Lily, Owen. T.he 
 child stands in terror of you now ; and if
 
 144 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 you keep on in this way, she can't draw a 
 natural breath in the house." 
 
 There is always something flattering, at 
 first, to a gentle and peaceable man in the 
 notion of being terrible to any one ; Elmore 
 melted at these words, and at the fear that 
 he might have been, in some way that he 
 could not think of, really harsh. 
 
 " I should be very sorry to distress her," 
 he began. 
 
 " Well, you haven't distressed her yet,'' 
 his wife relented. " Only you must be care- 
 ful not to. She was going to be very cir- 
 cumspect, Owen, on your account, for she 
 really appreciates the interest you take in 
 her, and I think she sees that it won't do 
 to be at all free with strangers over here. 
 This ball will be a great education for Lily, 
 a great education. I 'm going to commence 
 a letter to Sue about her costume, and all 
 that, and leave it open to finish up when 
 Lily gets home. " 
 
 When she went to bed, she did not sleep 
 till after the time when the girl ought to 
 have come ; and when she awoke to a late 
 breakfast, Lily had still not returned. By 
 eleven o'clock she and Elmore had passed 
 the stage of accusing themselves, and then
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 145 
 
 of accusing each other, for allowing Lily to 
 go in the way they had ; and had come to 
 the question of what they had better do, 
 and whether it was practicable to send to 
 the Spanish consulate and ask what had 
 become of her. They had resigned them 
 selves to waiting for one half -hour longer, 
 when they heard her voice at the water- 
 gate, gaily forbidding Hoskins to come up ; 
 and running out upon the balcony, Mrs. 
 Elmore had a glimpse of the courtier, very- 
 tawdry by daylight, re-entering his gondola, 
 and had only time to turn about when Lily 
 burst laughing into the room. 
 
 "Oh, don't look at me, Professor Elmore ! " 
 she cried. *' I 'm literally danced to rags ! r ' 
 
 Her dress and hair were splashed with 
 drippings from the wax candles ; she was 
 wildly decorated with favours from the 
 German, and one of these had been used 
 to pin up a rent which the spur of a hussar 
 had made in her robe ; her hair had escaped 
 from its fastenings during the night, and in 
 putting it back she had broken the star in 
 her fillet ; it was now kept in place by a bit 
 of black -and-yellow cord which an officer 
 had lent her. " He said he should claim it 
 of me the first time we met, " she exclaimed
 
 146 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 excitedly. " Why, Professor Elmore," she 
 implored with a laugh, " don't look at me 
 so!" 
 
 Grief and indignation were in his heart. 
 "You look like the spectre of last night," 
 he said with dreamy severity, and as if he 
 saw her merely as a vision. 
 
 "Why, that's the way I feel!" she an- 
 swered ; and with a reproachful "Owen !" 
 his wife followed her flight to her room.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 147 
 
 XI. 
 
 T7LMORE went out for a long walk, from 
 I 1 which he returned disconsolate at din- 
 ner. He was one of those people, common 
 enough in our Puritan civilisation, who 
 would rather forego any pleasure than incur 
 the reaction which must follow with all the 
 keenness of remorse ; and he always me- 
 chanically pitied (for the operation was not 
 a rational one) such unhappy persons as 
 he saw enjoying themselves. But he had 
 not meant to add bitterness to the anguish 
 which Lily would necessarily feel in retro- 
 spect of the night's gaiety; he had not 
 known that he was recognising, by those 
 unsparing words of his, the nervous mis- 
 givings in the girl's heart. He scarcely 
 dared ask, as he sat down at table with 
 Mrs. Elmore alone, whether Lily were 
 asleep. 
 
 "Asleep?" she echoed, in a low tone of 
 mystery. " I hope so." 
 
 " Celia, Celia!" he cried in despair.
 
 148 . A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " What shall I do ? I feel terribly at what 
 I said to her." 
 
 " Sh ! At what you said to her? Oh 
 yes ! Yes, that was cruel. But there is so 
 much else, poor child, that I had forgotten 
 that." 
 
 He let his plate of soup stand untasted. 
 "Why why," he faltered, "didn't she 
 enjoy herself ?" And a historian of Venice, 
 whose mind should have been wholly en- 
 gaged in philosophising the republic's diffi- 
 cult past, hung abjectly upon the question 
 whether a young girl had or had not had a 
 good time at a ball. 
 
 ' ' Yes. Oh, yes ! She enjoyed herself 
 if that 's all you require, " replied his wife. 
 " Of course she wouldn't have stayed so 
 late if she hadn't enjoyed herself." 
 
 " No," he said in a tone which he tried 
 to make leading ; but his wife refused to be 
 led by indirect methods. She ate her soup, 
 but in a manner to carry increasing bitter- 
 ness to Elmore with every spoonful. 
 
 "Come, Celia!" he cried at last, "tell 
 me what has happened. You know how- 
 wretched this makes me. Tell me it, what- 
 ever it is. Of course, I must know it in the 
 end. Are there any new complications?"
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 149 
 
 " No new complications," said his wife, as 
 if resenting the word. ' ' But you make such 
 a bugbear of the least little matter that 
 there 's no encouragement to tell you any- 
 thing." 
 
 "Excuse me," he retorted, "I haven't 
 made a bugbear of this." 
 
 * ' You haven't had the opportunity. " This 
 was so grossly unjust that Elmore merely 
 shrugged his shoulders and remained silent. 
 When it finally appeared that he was not 
 going to ask anything more, his wife added : 
 " If you could listen, like any one else, and 
 not interrupt with remarks that distort all 
 one's ideas" Then, as he persisted in his 
 silence, she relented still further. " Why, 
 of course, as you say, you will have to know 
 it in the end. But I can tell you, to begin 
 with, Owen, that it's nothing you can do 
 anything about, or take hold of in any way. 
 Whatever it is, it 's done and over ; so it 
 needn't distress you at all." 
 
 "Ah, I've known some things done and 
 over that distressed me a great deal," he 
 
 " The princess wasn't so very young, after 
 all, " said Mrs. Elmore, as if this had been 
 the point in dispute, " but very fat and
 
 150 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 jolly, and very kind. She wasn't in cos- 
 tume ; but there was a young countess with 
 her, helping receive, who appeared as Night, 
 black tulle, you know, with silver stars. 
 The princess seemed to take a great fancy 
 to Lily, the Russians always have sym- 
 pathised with us in the war, and all the 
 time she wasn't dancing, the princess kept 
 her by her, holding her hand and patting 
 it. The officers hundreds of them, in their 
 white uniforms and those magnificent hussar 
 dresses were very obsequious to the prin- 
 cess, and Lily had only too many partners. 
 She says you can't imagine how splendid the 
 scene was, with all those different costumes, 
 and the rooms a perfect blaze of waxlights ; 
 the windows were battened, so that you 
 couldn't tell when it came daylight, and she 
 hadn't any idea how the time was passing. 
 They were not all in masks ; and there 
 didn't seem to be any regular hour for un- 
 masking. She can't tell just when the sup- 
 per was, but she thinks it must have been 
 towards morning. She says Mr. Hoskins 
 got on capitally, and everybody seemed to 
 like him, he was so jolly and good-natured ; 
 and when they found out that he had been 
 wounded in the war, they made quite a belle
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 151 
 
 of him as he called it. The princess made a 
 point of introducing all the officers to Lily that 
 came up after they unmasked. They paid 
 her the greatest attention, and you can easily 
 see that she was the prettiest girl there." 
 
 " I can believe that without seeing," said 
 Elmore, with magnanimous pride in the 
 loveliness that had made him so much 
 trouble. "Well?" 
 
 " Well, they couldn't any of them get the 
 hang, as Mr. Hoskins said, of the character 
 she came in, for a good while ; but when 
 they did, they thought it was the best idea 
 there : and it was all your idea, Owen," said 
 Mrs. Elmore, in accents of such tender pride 
 that he knew she must now be approaching 
 the difficult passage of her narration. "It 
 was so perfectly new and unconventional. 
 She got on very well speaking Italian with 
 the officers, for she knew as much of it as 
 they did." 
 
 Here Mrs. Elmore paused, and glanced 
 hesitatingly at her husband. " They only 
 made one little mistake ; but that was at the 
 beginning, and they soon got over it." 
 Elmore suffered, but he did not ask what it 
 was, and his wife went on with smooth cau- 
 tion. "Lily thought it was just as it is at
 
 152 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 home, and she mustn't dance with any one 
 unless they had been introduced. So after 
 the first dance with the Spanish consul, as 
 her escort, a young officer came up and asked 
 her; and she refused, for she thought it was a 
 great piece of presumption. Afterwards the 
 princess told her she could dance with any 
 one, introduced or not, and so she did ; and 
 pretty soon she saw this first officer looking 
 at her very angrily, and going about speak- 
 ing to others and glancing toward her. She 
 felt badly about it, when she saw how it was ; 
 and she got Mr. Hoskins to go and speak to 
 him. Mr. Hoskins asked him if he spoke 
 English, and the officer said No ; and it seems 
 that he didn't know Italian either, and Mr. 
 Hoskins tried him in Spanish, he picked 
 up a little in New Mexico, but the officer 
 didn't understand it ; and all at once it oc- 
 curred to Mr. Hoskins to say, 'Parlez-vous 
 Fran9ais?' and says the officer instantly. 
 ' Oui, monsieur. ' " 
 
 * k Of course the man knew French. He 
 ought to have tried him with that in the 
 beginning. What did Hoskins say then?'' 
 asked Elmore impatiently. 
 
 "He didn't say anything: that was all 
 the French he knew. ''
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 153 
 
 Elmore broke into a cry of laughter, and 
 laughed on and on with the wild excess of 
 a sad man when once he unpacks his heart 
 in that way. His wife did not, perhaps, feel 
 the absurdity as keenly as he, but she gladly 
 laughed with him, for it smoothed her way 
 to have him in this humour. " Mr. Hoskins 
 just took him by the arm, and said, ' Here ! 
 you come along with me,' and led him up to 
 the princess, where Lily was sitting ; and 
 when the princess had explained to him, Lily 
 rose, and mustered up enough French to say, 
 ' Je vous prie, monsieur, de danser avec 
 moi,' and after that they were the greatest 
 friends." 
 
 "That was very pretty in her; it was 
 sovereignly gracious," said Elmore. 
 
 " Oh, if an American girl is left to manage 
 for herself she can always manage ! " cried 
 Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 "Well, and what else?" asked her hus- 
 band. 
 
 ' ' Oh, / don't know that it amounts to 
 anything," said Mrs. Elmore ; but she did 
 not delay further. 
 
 It appeared from what she went on to say 
 that in the German, 1 which began not long
 
 154 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 after midnight, there was a figure fancifully 
 called the symphony, in which musical toys 
 were distributed among the dancers in pairs ; 
 the possessor of a small pandean pipe, or tin 
 horn, went about sounding it, till he found 
 some lady similarly equipped, when he de- 
 manded her in the dance. In this way a 
 tall mask, to whom a penny trumpet had 
 fallen, was stalking to and fro among the 
 waltzers, blowing the silly plaything with a 
 disgusted air, when Lily, all unconscious of 
 him, where she sat with her hand in that of 
 her faithful princess, breathed a responsive 
 note. The mask was instantly at her side, 
 and she was whirling away in the waltz. 
 She tried to make him out, but she had 
 already danced with so many people that 
 she was unable to decide whether she had 
 seen this mask before. He was not dis- 
 guised except by the little visor of black 
 silk, coming down to the point of his nose ; 
 his blonde whiskers escaped at either side, 
 and his blonde moustache swept beneath, 
 like the whiskers and moustaches of fifty 
 other officers present, and he did not speak. 
 This was a permissible caprice of his, but if 
 she were resolved to make him speak, this 
 also was a permissible caprice. She made a
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 155 
 
 whole turn of the room in studying up the 
 Italian sentence with which she assailed 
 him : ' ' Perdoni, Maschera ; ma cosa ha 
 detto ? Non ho ben inteso. " 
 
 " Speak English, Mask," came the reply. 
 "I did not say anything." It came cer- 
 tainly with a German accent, and with a 
 foreigner's deliberation ; but it came at once, 
 and clearly. 
 
 The English astonished her, and somehow 
 it daunted her, for the mask spoke very 
 gravely ; but she would not let him imagine 
 that he had put her down, and she rejoined 
 laughingly, " Oh, I knew that you hadn't 
 spoken, but I thought I would make 
 you." 
 
 " You think you can make one do what 
 you will ? " asked the mask. 
 
 " Oh, no. I don't think I could make you 
 tell me who you are, though I should like to 
 make you. " 
 
 " And why should you wish to know me ? 
 If you met me in Piazza, you would not 
 recognise my salutation." 
 
 "How do you know that?" demanded 
 Lily. " I don't know what you mean." 
 
 " Oh, it is understood yet already," an- 
 swered the mask. " Your compatriot, with
 
 156 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 whom you live, wishes to be well seen by 
 the Italians, and he would not let you bow 
 to an Austrian. " 
 
 " That is not so," exclaimed Lily indig- 
 nantly. " Professor Elmore wouldn't be so 
 mean ; and if he would, / shouldn't." She 
 was frightened, but she felt her spirit rising, 
 too. " You seem to know so well who I am : 
 do you think it is fair for you to keep me in 
 ignorance ? " 
 
 " I cannot remain masked without your 
 leave. Shall I unmask ? Do you insist ?" 
 
 "Oh, no," she replied. " You will have 
 to unmask at supper, and then I shall see 
 you. I 'm not impatient. I prefer to keep 
 you for a mystery." 
 
 " You will be a mystery to me even when 
 you unmask," replied the mask gravely. 
 
 Lily was ill at ease, and she gave a little, 
 unsuccessful laugh. "You seem to take the 
 mystery very coolly," she said in default of 
 anything else. 
 
 " I have studied the American manner/' 
 replied the mask. "In America they take 
 everything coolly : life and death, love aixd 
 hate all things." 
 
 ' ' How do you know that ? You have 
 never been in America."
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 157 
 
 ' ' That is not necessary, if the Americans 
 come here to show us." 
 
 "They are not true Americans, if they 
 show you that," cried the girl. 
 
 "No?" 
 
 " But I see that you are only amusing 
 yourself. " 
 
 " And have you never amused yourself 
 with me ?" 
 
 "How could I," she demanded, "if I 
 never saw you before ? " 
 
 "But are you sure of that?" She did 
 not answer, for in this masquerade banter 
 she had somehow been growing unhappy. 
 " Shall I prove to you that you have seen 
 me before ? You dare not let me un- 
 mask." 
 
 " Oh, I can wait till supper. I shall know 
 then that I have never seen you before. I 
 forbid you to unmask till supper ! Will you 
 obey ? " she cried anxiously. 
 
 " I have obeyed in harder things," replied 
 the mask. 
 
 She refused to recognise anything but 
 meaningless badinage in his words. " Oh, 
 as a soldier, yes ! you must be used to 
 obeying orders." He did not reply, and she 
 added, releasing her hand and slipping it
 
 158 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 into his arm, ' ' I am tired now ; will you 
 take me back to the princess ?" 
 
 He led her silently to her place, and left 
 her with a profound bow. 
 
 "Now," said the princess, "they shall 
 give you a little time to breathe. I will not 
 let them make you dance every minute. 
 They are indiscreet. You shall not take any 
 of their musical instruments, and so you can 
 fairly escape till supper." 
 
 " Thank you," said Lily absently, " that 
 will be the best way ;" and she sat languidly 
 watching the dancers. A young naval officer 
 who spoke English ran across the floor to her. 
 
 " Come," he cried, " I shall have twenty 
 duels on my hands if I let you rest here, 
 when there are so many who wish to dance 
 with you. " He threw a pipe into her lap, and 
 at the same moment a pipe sounded from the 
 other side of the room. 
 
 "This is a conspiracy!" exclaimed the 
 girl. " I will not have it ! I am not going to 
 dance any more. " She put the pipe back into 
 his hands ; he placed it to his lips, and 
 sounded it several times, and then dropped 
 it into her lap again with a laugh, and van- 
 ished in the crowd. 
 
 ' ' That little fellow is a rogue, " said 4he
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 159 
 
 princess. " But he is not so bad as some of 
 them. Monsieur," she cried in French to 
 the fair-whiskered, tall mask who had already 
 presented himself before Lily, "I will not 
 permit it, if it is for a trick. You must un- 
 mask. I will dispense mademoiselle from 
 dancing with you." 
 
 The mask did not reply, but turned his 
 eyes upon Lily with an appeal which the 
 holes of the visor seemed to intensify. " It 
 is a promise, " she said to the princess, rising 
 in a sort of fascination. " I have forbidden 
 him to unmask before supper." 
 
 "Oh, very well, " answered the princess, 
 "if that is the case. But make him bring 
 you back soon : it is almost time." 
 
 " Did you hear, Mask?" asked the girl, as 
 they waltzed away. ' ' I will only make two 
 turns of the room with you." 
 
 "Perdoni?" 
 
 "This is too bad!" she exclaimed. "I 
 will not be trilled with in this way. Either 
 speak English, or unmask at once." 
 
 The mask again answered in Italian, with 
 a repeated apology for not understanding. 
 " You understand very well," retorted Lily, 
 now really indignant, " and you know that 
 this passes a jest. "
 
 160 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 "Can you speak German?" asked the mask 
 in that tongue. 
 
 " Yes, a little, but I do not choose to speak 
 it. If you have anything to say to me, you 
 can say it in English." 
 
 "I cannot understand English," replied 
 the mask, still in German, and now Lily 
 thought the voice seemed changed ; but she 
 clung to her belief that it was some hoax 
 played at her expense, and she continued her 
 efforts to make him answer her in English. 
 The two turns round the room had stretched 
 to half a dozen in this futile task, but she felt 
 herself powerless to leave the mask, who for 
 his part betrayed signs of embarrassment, as 
 if he had undertaken a ruse of which he re- 
 pented. A confused movement in the crowd 
 and a sudden cessation of the music recalled 
 her to herself, and she now took her partner's 
 arm and hurried with him toward the place 
 where she had left the princess. But the 
 princess had already gone into the supper- 
 room, and she had no other recourse than to 
 follow with the stranger. 
 
 As they entered the supper-room she re- 
 moved her little visor, and she felt, rather 
 than saw, the mask put up his hand and lift 
 away his own : he turned his head, and looked
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 161 
 
 down upon her with the face of a man she 
 had never seen before. 
 
 " Ah, you are there ! " she heard the prin- 
 cess's voice calling to her from one of the 
 tables. " How tired you look ! Here here 
 I will make you drink this glass of wine." 
 
 The officer who brought her the wine gave 
 her his arm and led her to the princess, and 
 the late mask mixed with the two-score other 
 tall, blonde officers. 
 
 The night which stretched so far into the 
 day ended at last, and she followed Hoskins 
 down to their gondola. He entered the boat 
 first, to give her his hand in stepping from the 
 riva; at the same moment she involuntarily 
 turned at the closing of the door behind her, 
 and found at her side the tall blonde mask, 
 or one of the masks, if there were two who 
 had danced with her. He caught her hand 
 suddenly to his lips, and kissed it. 
 
 "Adieu forgive!" he murmured in 
 English, and then vanished in- doors again. 
 
 "Owen," said Mrs. Elmore dramatically at 
 the end of her narration, " who do you think 
 it could have been ? " 
 
 " I have no doubt as to who it was, Celia," 
 replied Elmore, with a heat evidently quite 
 
 L
 
 162 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 unexpected to his wife, " and if Lily has not 
 been seriously annoyed by the matter, I am 
 glad that it has happened. I have had my 
 regrets my doubts whether I did not dis- 
 miss that man's pretensions too curtly, too 
 unkindly. But I am convinced now that we 
 did exactly right, and that she was wise never 
 to bestow another thought upon him. A man 
 capable of contriving a petty persecution of 
 this sort of pursuing a young girl who had 
 rejected him in this shameless fashion, is 
 110 gentleman. " 
 
 "It was a persecution," said Mrs. Elmore 
 with a dazed air, as if this view of the case 
 had not occurred to her. 
 
 " A miserable, unworthy persecution !" re- 
 peated her husband. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And we are well rid of him. He has 
 relieved me by this last performance, im- 
 mensely ; and I trust that if Lily had any 
 secret lingering regrets, he has given her a 
 final lesson. Though I must say, in justice 
 to her, poor girl, she didn't seem to need it. 1 ' 
 
 Mrs. Elmore listened with a strange abey- 
 ance ; she looked beaten and bewildered, 
 while he vehemently uttered these words. 
 She could not meet his eyes, with her con-
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 163 
 
 sciousness of having her intended romance 
 thrown back upon her hands ; and he seemed 
 in nowise eager to meet hers, for whatever 
 consciousness of his own. " Well, it isn't 
 certain that he was the one, after all," she 
 said.
 
 164 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 XII. 
 
 LONG after the ball Lily seemed to El- 
 more 's eye not to have recovered her 
 former tone. He thought she went about 
 languidly, and that she was fitful and dreamy, 
 breaking from moods of unwonted abstraction 
 in bursts of gaiety as unnatural. She did 
 not talk much of the ball ; he could not be 
 sure that she ever recurred to it of her own 
 motion. Hoskins continued to come a great 
 deal to the house, and she often talked with 
 him for a whole evening ; Elmore fancied 
 she was very serious in these talks. 
 
 He wondered if Lily avoided him, or 
 whether this was only an illusion of his ; but 
 in any case, he was glad that the girl seemed 
 to find so much comfort in Hoskins's com- 
 pany, and when it occurred to him he always 
 said something to encourage his visits. His 
 wife was singularly quiescent at this time, as 
 if, having accomplished all she wished in 
 Lily's presence at the princess's ball, she was
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 165 
 
 willing to rest for a while from further social 
 endeavour. Life was falling into the dull rou- 
 tine again, and after the past shocks his 
 nerves were gratefully clothing themselves 
 in the old habits of tranquillity once more, 
 when one day a letter came from the over- 
 seers of Patmos University, offering him the 
 presidency of that institution on condition 
 of his early return. The board had in view 
 certain changes, intended to bring the uni- 
 versity abreast with the times, which they 
 hoped would meet his approval. 
 
 Among these was a modification of the 
 name, which was hereafter to be Patmos 
 University and Military Institute. The 
 board not only believed that popular feeling 
 demanded the introduction of military drill 
 into the college, but they felt that a college 
 which had been closed at the beginning of 
 the Rebellion, through the dedication of its 
 president and nearly all its students to the 
 war, could in no way so gracefully recognise 
 this proud fact of its history as by hereafter 
 making war one of the arts which it taught. 
 The board explained that of course Mr. El- 
 more would not be expected to take charge 
 of this branch of instruction at once. A 
 competent military assistant would be pro-
 
 lb'6 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 vided, and continued under him as long as 
 he should deem his services essential. The 
 letter closed with a cordial expression of the 
 desire of Elmore's old friends to have him 
 once more in their midst, at the close of 
 labours which they were sure would do 
 credit to the good old university and to the 
 whole city of Patmos. 
 
 Elmore read this letter at breakfast, and 
 silently handed it to his wife : they were 
 alone, for Lily, as now often happened, had 
 not yet risen. " Well ?" he said, when she 
 had read it in her turn. She gave it back 
 to him with a look in her dimmed eyes 
 which he could not mistake. " I see there 
 is no doubt of your feeling, Celia," he added. 
 
 "I don't wish to urge you," she replied, 
 " but yes, I should like to go back. Yes, I 
 am homesick. I have been afraid of it be- 
 fore, but this chance of returning makes it 
 certain. " 
 
 "And you see nothing ridiculous in my 
 taking the presidency of a military insti- 
 tute?" 
 
 " They say expressly that they don't ex- 
 pect you to give instruction in that branch." 
 
 "No, not immediately, it seems," he said, 
 with his pensive irony. " And the history? "
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 167 
 
 " Haven't you almost got notes enough ?" 
 
 Elm ore laughed sadly. " I have been 
 here two years. It would take me twenty 
 years to write such a history of Venice as I 
 ought not to be ashamed to write ; it would 
 take me five years to scamp it as I thought 
 of doing. Oh, I dare say I had better go 
 back. I have neither the time nor the 
 money to give to a work I never was fit for, 
 of whose magnitude even I was unable to 
 conceive." 
 
 " Don't say that ! " cried his wife, with 
 the old sympathy. " You will write it yet, 
 I know you will. I would rather spend all 
 my days in this watery mausoleum than 
 have you talk so, Owen ! " 
 
 " Thank you, my dear ; but the work 
 won't be lost even if I give it up at this 
 point. I can do something with my mate- 
 rial, I suppose. And you know that if I 
 didn't wish to give up my project I couldn't. 
 It 's a sign of my unfitness for it that I 'm 
 able to abandon it. The man who is bom 
 to write the history of Venice will have no 
 volition in the matter ; he cannot leave it, 
 and he will not die till he has finished it." 
 He feebly crushed a bit of bread in his 
 fingers as he ended with this burst of feel-
 
 J68 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 ing, and he shook his head in sad negation 
 to his wife's tender protest, " Oh, you will 
 come back some day to finish it !" 
 
 " No one ever comes back to finish a his- 
 tory of Venice, " he said. 
 
 " Oh, yes, you will," she returned. "But 
 you need the rest from this kind of work, 
 now, just as you needed rest from your col- 
 lege work before. You need a change of 
 standpoint, and the American standpoint 
 will be the very thing for you." 
 
 " Perhaps so, perhaps so," he admitted. 
 " At any rate, this is a handsome offer, and 
 most kindly made, Celia. It 's a great com- 
 pliment. I didn't suppose they valued me 
 so much." 
 
 " Of course they valued you, and they will 
 be very glad to get you. I call it merely 
 letting the historic material ripen in your 
 mind, or else I shouldn't let you accept. 
 And I shall be glad to go home, Owen, on 
 Lily's account. The child is getting no 
 good here : she 's drooping." 
 
 " Drooping?" 
 
 " Yes. Don't you see how she mopes 
 about?" 
 
 " I 'in afraid that I have noticed." 
 
 He was going to ask why she was droop-
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 169 
 
 ing ; but he could not. He said, recurring 
 to the letter of the overseers, " So Patmos 
 is a city." 
 
 " Of course it is by this time," said his 
 wife, " with all that prosperity !" 
 
 Now that they were determined to go, 
 their little preparations for return were soon 
 made ; and a week after Elmore had written 
 to accept the offer of the overseers, they were 
 ready to follow his letter home. Their deci- 
 sion was a blow to Hoskins under w r hich he 
 visibly suffered ; and they did not realise till 
 then in what fond and affectionate friendship 
 he held them. He now frankly spent his 
 whole time with them ; he disconsolately 
 helped them pack, and he did all that a 
 consul can do to secure free entry for some 
 objects of Venice that they wished to get in 
 without payment of duties at New York. 
 
 He said a dozen times, "I don't know 
 what I will do when you 're gone ; " and 
 toward the last he alarmed them for his own 
 interests by beginning to say, " Well, I 
 don't see but what I will have to go along. " 
 
 The last night but oe Lily felt it her 
 duty to talk to him very seriously about his 
 future and what he owed to it. She told 
 him that he must stay in Italy till he could
 
 1/0 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 bring home something that would honour 
 the great, precious, suffering country for 
 which he had fought so nobly, and which 
 they all loved. She made the tears come 
 into her eyes as she spoke, and when she 
 said that she should always be proud to be 
 associated with one of his works, Hoskins's 
 voice was quite husky in replying: "Is 
 that the way you feel about it ?" He went 
 away promising to remain at least till he 
 finished his bas-relief of Westward, and his 
 figure of the Pacific Slope ; and the next 
 morning he sent around by afaccJiino a note 
 to Lily. 
 
 She ran it through in the presence of the 
 Elmores, before whom she received it, and 
 then, with a cry of " I think Mr. Hoskins 
 is too bad /" she threw it into Mrs. Elmore's 
 lap, and, catching her handkerchief to her 
 eyes, she broke into tears and went out of 
 the room. The note read : 
 
 DEAR Miss LILY, Your kind interest in 
 me gives me courage to say something that 
 will very likely make me hateful to you 
 for evermore. But I have got to say it, and 
 you have got to know it ; and it 's all the 
 worse for me if you have never suspected it. 
 I want to give my whole life to you, where-
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 171 
 
 ever and however you will have it. With 
 you by my side, I feel as if I could realty 
 do something that you would not be ashamed 
 of in sculpture, and I believe that I could 
 make you happy. I suppose I believe this 
 because I love you very dearly, and I know 
 the chances are that you will not think this 
 is reason enough. But I would take one 
 chance in a million, and be only too glad of 
 it. I hope it will not worry you to read 
 this : as I said before, I had to tell you. 
 Perhaps it won't be altogether a surprise. 
 I might go on, but I suppose that until I 
 hear from you I had better give you as little 
 of my eloquence as possible. 
 
 CLAY HOSKINS. 
 
 " Well, upon my word," said Elmore, to 
 whom his wife had transferred the letter, 
 ' ' this is very indelicate of Hoskins ! I must 
 say, I expected something better of him.'' 
 He looked at the note with a face of disgust. 
 
 ' ' I don't know why you had a right to 
 expect anything better of him, as you call 
 it," retorted his wife. "It's perfectly 
 natural." 
 
 1 ' Natural ! " cried Elmore. " To put this 
 upon us at the last moment, when he knows 
 how much trouble I Ye" 
 
 Lily re-entered the room as precipitately 
 as she had left it, and saved him from be-
 
 172 A TEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 traying himself as to the extent of his con- 
 fidences to Hoskins. " Professor Elmore," 
 she said, bending her reddened eyes upon 
 him, " I want you to answer this letter for 
 me ; and I don't want you to write as you 
 I mean, don't make it so cutting so so 
 Why, I like Mr. Hoskins ! He's been so 
 kind ! And if you said anything to wound 
 his feelings" 
 
 " I shall not do that, you may be sure ; 
 because, for one reason, I shall say nothing 
 at all to him," replied Elmore. 
 
 " You won't write to him ?" she gasped. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Why, what shall I do-o-o-o ?" demanded 
 Lily, prolonging the syllable in a burst of 
 grief and astonishment. 
 
 " I don't know," answered Elmore. 
 
 "Owen," cried his wife, interfering for 
 the first time, in response to the look of 
 appeal that Lily turned upon her, "you 
 must write ! 
 
 " Celia," he retorted boldly, "I won't 
 write. I have a genuine regard for Hoskins ; 
 I respect him, and I am very grateful to him 
 for all his kindness to you. He has been 
 like a brother to you both." 
 
 "Why, of course," interrupted Lily, "I
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 173 
 
 never thought of him as anything but a 
 brother. " 
 
 " And though I must say I think it would 
 have been more thoughtful and and more 
 considerate in him not to do this" 
 
 " We did everything we could to fight 
 him off from it," interrupted Mrs. Elmore, 
 " both of us. We saw that it was coming, 
 and we tried to stop it. But nothing would 
 help. Perhaps, as he says, he did have to 
 do it " 
 
 ' ' I didn't dream of his having any such 
 idea," said Elmore. "I felt so perfectly 
 safe in his coming ; I trusted everything to 
 him." 
 
 ' ' I suppose you thought his wanting to 
 come was all unconscious cerebration," said 
 his wife disdainfully. " Well, now you see 
 it wasn't." 
 
 ' ' Yes ; but it 's too late now to help it ; 
 and though I think he ought to have spared 
 us this, if he thought there was no hope for 
 him, still I can't bring myself to inflict pain 
 upon him, and the long and the short of it 
 is, I won't." 
 
 " But how is he to be answered ?" 
 
 ' ' I don't know. You can answer him. " 
 
 " I could never do it in the world ! "
 
 174 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " I own it 's difficult," said Elmore coldly. 
 
 " Oh, / will answer him I will answer 
 him," cried Lily, "rather than have any 
 trouble about it. Here, here," she said, 
 reaching blindly for pen and paper, as she 
 seated herself at Elmore's desk, ' ' give me 
 the ink, quick. Oh, dear ! What shall I 
 say ? What date is it ? the 25th ? And it 
 doesn't matter about the day of the week. 
 ' Dear Mr. Hoskins Dear Mr. Hoskins 
 Dear Mr. Hosk ' Ought you to put Clay 
 Hoskins, Esq. , at the top or the bottom or 
 not at all, when you 've said Dear Mr. Hos- 
 kins ? Esquire seems so cold, anyway, and 
 I won't put it ! ' Dear Mr. Hoskins ' 
 Professor Elmore ! " she implored reproach- 
 fully, " tell me what to say ! " 
 
 " That would be equivalent to writing the 
 letter," he began. 
 
 "Well, write it, then," she said, throwing 
 down the pen. " I don't ask you to dictate 
 it. Write it, write anything, just in 
 pencil, you know ; that won't commit you to 
 anything ; they say a thing in pencil isn't 
 legal, and I '11 copy it out in the first per- 
 son. " 
 
 "Owen, "said his wife, "you shall not 
 refuse ! It 's inhuman, it 's inhospitable.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 175 
 
 when Lily wants you to, so ! Why, I never 
 heard of such a thing ! " 
 
 Elmore desperately caught up the sheet of 
 paper on which Lily had written " Dear Mr. 
 Hoskins," and groaning out " Well, well !" 
 he added, 
 
 / have your letter. Come to the station to- 
 morrow and say good-bye to her whom you ivill 
 yet live to thank for remaining only 
 Your friend, 
 
 ELIZABETH MA riiE: 
 
 " There ! there, that will do beautifully 
 beautifully ! Oh, thank you, Professor El- 
 more, ever and ever so much ! That will 
 save his feelings, and do everything," said 
 Lily, sitting down again to copy it ; while 
 Mrs. Elmore, looking over her shoulder, 
 mingled her hysterical excitement with the 
 girl's, and helped her out by sealing the note 
 when it was finished and directed. 
 
 It accomplished at least one purpose 
 intended. It kept Hoskins away till the 
 final moment, and it brought him to the 
 station for their adieux just before their train 
 started. A consciousness of the absurdity 
 of his part gave his face a humorously rue- 
 ful cast. But he came pluckily to the mark. 
 He marched straight up to the girl. " It 's
 
 176 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 all right, Miss Lily," he said, and offered her 
 his hand, which she had a strong impulse to 
 cry over. Then he turned to Mrs. Elmore, 
 and while he held her hand in his right, he 
 placed his left affectionately on Elmore's 
 shoulder, and, looking at Lily, he said, " You 
 ought to get Miss Lily to help you out with 
 your history, Professor ; she has a very good 
 style, quite a literary style, I should have 
 said, if I hadn't known it was hers. I don't 
 like her subjects, though." They broke into 
 a forlorn laugh together ; he wrung their 
 hands once more, without a word, and, 
 without looking back, limped out of the 
 waiting-room and out of their lives. 
 
 They did not know that this was really 
 the last of Hoskins, one never knows that 
 any parting is the last, and in their in- 
 ability to conceive of a serious passion in 
 him, they quickly consoled themselves for 
 what he might suffer. They knew how 
 kindly, how tenderly even, they felt to- 
 wards him, and by that juggle with the 
 emotions which we all practise at times, 
 they found comfort for him in the fact. 
 Another interest, another figure, began to 
 occupy the morbid fancy of Elmore, and as 
 they approached Peschiera his expectation
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 177 
 
 became intense. There was no reason why 
 it should exist ; it would be by the thou- 
 sandth chance, even if Ehrhardt were still 
 there, that they should meet him at the 
 railroad station, and there were a thousand 
 chances that he was no longer in Peschiera. 
 He could see that his wife and Lily were 
 restive too ; as the train drew into the 
 station they nodded to each other, and 
 pointed out of the window, as if to identify 
 the spot where Lily had first noticed him ; 
 they laughed nervously, and it seemed to 
 Elmore that he could not endure their 
 laughter. 
 
 During that long wait which the train 
 used to make in the old Austrian times at 
 Peschiera, while the police authorities vised 
 the passports of those about to cross the 
 frontier, Elmore continued perpetually alert. 
 He was aware that he should not know 
 Ehrhardt if he met him ; but he should 
 know that he was present from the looks of 
 Lily and Mrs. Elmore, and he watched 
 them. They dined well in waiting, while 
 he impatiently trifled with the food, and ate 
 next to nothing ; and they calmly returned 
 to their places in the train, to which he 
 remounted after a last despairing glance 
 M
 
 178 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 around the platform in a passion of dis- 
 appointment. The old longing not to be 
 left so wholly to the effect of what he had 
 done possessed him to the exclusion of all 
 other sensations, and as the train moved 
 away from the station he fell back against 
 the cushions of the carriage, sick that he 
 should never even have looked on the face 
 of the man in whose destiny he had played 
 so fatal a part.
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 179 
 
 XIII. 
 
 IN America, life soon settled into form 
 about the daily duties of Elmore's place, 
 and the daily pleasures and cares which his 
 wife assumed as a leader in Pa4mos society. 
 Their sojourn abroad conferred its distinc- 
 tion ; the day came when they regarded it 
 as a brilliant episode, and it was only by fit- 
 ful glimpses that they recognised its essen- 
 tial dulness. After they had been home a 
 year or two, Elmore published his Story of 
 Venice in the Lives of her Heroes, which 
 fell into a ready oblivion ; he paid all the 
 expenses of the book, and was puzzled that, 
 in spite of this, the final settlement should 
 still bring him in debt to his publishers. 
 He did not understand, but he submitted ; 
 and he accepted the failure of his book very 
 meekly. If he could have chosen, he would 
 have preferred that the Saturday Review, 
 which alone noticed it in London with three 
 lines of exquisite slight, should have passed
 
 180 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 it in silence. But after all, he felt that the 
 book deserved no better fate. He always 
 spoke of it as unphilosophised and incom- 
 plete, without any just claim to being. 
 
 Lily had returned to her sister's house- 
 hold, but though she came home in the hey- 
 day of her young beauty, she failed somehow 
 to take up the story of her life just where 
 she had left it in Patmos. On the way 
 home she had refused an offer in London, 
 and shortly after her arrival in America she 
 received a letter from a young gentleman 
 whom she had casually seen in Geneva, and 
 who had found exile insupportable since 
 parting with her, and was ready to return 
 to his native land at her bidding ; but she 
 said nothing of these proposals till long after- 
 wards to Professor Elmore, who, she said, 
 had suffered enough from her offers. She 
 went to all the parties and pic-nics, and had 
 abundant opportunities of flirtation and mar- 
 riage ; but she neither flirted nor married. 
 She seemed to have greatly sobered ; and the 
 sound sense which she had always shown be- 
 came more and more qualified with a thought- 
 ful sweetness. At first, the relation between 
 her and the Elmores lost something of its in- 
 timacy ; but when, after several years, her
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY 181 
 
 health gave way, a familiarity, even kinder 
 than before, grew up. She used to like to 
 come to them, and talk and laugh fondly 
 over their old Venetian days. But often 
 she sat pensive and absent, in the midst of 
 these memories, and looked at Elmore with a 
 regard which he found hard to bear : a gentle 
 unconscious wonder it seemed, in which he 
 imagined a shade of tender reproach. 
 
 When she recovered her health, after a jour- 
 ney to the West one winter, they saw that, by 
 some subtle and indefinable difference, she 
 was no longer a young girl. Perhaps it was 
 because they had not met her for half a year. 
 But perhaps it was age, she was now thirty. 
 However it was, Elmore recognised with a 
 pang that the first youth at least had gone 
 out of her voice and eyes. She only returned 
 to arrange for a long sojourn in the West. 
 She liked the climate and the people, she 
 said ; and she seemed well and happy. She 
 had planned starting a Kindergarten school 
 in Omaha with another young lady ; she said 
 that she wanted something to do. " She will 
 end by marrying one of those Western 
 widowers," said Mrs. Elmore. 
 
 " I wonder she didn't take poor old 
 Hoskins," mused Elmore aloud.
 
 182 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 "No, you don't, dear," said his wife, who 
 had not grown less direct in dealing with 
 him. " You know it would have been ridi- 
 culous ; besides, she never cared anything 
 for him, she couldn't. You might as well 
 wonder why she didn't take Captain Ehrhardt 
 after you dismissed him." 
 
 " / dismissed him ?" 
 
 " You wrote to him, didn't you ?" 
 
 "Celia," cried Elmore, "this I cannot 
 bear. Did I take a single step in that 
 business without her request and your full 
 approval ? Didn't you both ask me to 
 write ? " 
 
 "Yes, I suppose we did." 
 
 " Suppose?" 
 
 " Well, we did, if you want me to say 
 it. And I 'm not accusing you of anything. 
 I know you acted for the best. But you can 
 see yourself, can't you, that it was rather 
 sudden to have it end so quickly " 
 
 She did not finish her sentence, or he did 
 not hear the close in the miserable absence 
 into which he lapsed. " Celia," he asked at 
 last, " do you think she she had any feeling 
 about him ? " 
 
 "Oh," cried his wife restively, "how 
 should 7 know ? "
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 183 
 
 " I didn't suppose you knew" he pleaded. 
 " I asked if you thought so." 
 
 " What would be the use of thinking any- 
 thing about it ? The matter can't be helped 
 now. If you inferred from anything she said 
 to you" 
 
 ' ' She told me repeatedly, in answer to 
 questions as explicit as I could make them, 
 that she wished him dismissed." 
 
 " Well, then, very likely she did." 
 
 " Very likely, Celia ?" 
 
 " Yes. At any rate, it 's too late now." 
 
 " Yes, it 's too late now." He was silent 
 again, and he began to walk the floor, after 
 his old habit, without speaking. He was 
 always mute whea he was in pain, and he 
 startled her with the anguish in which he 
 now broke forth. " I give it up ! I give it 
 up ! Celia, Celia, I 'm afraid I did wrong ! 
 Yes, I 'm afraid that I spoiled two lives. I 
 ventured to lay my sacrilegious hands upon 
 two hearts that a divine force was drawing 
 together, and put them asunder. It was a 
 lamentable blunder, it was a crime !" 
 
 "Why, Owen, how strangely you talk ! 
 How could you have done any differently 
 under the circumstances ?" 
 
 " Oh, I could have done very differently.
 
 184 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 I might have seen him, and talked with him 
 brotherly, face to face. He was a fearless 
 and generous soul ! And I was meanly 
 scared for my wretched little decorums, for 
 my responsibility to her friends, and I gave 
 him no chance." 
 
 "We wouldn't let you give him any," 
 interrupted his wife. 
 
 "Don't try to deceive yourself, don't try 
 to deceive me, Celia ! I know well enough 
 that you would have been glad to have me 
 show mercy ; and I would not even show 
 him the poor grace of passing his offer in 
 silence, if I must refuse it. I couldn't spare 
 him even so much as that ! " 
 
 " We decided we both decided that it 
 would be better to cut off all hope at once, " 
 urged his wife. 
 
 " Ah, it was I who decided that decided 
 everything. Leave me to deal honestly with 
 myself at last, Celia ! I have tried long 
 enough to believe that it was not I who did 
 it ! " The pent-up doubt of years, the long- 
 silenced self-accusal, burst forth in his words. 
 " Oh, I have suffered for it ! I thought he 
 must come back, somehow, as long as we 
 stayed in Venice. When we left Peschiera 
 without a glimpse of him I wonder I out-
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 185 
 
 lived it. But even if I had seen him there, 
 what use would it have been ? Would I 
 have tried to repair the wrong done ? What 
 did I do but impute unmanly and impudent 
 motives to him when he seized his chance to 
 see her once more at that masquerade " 
 
 * ' No, no, Owen ! He was not the one. 
 Lily was satisfied of that long ago. It was 
 nothing but a chance, a coincidence. Per- 
 haps it was some one he had told about the 
 affair" 
 
 " No matter ! no matter ! If I thought it 
 was he, my blame is the same. And she, 
 poor girl, in my lying compassion for him, 
 I used to accuse her of cold-heartedness, of 
 indifference ! I wonder she did not abhor 
 the sight of me. How has she ever tolerated 
 the presence, the friendship, of a man who 
 did her this irreparable wrong ? Yes, it has 
 spoiled her life, and it was my work. No, 
 no, Celia ! you and she had nothing to do 
 with it, except as I forced your consent it 
 was my work ; and, however I have tried 
 openly and secretly to shirk it, I must bear 
 this fearful responsibility." 
 
 He dropped into a chair, and hid his face 
 in his hands, while his wife soothed him 
 with loving excuses for what he had done,
 
 186 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY.'. 
 
 with tender protests against the exaggera- 
 tions of his remorse. She said that he had 
 done the only thing he could do ; that Lily 
 wished it, and that she never had blamed 
 him. " Why, I don't believe she would 
 ever have married Captain Ehrhardt, any- 
 how. She was full of that silly fancy of 
 hers about Dick Burton, all the time, you 
 know how she used always to be talking 
 about him ; and when she came home and 
 found she had outgrown him, she had to 
 refuse him, and I suppose it 's that that 's 
 made her rather melancholy. " She explained 
 that Major Burton had become extremely 
 fat, that his moustache was too big and 
 black, and his laugh too loud ; there was 
 nothing left of him, in fact, but his empsy 
 sleeve, and Lily was too conscientious to 
 marry him merely for that. 
 
 In fact, Elmore's regret did reflect a mon- 
 strous and distorted image of his conduct. 
 He had really acted the part of a prudent 
 and conscientious man ; he was perfectly 
 justifiable at every step ; but in the retro- 
 spect those steps which we can perfectly 
 justify sometimes seem to have cost so ter- 
 ribly that we look back even upon our sin- 
 ful stumblings with better heart. Heaven
 
 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 187 
 
 knows how such things will be at the last 
 day ; but at that moment there was no 
 wrong, no folly of his youth, of which El- 
 more did not think with more comfort than 
 of this passage in which he had been so wise 
 and right. 
 
 Of course the time came when he saw it 
 all differently again ; when his wife per- 
 suaded him that he had done the best that 
 any one could do with the responsibilities 
 that ought never to have been laid on a 
 man of his temperament and habits ; when 
 he even came to see that Lily's feeling was 
 a matter of pure conjecture with him, and 
 that so far as he knew she had never cared 
 anything for Ehrhardt. Yet he was glad to 
 have her away ; he did not like to talk of 
 her with his wife ; he did not think of her 
 if he could help it. 
 
 They heard from time to time through her 
 sister that her little enterprise in Omaha 
 was prospering, and that she was very con- 
 tented out West ; at last they heard directly 
 from her that she was going to be married. 
 Till then, Elmore had been dumbly tormented 
 in his sombre moods with the solution of a 
 problem at which his imagination vainly 
 toiled, the problem of how some day she
 
 188 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 and Ehrhardt should meet again and retrieve 
 the error of the past for him. He contrived 
 this encounter in a thousand different ways 
 by a thousand different chances ; what he 
 so passionately and sorrowfully longed for 
 accomplished itself continually in his dreams, 
 but only in his dreams. 
 
 In due course Lily married, and from all 
 they could understand, very happily. Her 
 husband was a clergyman, and she took par- 
 ticular interest in his parochial work, which 
 her good heart and clear head especially 
 qualified her to share with him. To connect 
 her fate any longer with that of Ehrhardt 
 was now not only absurd, it was improper ; 
 yet Elmore sometimes found his fancy for- 
 getfully at work as before. He could not at 
 once realise that the tragedy of this romance, 
 such as it was, remained to him alone, ex- 
 cept perhaps as Ehrhardt shared it. With 
 him, indeed, Elmore still sought to fret his 
 remorse and keep it poignant, and his final 
 failure to do so made him ashamed. But 
 what lasting sorrow can one have from the 
 disappointment of a man whom one has 
 never seen ? If Lily could console herself, 
 it seemed probable that Ehrhardt too had 
 "got along."
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE.
 
 TONELLI'S MAEEIAGE. 
 
 THERE was no richer man in Venice than 
 Tommaso Tonelli, who had enough on 
 his florin a day ; and none younger than he, 
 who owned himself forty-seven years old. 
 He led the cheerfullest life in the world, and 
 was quite a monster of content ; but when 
 I come to sum up his pleasures, I fear that 
 I shall appear to my readers to be celebrating 
 a very insipid and monotonous existence. I 
 doubt if even a summary of his duties could 
 be made attractive to the conscientious ima- 
 gination of hard-working people ; for Ton- 
 elli's labours were not killing, nor, for that 
 matter, were those of any Venetian that I 
 ever knew. He had a stated employment 
 in the office of the notary Cenarotti ; and he 
 passed there so much of every working day 
 as lies between nine and five o'clock, writing 
 upon deeds and conveyances and petitions
 
 192 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 and other legal instruments for the notary, 
 who sat in an adjoining room, secluded from 
 nearly everything in this world but snuff. 
 He called Tonelli by the sound of a little 
 bell ; and, when he turned to take a paper 
 from his safe, he seemed to be abstracting 
 some secret from long-lapsed centuries, which 
 he restored again, and locked back among 
 the dead ages when his clerk replaced the 
 document in his hands. These hands were 
 very soft and pale, and their owner was a 
 colourless old man, whose silvery hair fell 
 down a face nearly as white ; but, as he has 
 almost nothing to do with the present affair, 
 I shall merely say that, having been com- 
 promised in the last revolution, he had been 
 obliged to live ever since in perfect retire- 
 ment, and that he seemed to have been 
 blanched in this social darkness as a plant 
 is blanched by growth in a cellar. His 
 enemies said that he was naturally a timid 
 man, but they could not deny that he had 
 seen things to make the brave afraid, or that 
 he had now every reason from the police to 
 be secret and cautious in his life. He could 
 hardly be called company for Tonelli, who 
 must have found the day intolerably long 
 but for the visit which the notary's pretty
 
 TONELLI'S MARKIAGE. 193 
 
 granddaughter contrived to pay every morn- 
 ing in the cheerless mezza. She commonly 
 appeared oil some errand from her mother, 
 but her chief business seemed to be to share 
 with Tonelli the modest feast of rumour and 
 hearsay which he loved to furnish forth for 
 her, and from which doubtless she carried 
 back some fragments of gossip to the family 
 apartments. Tonelli called her, with that 
 mingled archness and tenderness of the 
 Venetians, his Paronsina ; and, as he had 
 seen her grow up from the smallest possible 
 of Little Mistresses, there was no shyness 
 between them, and they were fully privi- 
 leged to each other's society by her mother. 
 When she flitt.ed away again, Tonelli was 
 left to a stillness broken only by the soft 
 breathing of the old man in the next room, 
 and by the shrill discourse of his own loqua- 
 cious pen, so that he was commonly glad 
 enough when it came five o'clock. At this 
 hour he put on his black coat, that shone 
 with constant use, and his faithful silk hat, 
 worn down to the pasteboard with assiduous 
 brushing, and caught up a very jaunty cane 
 in his hand. Then, saluting the notary, he 
 took his way to the little restaurant, where 
 it was his custom to dine, and had his tripe 
 
 N
 
 194 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 soup and his risotto, or dish of fried liver, in 
 the austere silence imposed by the presence 
 of a few poor Austrian captains and lieuten- 
 ants. It was not that the Italians feared to 
 be overheard by these enemies ; but it was 
 good dimostrazione to be silent before the 
 oppressor, and not let him know that they 
 even enjoyed their dinners well enough, 
 under his government, to chat sociably over 
 them. To tell the truth, this duty was an 
 irksome one to Tonelli, who liked far better 
 to dine, as he sometimes did, at a cook-shop, 
 where he met the folk of the people (gente 
 del popolo), as he called them ; and where, 
 though himself a person of civil condition, 
 he discoursed freely with the other guests, 
 and ate of their humble but relishing fare. 
 He was known among them as Sior Toni- 
 maso ; and they paid him a homage, which 
 they enjoyed equally with him, as a person 
 not only learned in the law, but a poet of 
 gift enough to write wedding and funeral 
 verses, and a veteran who had fought for 
 the dead Republic of Forty-eight. They 
 honoured him as a most travelled gentle- 
 man, who had been in the Tyrol, and who 
 could have spoken German, if he had not 
 despised that tongue as the language of the
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 195 
 
 ugly Croats, like one born to it. Who, for 
 example, spoke Venetian more elegantly 
 than Sior Tommaso ? or Tuscan, when he 
 chose ? and yet he was poor, a man of that 
 genius ! Patience ! When Garibaldi came, 
 we should see ! Thefacchini and gondoliers, 
 who had been wagging their tongues all day 
 at the church corners and ferries, were never 
 tired of talking of this gifted friend of theirs, 
 when having ended some impressive dis- 
 course or some dramatic story, he left them 
 with a sudden adieu, and walked quickly 
 away toward the Riva degli Schiavoni. 
 
 Here, whether he had dined at the cook- 
 shop, or at his more genteel and gloomy 
 restaurant of the Bronze Horses, it was his 
 custom to lounge an hour or two over a cup 
 of coffee and a Virginia cigar at one of the 
 many caffes, and to watch all the world as 
 it passed to and fro on the quay. Tonelli 
 was grey, he did not disown it ; but he 
 always maintained that his heart was still 
 young, and that there was, moreover, a 
 great difference in persons as to age, which 
 told in his favour. So he loved to sit there, 
 and look at the ladies ; and he amused him- 
 self by inventing a pet name for every face 
 he saw, which he used to teach to certain
 
 196 TOXELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 friends of his, when they joined him over 
 his coffee. These friends were all young 
 enough to be his sons, and wise enough to 
 be his fathers ; but they were always glad 
 to be with him, for he had so cheery a wit 
 and so good a heart that neither his years 
 nor his follies could make any one sad. His 
 kind face beamed with smiles, when Pen- 
 nellini, chief among the youngsters in his 
 affections, appeared on the top of the nearest 
 bridge, and thence descended directly to- 
 wards his little table. Then it was that he 
 drew out the straw which ran through the 
 centre of his long Virginia, and lighted the 
 pleasant weed, and gave himself up to the 
 delight of making aloud those comments oil 
 the ladies which he had hitherto stifled in 
 his breast. Sometimes he would feign him- 
 self too deeply taken with a passing beauty 
 to remain quiet, and would make his friend 
 follow with him in chase of her to the Public 
 Gardens. But he was a fickle lover, and 
 wanted presently to get back to his caffe, 
 where, at decent intervals of days or weeks, he 
 would indulge himself in discovering a spy 
 in some harmless stranger, who, in going out, 
 looked curiously at the scar Tonelli's cheek had 
 brought from the battle of Vicenza in 1848.
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 197 
 
 "Something of a spy, no?" he asked at 
 these times of the waiter, who, flattered by 
 the penetration of a frequenter of his caffe, 
 and the implication that it was thought sedi- 
 tious enough to be watched by the police, as- 
 sumed a pensive importance, and answered, 
 " Something of a spy, certainly." 
 
 Upon this Tonelli was commonly encour- 
 aged to proceed : " Did I ever tell you how 
 I once sent one of those ugly muzzles out of 
 a caffe ? I knew him as soon as I saw him, 
 I am never mistaken in a spy, and I went 
 with my newspaper, and sat clown close at 
 his side. Then I whispered to him across 
 the sheet, ' We are two. ' * Eh ? ' says he. 
 ' It is a very small caffe, and there is no 
 need of more than one,' and then I stared 
 at him and frowned. He looks at me fix- 
 edly a moment, then gathers up his hat and 
 gloves, and takes his pestilency off." 
 
 The waiter, who had heard this story, man 
 and boy, a hundred times, made a qi;ite suc- 
 cessful show of enjoying it, as he walked 
 away with Tonelli's fee of half a cent in his 
 pocket. Tonelli then had left from his day's 
 salary enough to pay for the ice which he ate 
 at ten o'clock, but which he would sometimes 
 forego, in order to give the money in charity,
 
 198 TOXELLl's MARRIAGE. 
 
 though more commonly he indulged himself, 
 and put off the beggar with, "Another time, 
 my dear. I have no leisure now to discuss 
 those matters with thee." 
 
 On holidays this routine of Tonelli's life 
 was varied. In the forenoon he went to 
 mass at St. Mark's, to see the beauty and 
 fashion of the city ; and then he took a walk 
 with his four or five young friends, or went 
 with them to play at bowls, or even made 
 an excursion to the main-land where they 
 hired a carriage, and all those Venetians got 
 into it, like so many seamen, and drove the 
 horse with as little mercy as if he had been 
 a sail-boat. At seven o'clock Tonelli dined 
 with the notary, next whom lie sat at table, 
 and for whom his quaint pleasantries had 
 a zest that inspired the Paronsina and her 
 mother to shout them into his dull ears, that 
 he might lose none of them. He laughed a 
 kind of faded laugh at them, and, rubbing 
 his pale hands together, showed by his act 
 that he did not think his best wine too good 
 for his kindly guest. The signora feigned 
 to take the same delight shown by her father 
 and daughter in Tonelli's drolleries ; but I 
 doubt if she had a great sense of his humour, 
 or, indeed, cared anj-thing for it save as she
 
 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 199 
 
 perceived that it gave pleasure to those she 
 loved. Otherwise, however, she had a sin- 
 cere regard for him, for he was most useful 
 and devoted to her in her quality of widowed 
 mother ; and if she could not feel wit, she 
 could feel gratitude, which is perhaps the 
 rarer gift, if not the more respectable. 
 
 The Little Mistress was dependent upon 
 him for nearly all the pleasures and for the 
 only excitements of her life. As a young 
 girl she was at best a sort of caged bird, 
 who had to be guaixled against the youth 
 of the other sex as if they, on their part, 
 were so many marauding and ravening cats. 
 During most days of the year the Paroii- 
 sina's parrot had almost as much freedom as 
 she. He could leave his gilded prison when 
 he chose, and promenade the notary's house 
 as far down as the marble well in the sun- 
 less court, and the Paronsina could do little 
 more. The signora would as soon have 
 thought of letting the parrot walk across 
 their campo alone as her daughter, though 
 the local dangers, either to bird or beauty, 
 could not have been very great. The green- 
 grocer of that sequestered campo was an old 
 woman, the apothecary was grey, and his 
 shop was haunted by none but superannuated
 
 200 TOXELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 physicians ; the baker, the butcher, the 
 waiters at the caffe were all professionally, 
 and, as purveyors to her family, out of the 
 question ; the sacristan, who sometimes ap- 
 peared at the perruquier's to get a coal from 
 under the curling-tongs to kindle his censer, 
 had but one eye, which he kept single to the 
 service of the Church, and his perquisite of 
 candle -drippings ; and I hazard little in say- 
 ing that the Paronsina might have danced a 
 polka around Campo San Giuseppe without 
 jeopardy so far as concerned the handsome 
 wood-carver, for his wife always sat in the 
 shop beside him. Nevertheless a custom is 
 not idly handed down by mother to daughter 
 from the dawn of Christianity to the middle 
 of the nineteenth century ; and I cannot deny 
 that the local perruquier, though stricken in 
 years, was still so far kept fresh by the im- 
 mortal youth of the wax heads in his window 
 as to have something beau-ish about him ; 
 or that, just at the moment the Paronsina 
 chanced to go into the campo alone, a leone 
 from Florian's might not have been passing 
 through it, when he would certainly have 
 looked boldly at her, perhaps spoken to her, 
 and possibly pounced at once upon her flut- 
 tering heart. So by day the Paronsina rarely
 
 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 201 
 
 went out, and she never emerged unattended 
 from the silence and shadow of her grand- 
 father's house. 
 
 If I were here telling a story of the Paron- 
 sina, or indeed any story at all, I might suffer 
 myself to enlarge somewhat upon the daily 
 order of her secluded life, and show how the 
 seclusion of other Venetian girls was the 
 widest liberty as compared with hers ; but 
 I have no right to play with the reader's 
 patience in a performance that can promise 
 no excitement of incident, no charm of inven- 
 tion. Let him figure to himself, if he will, the 
 ancient and half-ruined palace in which the 
 notary dwelt, with a gallery running along 
 one side of its inner court, the slender pillars 
 supporting upon the corroded sculpture of 
 their capitals a clinging vine, that dappled 
 the floor with palpitant light and shadow in 
 the afternoon sun. The gate, whose exquisite 
 Saracenic arch grew into a carven flame, was 
 siirmounted by the armorial bearings of a 
 family that died of its sins against the 
 Serenest Republic long ago ; the marble cis- 
 tern which stood in the middle of the court 
 had still a ducal rose upon either of its four 
 sides ; and little lions of stone perched upon 
 the posts at the head of the marble stairway
 
 202 TONELLrS MARRIAGE. 
 
 climbing to the gallery, their fierce aspects 
 worn smooth and amiable by the contact of 
 hands that for many ages had mouldered in 
 tombs. Toward the canal the palace win- 
 dows had been immemorially bricked up for 
 some reason or caprice, and no morning sun- 
 light, save such as shone from the bright 
 eyes of the Paronsina, ever looked into the 
 dim halls. It was a fit abode for such a man 
 as the notary, exiled in the heart of his 
 native city, and it was not unfriendly in its 
 influences to a quiet vegetation like the 
 signora's ; but to the Paronsina it was sad 
 as Venice itself, where, in some moods, I 
 have wondered that any sort of youth could 
 have the courage to exist. Nevertheless, 
 the Paronsina had contrived to grow up 
 here a child of the gayest and archest spirit, 
 and to lead a life of due content, till after 
 her return home from the comparative free- 
 dom and society of Madame Prateux's school, 
 where she spent three years in learning all 
 polite accomplishments, and whence she 
 came, with brilliant hopes and romances 
 ready imagined, for any possible exigency 
 of the future. She adored all the modern 
 Italian poets, and read their verse with that 
 stately and rhythmical fulness of voice which
 
 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 203 
 
 often made it sublime and always pleasing. 
 She was a relentless patriot, an Italianissima 
 of the vividest green, white, and red ; and 
 she could interpret the historical novels of 
 her countrymen in their subtlest application 
 to the modern enemies of Italy. But all the 
 Paronsina's gifts and accomplishments were 
 to poor purpose, if they brought no young 
 men a-wooing under her balcony ; and it 
 was to no effect that her fervid fancy peopled 
 the palace's empty halls with stately and 
 gallant company out of Marco Visconti, 
 Xicolo de' Lapi, Margherita Pusterla, and 
 the other romances, since she could not hope 
 to receive any practicable offer of marriage 
 from the heroes thus assembled. Her grand- 
 father invited no guests of more substantial 
 presence to his house. In fact, the police 
 watched him too narrowly to permit him to 
 receive society, even had he been so minded, 
 and for kindred reasons his family paid few 
 visits in the city. To leave Venice, except 
 for the autumnal villegglatura was almost 
 out of the question ; repeated applications 
 at the Luogotenenza won the two ladies but 
 a tardy and scanty grace ; and the use of 
 the passport allowing them to spend a few 
 weeks in Florence was attended with so
 
 204 TONKLLTS MARRIAGE. 
 
 much vexation, in coming and going upon 
 the imperial confines, and when they re- 
 turned home they were subject to so great 
 fear of perquisition from the police, that it 
 was after all rather a mortification than a 
 pleasure that the government had given 
 them. The signora received her few ac- 
 quaintances once a week ; but the Paronsina 
 found the old ladies tedious over their cups 
 of coffee or tumblers of lemonade, and de- 
 clared that her mamma's reception days 
 were a martyrdom, actually a martyrdom, 
 to her. She was full of life and the beauti- 
 ful and tender longing of youth ; she had 
 a warm heart and a sprightly wit ; but 
 she led an existence scarce livelier than a 
 ghost's, and she was so poor in friends and 
 resources that she shuddered to think what 
 must become of her if Tonelli should die. 
 It was not possible, thanks to God ! that he 
 should marry. 
 
 The signora herself seldom cared to go 
 out, for the reason that it was too cold in 
 winter and too hot in summer. In the one 
 season she clung all day to her wadded arm- 
 chair, with her scaldino in her lap ; and in 
 the other season she found it a sufficient 
 diversion to sit in the great hall of the
 
 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 205 
 
 palace, and be fanned by the salt breeze 
 that came from the Adriatic through the 
 vine-garlanded gallery. But besides this 
 habitual inclemency of the weather, which 
 forbade out-door exercise nearly the whole 
 year, it was a displeasure to walk in Venice 
 on account of the stairways of the bridges ; 
 and the signora much preferred to wait till 
 they went to the country in the autumn, 
 when she always rode to take the air. The 
 exceptions to her custom were formed by 
 those after-dinner promenades which she 
 sometimes made on holidays, in summer. 
 Then she put on her richest black, and the 
 Paronsina dressed herself in her best, and 
 they both went to walk on the Molo, before 
 the pillars of the lion and the saint, under 
 the escort of Tonelli. 
 
 It often happened that, at the hour of 
 their arrival on the Molo, the moon was 
 coming up over the low bank of the Lido in 
 the east, and all that prospect of ship- 
 bordered quay, island, and lagoon, which, 
 at its worst, is everything that heart can 
 wish, was then at its best, and far beyond 
 words to paint. On the right stretched the 
 long Giudecca, with the domes and towers 
 of its Palladian church, and the swelling
 
 206 TONELLI'S -MARRIAGE. 
 
 foliage of its gardens, and its line of ware- 
 houses painted pink, as if even Business, 
 grateful to be tolerated amid such lovely 
 scenes, had striven to adorn herself. In 
 front lay San Giorgio, picturesque with its 
 church and pathetic with its political pri- 
 sons ; and, further away to the east again, 
 the gloomy mass of the madhouse at San 
 Servolo, and then the slender campanili of 
 the Armenian convent rose over the gleam- 
 ing and tremulous water. Tonelli took in 
 the beauty of the scene with no more con- 
 sciousness than a bird ; but the Paronsina 
 had learnt from her romantic poets and 
 novelists to be complimentary to prospects, 
 and her heart gurgled out in rapturous praises 
 of this. The unwonted freedom exhilarated 
 her ; there was intoxication in the encounter 
 of faces on the promenade, in the dazzle and 
 glimmer of the lights, and even in the music 
 of the Austrian band playing in the Piazza, 
 as it came purified to her patriotic ear by the 
 distance. There were none but Italians upon 
 the Molo, and one might walk there without 
 so much as touching an officer with the hem 
 of one's garment ; and, a little later, when 
 the band ceased playing, she should go with 
 the other Italians and possess the Piazza for
 
 TOXELLI'S MARRIAGE. 207 
 
 one blessed hour. In the meantime the 
 Paronsina had a sharp little tongue ; and, 
 after she had flattered the landscape, and 
 had, from her true heart, once for all, saluted 
 the promenaders as brothers and sisters in 
 Italy, she did not mind making fun of their 
 peculiarities of dress and person. She was 
 signally sarcastic upon such ladies as Tonelli 
 chanced to admire, and often so stung him 
 with her jests that he was glad when Pen- 
 nellini appeared, as he always did exactly at 
 nine o'clock, and joined the ladies in their 
 promenade, asking and answering all those 
 questions of ceremony which form Venetian 
 greeting. He was a youth of the most 
 methodical exactness in his whole life, and 
 could no more have arrived on the Molo a 
 moment before or after nine than the bronze 
 giants on the clock-tower could have hastened 
 or lingered in striking the hour. Nature, 
 which had made him thus punctual and pre- 
 cise, gave him also good looks, and a most 
 amiable kindness of heart. The Paronsina 
 cared nothing at all for him in his quality of 
 handsome young fellow ; but she prized him 
 as an acquaintance whom she might salute, 
 and be saluted by, in a city where her grand- 
 father's isolation kept her strange to nearly
 
 208 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 all the faces she saw. Sometimes her even- 
 ings on the Molo wasted away without the 
 exchange of a word save with Tonelli, for her 
 mother seldom talked ; and then it was quite 
 possible her teasing was greater than his 
 patience, and that he grew taciturn under 
 her tongue. At such times she hailed Pen- 
 nellini's appearance with a double delight ; 
 for, if he never joined in her attacks upon 
 Tonelli's favourites, he always enjoyed them, 
 and politely applauded them. If his friend 
 reproached him for this treason, he made him 
 every amend in answering, " She is jealous, 
 Tonelli, " a wily compliment, which had the 
 most intense effect in coming from lips ordi- 
 narily so sincere as his. 
 
 The signora was weary of the promenade 
 long before the Austrian music ceased in the 
 Piazza, and was very glad when it came time 
 for them to leave the Molo, and go and sit 
 down to an ice at the Gaffe Florian. This 
 was the supreme hour to the Paronsina, the 
 one heavenly excess of her restrained and 
 eventless life. All about her were scattered 
 tranquil Italian idlers, listening to the music 
 of the strolling minstrels who had succeeded 
 the military band ; on either hand sat her 
 friends, and she had thus the image of that
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 209 
 
 tender devotion without which a young girl 
 is said not to be perfectly happy ; while the 
 very heart of adventure seemed to bound in 
 her exchange of glances with a handsome 
 foreigner at a neighbouring table. On the 
 other side of the Piazza a few officers still 
 lingered at the Gaffe Quadri ; and at the 
 Specchi sundry groups of citizens in then- 
 dark dress contrasted well with these white 
 uniforms ; but, for the most part, the moon 
 and gas-jets shone upon the broad, empty 
 space of the Piazza, whose loneliness the 
 presence of a few belated promenaders only 
 served to render conspicuous. As the giants 
 hammered eleven upon the great bell, the 
 Austrian sentinel, under the Ducal Palace, 
 uttered a long, reverberating cry ; and soon 
 after a patrol of soldiers clanked across 
 the Piazza, and passed with echoing feet 
 through the arcade into the narrow and 
 devious streets beyond. The young girl 
 found it hard to rend herself from the 
 dreamy pleasure of the scene, or even to 
 turn from the fine impersonal pain which 
 the presence of the Austrians in the spec- 
 tacle inflicted. All gave an impression 
 something like that of the theatre, with 
 the advantage that here one's self was part
 
 210 TOXELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 of the pantomime ; and in those days, when 
 nearly everything but the puppet-shows was 
 forbidden to patriots, it was altogether the 
 greatest enjoyment possible to the Paron- 
 siiia. The pensive charm of the place im- 
 bued all the little company so deeply that 
 they scarcely broke it, as they loitered slowly 
 homeward through the deserted Merceria. 
 When they reached the Campo San Salvatore, 
 on many a lovely summer's midnight, their 
 footsteps seemed to waken a nightingale 
 whose cage hung from a lofty balcony there ; 
 for suddenly, at their coming, the bird broke 
 into a wild and thrilling song, that touched 
 them all, and suffused the tender heart of 
 the Paronsina with an inexpressible pathos. 
 Alas ! she had so often returned thus from 
 the Piazza, and no stealthy footstep had fol- 
 lowed hers homeward with love's persistence 
 and diffidence ! She was young, she knew, 
 and she thought not quite dull or hideous ; 
 but her spirit was as sole in that melancholy 
 city as if there were no youth but hers in 
 the world. And a little later than this, 
 when she had her first affair, it did not origi- 
 nate in the Piazza, nor at all respond to her 
 expectations in a love-affair. In fact, it was 
 altogether a business affair, and was managed
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 211 
 
 chiefly by Tonelli, who having met a young 
 doctor, laurelled the year before at Padua, 
 had heard him express so pungent a curiosity 
 to know what the Paronsina would have to 
 her dower, that he perceived he must be 
 madly in love with her. So with the con- 
 sent of the signora he had arranged a cor- 
 respondence between the young people ; and 
 all went on well at first, the letters from 
 both passing through his hands. But his 
 office was anything but a sinecure, for while 
 the doctor was on his part of a cold temper- 
 ament, and disposed to regard the affair 
 merely as a proper way of providing for 
 the natural affections, the Paronsina cared 
 nothing for him personally, and only viewed 
 him favourably as abstract matrimony, as 
 the means of escaping from the bondage 
 of her girlhood and the sad seclusion of her 
 life into the world outside her grandfather's 
 house. So presently the correspondence fell 
 almost wholly upon Tonelli, who worked up 
 to the point of betrothal with an expense of 
 tinesse and sentiment that would have made 
 his fortune in diplomacy or poetry. What 
 should he say now ? that stupid young Doctor 
 would cry in a desperation, when Tonelli 
 delicately reminded him that it was time to
 
 212 TOXELLl's MARRIAGE. 
 
 answer the Paronsina's last note. Say this, 
 that, and the other, Tonelli would answer, 
 giving him the heads of a proper letter, 
 which the Doctor took down on square bits 
 of paper, neatly fashioned for writing pre- 
 scriptions. " And for God's sake, caro dot- 
 tore, put a little warmth into it ! " The poor 
 Doctor would try, but it must always end in 
 Tonelli's suggesting and almost dictating 
 every sentence ; and then the letter, being 
 carried to the Paronsina, made her laugh : 
 "This is very pi-etty, my poor Tonelli, but 
 it was never my onoratissimo dottore who 
 thought of these tender compliments. Ah ! 
 that allusion to my mouth and eyes could 
 only have come from the heart of a great 
 poet. It is yours, Tonelli, don't deny it." 
 And Tonelli, taken in his weak point of 
 literature, could make but a feeble pretence 
 of disclaiming the child of his fancy, while 
 the Paronsina, being in this reckless humour, 
 more than once responded to the Doctor in 
 such fashion that in the end the inspiration 
 of her altered and amended letter was Ton- 
 elli's. Even after the betrothal, the love- 
 making languished, and the Doctor was in- 
 decently patient of the late day fixed for the 
 marriage by the notary. In fact, the Doctor
 
 TONELLI'S MAKBIAGE. 213 
 
 was very busy ; and, as his practice grew, 
 the dower of the Paronsina dwindled in his 
 fancy, till one day he treated the whole 
 question of their marriage with such coldness 
 and itncertainty in his talk with Tonelli, 
 that the latter saw whither his thoughts 
 were drifting, and went home with an indig- 
 nant heart to the Paronsina, who joyfully 
 sat down and wrote her first sincere letter 
 to the Doctor, dismissing him. 
 
 "It is finished," she said, "and I am 
 glad. After all, perhaps, I don't want to 
 be any freer than I am ; and while I have 
 you, Tonelli, I don't want a younger lover. 
 Younger ? Diana ! You are in the flower of 
 youth, and I believe you will never wither. 
 Did that rogue of a Doctor, then, really give 
 you the elixir of youth for writing him those 
 letters ? Tell me, Tonelli, as a true friend, 
 how long have you been forty-seven ? Ever 
 since your fiftieth birthday ? Listen ! I 
 have been more afraid of losing you than 
 my sweetest Doctor. I thought you would 
 be so much in love with love-making that 
 you would go break-neck and court some 
 one in earnest on your own account ! " 
 
 Thus the Paronsina made a jest of the loss 
 she had sustained ; but it was not pleasant
 
 214 TOXELLI'S MARRTAGK. 
 
 to her, except as it dissolved a tie which 
 love had done nothing to form. Her life 
 seemed colder and vaguer after it, and the 
 hour very far away when the handsome offi- 
 cers of her king (all good Venetians in those 
 days called Victor Emanuel "our king") 
 should come to drive out the Austrians and 
 marry their victims. She scarcely enjoyed 
 the prodigious privilege, offered her at this 
 time in consideration of her bereavement, of 
 going to the comedy, under Tonelli's protec- 
 tion and along with Pennellini and his sister, 
 while the poor signora afterwards had real 
 qualms of patriotism concerning the breach 
 or public duty involved in this distraction of 
 her daughter. She hoped that no one had 
 recognised her at the theatre, otherwise they 
 might have a warning from the Venetian 
 Committee. "Thou knowest," she said to 
 the Paronsina, " that they have even ad- 
 monished the old Conte Tradonico, who loves 
 the comedy better than his soul, and who 
 used to go every evening. Thy aunt told 
 me, and that the old rogue, when people ask 
 him why he doesn't go to the play, answers, 
 ' My mistress won't let me. ' 'But fie ! I am 
 saying what young girls ought not to hear." 
 After the affair with the Doctor, I say,
 
 TONELLl's MARRIAGE. 215 
 
 life refused to return exactly to its old ex- 
 pression, and I suppose that, if what pre- 
 sently happened was ever to happen, it could 
 not have occurred at a more appropriate 
 time for a disaster, or at a time when its 
 victims were less able to bear it. I do not 
 know whether I have yet sufficiently indi- 
 cated the fact, but the truth is, both the 
 Paronsina and her mother had from long use 
 come to regard Tonelli as a kind of property 
 of theirs, which had no right in any way to 
 alienate itself. They would have felt an 
 attempt of this sort to be not only very 
 absurd, but very wicked, in view of their 
 affection for him and dependence upon him ; 
 and while the Paronsina thanked God that 
 he would never marry, she had a deep con- 
 viction that he ought not to marry, even if 
 he desired. It was at the same time per- 
 fectly natural, nay, filial, that she should 
 herself be ready to desert this old friend, 
 whom she felt so strictly bound to be faith- 
 ful to her loneliness. As matters fell out, 
 she had herself primarily to blame for Ton- 
 elli's loss ; for, in that interval of disgust 
 and ennui following the Doctor's dismissal, 
 she had suffered him to seek his own plea- 
 sure on holiday evenings ; and he had thus
 
 216 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 wandered alone to the Piazza, and so, one 
 night, had seen a lady eating an ice there, 
 and fallen in love without more ado than 
 another man should drink a lemonade. 
 
 This facility came of habit, for Tonelli 
 had now been falling in love every other 
 day for some forty years ; and in that time 
 had broken the hearts of innumerable women 
 of all nations and classes. The prettiest 
 water-carriers in his neighbourhood were in 
 love with him, as their mothers had been 
 before them, and ladies of noble condition 
 were believed to cherish passions for him. 
 Especially, gay and beautiful foreigners, as 
 they sat at Florian's, were taken with hope- 
 less love of him ; and he could tell stories 
 of very romantic adventure in which he 
 figured as hero, though nearly always with 
 moral effect. For example, there was the 
 countess from the mainland, she merited 
 the sad distinction of being chief among 
 those who had vainly loved him, if you 
 could believe the poet who both inspired 
 and sang her passion. When she took a 
 palace in Venice, he had been summoned 
 to her on the pretended business of a secre- 
 tary ; but when she presented herself with 
 those idle accounts of her factor and tenants
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 217 
 
 on the mainland, her household expenses 
 and her correspondence with her advocate, 
 Tonelli perceived at once that it was upon 
 a wholly different affair that she had desired 
 to see him. She was a rich widow of forty, 
 of a beauty supernaturally preserved and 
 very great. " This is no place for thee, 
 Tonelli mine," the secretary had said to 
 himself, after a week had passed, and he 
 had understood all the waywardness of that 
 unhappy lady's intentions. "Thou art not 
 too old, but thou art too wise, for these fol- 
 lies, though no saint j" and so had gathered 
 up his personal effects, and secretly quitted 
 the palace. But such was the countess's 
 fury at his escape that she never paid him 
 his week's salary ; nor did she manifest the 
 least gratitude that Tonelli, out of regard 
 for her son, a very honest young man, re- 
 fused in any way to identify her, but, to all 
 except his closest friends, pretended that he 
 had passed those terrible eight days on a 
 visit to the country village where he was 
 born. It showed Pennellini's ignorance of 
 life that he should laugh at this history ; 
 and I prefer to treat it seriously, and to use 
 it in explaining the precipitation with which 
 Tonelli's latest inamorata, returned his love.
 
 218 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 Though, indeed, why should a lady of 
 thirty, and from an obscure country town, 
 hesitate to be enamoured of any eligible 
 suitor who presented himself in Venice ? It 
 is not my duty to enter upon a detail or 
 summary of Carlotta's character or condi- 
 tion, or to do more than indicate that, while 
 she did not greatly excel in youth, good 
 looks, or worldly gear, she had yet a little 
 property, and was of that soft prettiness 
 which is often more effective than down- 
 right beauty. There was, indeed, some- 
 thing very charming about her ; and, if she 
 ^was a blonde, I have no reason to think she 
 was as fickle as the Venetian proverb paints 
 that complexion of woman ; or that she had 
 not every quality which would have excused 
 any one but Tonelli for thinking of marry- 
 ing her. 
 
 After their first mute interview in the 
 Piazza, the two lost no time in making each 
 other's acquaintance ; but though the affair 
 was vigorously conducted, no one could say 
 that it was not perfectly in order. Tonelli 
 011 the following day, which chanced to 
 be Sunday, repaired to St. Mark's at the 
 hour of the fashionable mass, where he 
 gazed steadfastly at the lady during her
 
 L 
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 219 
 
 orisons, and whence, at a discreet distance, 
 he followed her home to the house of the 
 friends whom she was visiting. Somewhat 
 to his discomfiture at first, these proved to 
 be old acquaintances of his ; and when he 
 came at night to walk up and down under 
 their balconies, as bound in true love to do, 
 they made nothing of asking him in-doors, 
 and presenting him to his lady. But the 
 pair were not to be entirely balked of their 
 romance, and they still arranged stolen in- 
 terviews at church, where one furtively 
 whispered word had the value of whole 
 hours of unrestricted converse under the 
 roof of their friends. They quite refused to 
 take advantage of their anomalously easy 
 relations, beyond inquiry on his part as to 
 the amount of the lady's dower, and on hers 
 as to the permanence of Tonelli's employ- 
 ment. He in due form had Pennellini to 
 his confidant, and Carlotta unbosomed her- 
 self to her hostess ; and the affair was thus 
 conducted with such secrecy that not more 
 than two-thirds of Tonelli's acquaintance 
 knew anything about it when their engage- 
 ment was announced. 
 
 There were now no circumstances to pre- 
 vent their early union, yet the happy con-
 
 220 TOXELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 elusion was one to which Tonelli urged 
 himself after many secret and bitter displea- 
 sures of spirit. I am persuaded that his 
 love for Carlotta must have been most ardent 
 and sincere, for there was everything in his 
 history and reason against marriage. He 
 could not disown that he had hitherto led a 
 joyous and careless life, or that he was ex- 
 actly fitted for the modest delights, the dis- 
 creet variety, of his present state, for his 
 ? daily routine at the notary's, his dinner at 
 the Bronze Horses or the cook-shop, his hour 
 at the caffe, his walks and excursions, for 
 his holiday banquet with the Cenarotti, and 
 his formal promenade with the ladies of that 
 family upon the Molo. He had a good em- 
 ployment, with a salary that held him above 
 want, and afforded him the small luxuries 
 already named ; and he had fixed habits of 
 work and of relaxation, which made both a 
 blessing. He had his chosen circle of inti- 
 mate equals, who regarded him for his good- 
 heartedness and wit and foibles ; and his 
 little following of humble admirers, who 
 looked upon him as a gifted man in disgrace 
 with fortune. His friendships were as old 
 as they were secure and cordial ; he was 
 established in the kindliness of all who knew
 
 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 221 
 
 him ; and he was flattered by the depen- 
 dence of the Paronsina and her mother, 
 even when it was troublesome to him. He 
 had his past of sentiment and war, his pre- 
 sent of story-telling and romance. He was 
 quite independent ; his sins, if he had any, 
 began and ended in himself, for none was 
 united to him so closely as to be hurt by 
 them ; and he was far too imprudent a man 
 to be taken for an example by any one. He 
 came and went as he listed, he did this or 
 that without question. With no heart chosen 
 yet from the world of woman's love, he was 
 still a young man, with hopes and affections 
 as pliable as a boy's. He had, in a word, 
 that reputation of good -fellow which in 
 Venice gives a man the title of buon diavolo, 
 but on which he does not anywhere turn his 
 back with impunity, either from his own 
 consciousness or from public opinion. There 
 never was such a thing in the world as both 
 good devil and good husband ; and even 
 with his betrothal Tonelli felt that his old, 
 careless, merry life of the hour ended, and 
 that he had tacitly recognised a future while 
 he was yet unable to cut the past. If one 
 has for twenty years made a jest of women, 
 however amiably and insincerely, one does
 
 222 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 not propose to marry a woman without 
 making a jest of one's self. The avenging 
 remembrance of elderly people whose late 
 matrimony had furnished food for Tonelli's 
 wit now rose up to torment him, and in his 
 morbid fancy the merriment he had caused 
 was echoed back in his own derision. 
 
 It shocked him to find how quickly his 
 secret took wing, and it annoyed him that 
 all his acquaintances were so prompt to feli- 
 citate him. He imagined a latent mockery 
 in their speeches, and he took them with an 
 argumentative solemnity. He reasoned sepa- 
 rately with his friends ; to all who spoke to 
 him of his marriage he presented elaborate 
 proofs that it was the wisest thing he could 
 possibly do, and tried to give the affair a cold 
 air of prudence. "You see, I am getting 
 old ; that is to say, I am tired of this bachelor 
 life in which I have 110 one to take care of 
 me, if I fall sick, and to watch that the 
 doctors do not put me to death. My pay is 
 very little, but, with Carlotta's dower well 
 invested, we shall both together live better 
 than either of us lives alone. She is a care- 
 ful woman, and will keep me neat and com- 
 fortable. She is not so young as some women 
 I had thought to marry, no, but so much
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 223 
 
 the better ; nobody will think her half so 
 charming as I do, and at my time of life 
 that is a great point gained. She is good, 
 and has an admirable disposition. She is 
 not spoiled by Venice, but as innocent as a 
 dove. O, I shall find myself very well with 
 her ! " 
 
 This was the speech which witli slight 
 modification Tonelli made over and over again 
 to all his friends but Pennellini. To him 
 he unmasked, and said boldly that at last 
 he was really in love ; and being gently 
 discouraged in what seemed his folly, and 
 incredulously laughed at, he grew angry, and 
 gave such proofs of his sincerity that Pen- 
 nellini was convinced, and owned to himself, 
 " This madman is actually enamoured, 
 enamoured like a cat ! Patience ! What will 
 ever those Cenarotti say ?" 
 
 In a little while poor Tonelli lost the 
 philosophic mind with which he had at first 
 received the congratulations of his friends, 
 and, from reasoning with them, fell to re- 
 senting their good wishes. Very little things 
 irritated him, and pleasantries which he had 
 taken in excellent part, time out of mind, 
 now raised his anger. His barber had for 
 many years been in the habit of saying, as he
 
 224 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 applied the stick of fixature to Tonelli's 
 mustache, and gave it a jaunty upward curl, 
 "Now we will bestow that little dash of 
 youthfulness ; " and it both amazed and hurt 
 him to have Tonelli respond with a fierce 
 " Tsit ! " and say that this jest was proper in 
 its antiquity to the times of Romulus rather 
 than our own period, and so go out of the 
 shop without that "Adieu, old fellow," 
 which he had never failed to give in twenty 
 years. "Capperi!" said the barber, when 
 he emerged from a profound reverie into 
 which this outbreak had plunged him, and 
 in which he had remained holding the nose 
 of his next customer, and tweaking it to and 
 fro in the violence of his emotions, regardless 
 of those mumbled maledictions which the 
 lather would not permit the victim to articu- 
 late. "If Tonelli is so savage in his be- 
 trothal, we must wait for his marriage to 
 tame him. I am sorry. He was always 
 such a good devil." 
 
 But if many things annoyed Tonelli, 
 there were some that deeply wounded him, 
 and chiefly the fact that his betrothal seemed 
 to have fixed an impassable gulf of years 
 between him and all those young men whose 
 company he loved so well. He had really a
 
 TOXELLI'S MARRIAGE. 225 
 
 boy's heart, and he had consorted with them 
 because he felt himself nearer their age than 
 his own. Hitherto they had in no wise 
 found his presence a restraint. They had 
 always laughed, and told their loves, and 
 spoken their young men's thoughts, and 
 made their young men's jokes, without fear 
 or shame, before the merry-hearted sage, 
 who never offered good advice, if indeed he 
 ever dreamed that there was a wiser philo- 
 sophy than theirs. It had been as if he were 
 the youngest among them ; but now, in spite 
 of all that he or they could do, he seemed 
 suddenly and irretrievably aged. They 
 looked at him strangely, as if for the first 
 time they saw that his moustache was grey, 
 and his brow was not smooth like theirs, 
 that there were crow's-feet at the corners of 
 his kindly eyes. They could not phrase the 
 vague feeling that haunted their hearts, or 
 they would have said that Tonelli, in offering 
 to marry, had voluntarily turned his back 
 upon his youth ; that love, which would 
 only have brought a richer bloom to their 
 age, had breathed away for ever the autum- 
 nal blossom of his. 
 
 Something of this made itself felt in Ton- 
 
 elli's own consciousness, whenever he met 
 
 p
 
 226 TOXELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 them, and he soon grew to avoid these com- 
 rades of his youth. It was therefore after a 
 purely accidental encounter with one of them, 
 and as he was passing into the Campo Sant' 
 Aiigelo, head down, and supporting himself 
 with an inexplicable sense of infirmity upon 
 the cane he was wont so jauntily to flourish, 
 that he heard himself addressed with, "I 
 say, master !" He looked up, and beheld 
 the fat madman who patrols that campo, and 
 who has the licence of his affliction to utter 
 insolences to whomsoever he will, leaning 
 against the door of a tobacconist's shop, with 
 his arms folded, and a lazy, mischievous smile 
 loitering down on his greasy face. As he 
 caught Tonelli's eye he nodded, " Eh ! I have 
 heard, master ;" while the idlers of that 
 neighbourhood, who relished and repeated 
 his incoherent pleasantries like the mots of 
 some great diner-out, gathered near with 
 expectant grins. Had Tonelli been alto- 
 gether himself, as in other days, he would 
 have been far too wise to answer, " What 
 hast thou heard, poor animal ? " 
 
 ' ' That you are going to take a mate when 
 most birds think of flying away," said the 
 madman. " Because it has been summer a 
 long time with you, master, you think it
 
 TONELLI'.S MARRIAGE. 227 
 
 will never be winter. Look out : the wolf 
 doesn't eat the season." 
 
 The poor fool in these words seemed to 
 utter a public voice of disapprobation and 
 derision ; and as the pitiless bystanders, 
 who had many a time laughed with Tonelli, 
 now laughed at him, joining in the applause 
 which the madman himself led off, the 
 miserable good devil walked away with a 
 shiver, as if the weather had actually turned 
 cold. It was not till he found himself in 
 Carlotta's presence that the long summer 
 appeared to return to him. Indeed, in her 
 tenderness and his real love for her he won 
 back all his youth again ; and he found it 
 of a truer and sweeter quality than he had 
 known even when his years were few, while 
 the gay old-bachelor life he had long led 
 seemed to him a period of miserable loneli- 
 ness and decrepitude. Mirrored in her fond 
 eyes, he saw himself alert and handsome ; 
 and, since for the time being they were to 
 each other all the world, we may be sure 
 there was nothing in the world then to vex 
 or shame Tonelli. The promises of the 
 future, too, seemed not improbable of fulfil- 
 ment, for they were not extravagant pro- 
 mises. These people's castle in the air was
 
 228 TONELLI S MARRIAGE. 
 
 a house furnished from Carlotta's modest 
 portion, and situated in a quarter of the city 
 not too far from the Piazza, and convenient 
 to a decent caffe, from which they could 
 order a lemonade or a cup of coffee for 
 visitors. Tonelli's stipend was to pay the 
 housekeeping, as well as the minute wage 
 of a servant-girl from the country ; and it 
 was believed that they could save enough 
 from that, and a little of Carlotta's money 
 at interest, to go sometimes to the Malibran 
 theatre or the Marionette, or even make an 
 excursion to the mainland upon a holiday ; 
 but if they could not, it was certainly better 
 Italianism to stay at home ; and at least 
 they could always walk to the Public Gar- 
 dens. At one time, religious differences 
 threatened to cloud this blissful vision of 
 the future ; but it was finally agreed that 
 Carlotta should go to mass and confession 
 as often as she liked, and should not tease 
 Tonelli about his soul ; while he, on his 
 part, was not to speak ill of the pope except 
 as a temporal prince, or of any of the priest- 
 hood except of the Jesuits when in company, 
 in order to show that marriage had not made 
 him a codino. For the like reason, no change 
 was to be made in his custom of praising
 
 TONELLl'.S MARRIAGE. 229 
 
 Garibaldi and reviling the accursed Germans 
 upon all safe occasions. 
 
 As Tonelli had nothing in the world but 
 his salary aiicl his slender wardrobe, Carlotta 
 eagerly accepted the idea of a loss of family 
 property during the Revolution. Of Tonelli's 
 scar she was as proud as Tonelli himself. 
 
 When she came to speak of the acquaintance 
 of all those young men, it seemed again like 
 a breath from the north to her betrothed ; 
 and he answered with a sigh, that this was an 
 affair that had already finished itself. "I 
 have long thought them too boyish for me," 
 he said, " and I shall keep none of them but 
 Pennellini, who is even older than I, who, 
 I believe, was never born, but created middle- 
 aged out of the dust of the earth, like Adam. 
 He is not a good devil, but he has every good 
 quality." 
 
 While lie thus praised his friend, Tonelli 
 was meditating a service, which, when he' 
 asked it of Pennellini, had almost the effect 
 to destroy their ancient amity. This was no 
 less than the composition of those wedding- 
 verses, without which, printed and exposed 
 to view in all the shop-windows, no one in 
 Venice feels himself adequately and truly 
 married. Pennellini had never willingly
 
 230 TONELLI ? S MARRIAGE. 
 
 made a verse in his life ; and it was long be- 
 fore he understood Tonelli, when he urged 
 the delicate request. Then in vain he pro- 
 tested, recalcitrated. It was all an offence 
 to Tonelli's morbid soul, already irritated by 
 his friend's obtuseness, and eager to turn even 
 the reluctance of natiire into insult. He took 
 his refusal for a sign that he, too, deserted 
 him ; and must be called back, after bidding 
 Pennellini adieu, to hear the only condition 
 on which the accursed sonnet would be fur- 
 nished, namely, that it should not be signed 
 Pennellini, but an Affectionate Friend. 
 Never was sonnet cost poet so great anguish 
 as this : Pennellini went at it conscientiously 
 as if it were a problem in mathematics ; he 
 refreshed his prosody, he turned over Carrer, 
 he toiled a whole night, and in due time ap- 
 peared as Tonelli's affectionate friend in all 
 the butchers' and bakers' windows. But it 
 had been too much to ask of him, and for a 
 while he felt the shock of Tonelli's unreason 
 and excess so much that there was a decided 
 coolness between them. 
 
 This important particular arranged, little 
 remained for Tonelli to do but to come to that 
 open understanding with the Paronsina and 
 her mother which he had long dreaded and
 
 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 231 
 
 avoided. He could not conceal from himself 
 that his marriage was a kind of desertion of 
 the two dear friends so dependent upon his 
 singleness, and he considered the case of the 
 Paronsina with a real remorse. If his medi- 
 tated act sometimes appeared to him a gross 
 inconsistency and a satire upon all his former 
 life, he had still consoled himself with the 
 truth of his passion, and had found love its 
 own apology and comfort ; but in its relation 
 to these lonely women, his love itself had no 
 fairer aspect than that of treason, and he 
 shrank from owning it before them with a 
 sense of guilt. Some wild dreams of recon- 
 ciling his future with his past occasionally 
 haunted him ; but in his saner moments, he 
 perceived their folly. Carlotta, he knew, 
 was good and patient, but she was neverthe- 
 less a woman, and she would never consent 
 that he should be to the Cenarotti all that 
 he had been ; these ladies also were very 
 kind and reasonable, but they too were 
 women, and incapable of accepting a less 
 perfect devotion. Indeed, was not his pro- 
 posed marriage too much like taking her 
 only son from the signora and giving the 
 Paronsina a stepmother ? It was worse, and 
 so the ladies of the notary's family viewed
 
 232 TOXELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 it, cherishing a resentment that grew with 
 Tonelli's delay to deal frankly with them ; 
 while Carlotta, 011 her part, was wounded 
 that these old friends should ignore his fu- 
 ture wife so utterly. On both sides evil was 
 stored up. 
 
 When Tonelli would still make a show of 
 fidelity to the Paronsina and her mother, 
 they accepted his awkward advances, the 
 latter with a cold visage, the former with a 
 sarcastic face and tongue. He had managed 
 particularly ill with the Paronsina, who, hav- 
 ing no romance of her own, would possibly 
 have come to enjoy the autumnal poetry of 
 his love if he had permitted. But when she 
 first approached him on the subject of those 
 rumours she had heard, and treated them 
 with a natural derision, as involving the 
 most absurd and preposterous ideas, he, in- 
 stead of suffering her jests, and then turning 
 her interest to his favour, resented them, and 
 closed his heart and its secret against her. 
 What could she do, thereafter, but feign 
 to avoid the subject, and adroitly touch it 
 with constant, invisible stings ? Alas ! it 
 did not need that she should ever speak to 
 Tonelli with the wicked intent she did ; at 
 this time he would have taken ill whatever
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 233 
 
 most innocent thing she said. When friends 
 are to be estranged, they do not require a 
 cause. They have but to doubt one another, 
 and no forced forbearance or kindness be- 
 tween them can do aught but confirm their 
 alienation. This is on the whole fortunate, 
 for in this manner neither feels to blame for 
 the broken friendship, and each can declare 
 with perfect truth that he did all he could 
 to maintain it. Tonelli said to himself, " If 
 the Paronsina had treated the affair properly 
 at first !" and the Paronsina thought, " If 
 he had told me frankly about it to begin 
 with ! " Both had a latent heartache over 
 their trouble, and both a sense of loss the 
 more bitter because it was of loss still unac- 
 knowledged. 
 
 As the day fixed for Tonelli's wedding, 
 drew near, the rumour of it came to the 
 Cenarotti from all their acquaintance. But 
 when people spoke to them of it, as of some- 
 thing they must be fully and particularly in- 
 formed of, the signora answered coldly, " It 
 seems that we have not merited Tonelli's 
 confidence ;" and the Paronsina received the 
 gossip with an air of clearly affected sur- 
 prise, and a " Davvero /" that at least dis- 
 comfited the tale-bearers.
 
 234 TONELLI 'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 The consciousness of the unworthy part 
 he was acting toward these ladies had come 
 at last to poison the pleasure of Tonelli's 
 wooing, even in Carlotta's presence ; yet I 
 suppose he would still have let his wedding- 
 day come and go, and been married beyond 
 hope of atonement, so loath was he to in- 
 flict upon himself and them the pain of an 
 explanation, if one day, within a week of 
 that time, the notary had not bade his clerk 
 dine with him on the morrow. It was a holi- 
 day, and as Carlotta w r as at home, making 
 ready for the marriage, Tonelli consented to 
 take his place at the table from which he 
 had been a long time absent. But it turned 
 out such a frigid and melancholy banquet as 
 never was known before. The old notary, 
 to whom all things came dimly, finally missed 
 the accustomed warmth of Tonelli's fun, and 
 said, with a little shiver, ' ' Why, what ails 
 you, Tonelli ? You are as moody as a man 
 in love. " 
 
 The notary had been told several times of 
 Tonelli's affair, but it was his characteristic 
 not to remember any gossip later than that 
 of 'Forty-eight. 
 
 The Paronsina burst into a laugh full of 
 the cruelty and insult of a woman's long-
 
 TONELLl's MARRIAGE. 235 
 
 smothered sense of injury. " Caro nonno," 
 she screamed into her grandfather's dull ear, 
 "he is really in despair how to support his 
 happiness. He is shy, even of his old friends, 
 he has had so little experience. It is the 
 first love of a young man. Bisogna com- 
 patire la gioventu, caro nonno." And her 
 tongue being finally loosed, the Paronsina 
 broke into incoherent mockeries, that hurt 
 more from their purpose than their point, 
 and gave no one greater pain than herself. 
 
 Tonelli sat sad and perfectly mute under 
 the infliction, but he said in his heart, "I 
 have merited worse." 
 
 At first the signora remained quite aghast ; 
 but when she collected herself, she called out 
 peremptorily, " Madamigella, you push the 
 affair a little beyond. Cease !" 
 
 The Paronsina having said all she desired, 
 ceased, panting. 
 
 The old notary, for whose slow sense all 
 but her first words had been too quick, though 
 all had been spoken at him, said drily, turn- 
 ing to Tonelli, "I imagine that my deafness 
 is not always a misfortune." 
 
 It was by an inexplicable, but hardly less 
 inevitable, violence to the inclinations of 
 each that, after this miserable dinner, the
 
 236 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 signora, the Paronsina, and Tonelli should 
 go forth together for their wonted promenade 
 on the Molo. Use, which is the second, is 
 also very often the stronger nature, and so 
 these parted friends made a last show of 
 union and harmony. In nothing had their 
 amity been more fatally broken than in this 
 careful homage to its forms ; and now, as 
 they walked up and down in the moonlight, 
 they were of the saddest kind of appari- 
 tions, not mere disembodied spirits, which, 
 however, are bad enough, but disanimated 
 bodies, which are far worse, and of which 
 people are not more afraid only because they 
 go about in society so commonly. As on 
 many and many another night of summers 
 past, the moon came up and stood over the 
 Lido, striking far across the glittering lagoon, 
 ; and everywhere winning the flattered eye to 
 the dark masses of shadow upon the water ; 
 1 to the trees of the Gardens, to the trees and 
 towers and domes of the cloistered and tem- 
 pled isles. Scene of pensive and incomparable 
 loveliness ! giving even to the stranger, in 
 some faint and most unequal fashion, a sense 
 of the awful meaning of exile to the Vene- 
 tian, who in all other lands in the world i.s 
 doubly an alien, from their unutterable
 
 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 237 
 
 unlikeness to his sole and beautiful city. 
 The prospect had that pathetic unreality 
 to the friends which natural things always 
 assume to people playing a part, and I 
 imagine that they saw it not more substan- 
 tial than it appears to the exile in his dreams. 
 In their promenade they met again and again 
 the unknown wonted faces ; they even en- 
 countered some acquaintances, whom they 
 greeted, and with whom they chatted for a 
 while ; and when at nine the bronze giants 
 beat the hour upon their bell, with as re- 
 mote effect as if they were giants of the 
 times before the flood, they were aware 
 of Pennellini, promptly appearing like an 
 exact and methodical spectre. 
 
 But to-night the Paronsina, wno had made 
 the scene no compliments, did not insist as 
 usual upon the ice at Florian's; and Pen- 
 nellini took his formal leave of the friends 
 under the arch of the Clock Tower, and they 
 walked silently homeward through the echo- 
 ing Merceria. 
 
 At the notary's gate Tonelli would have 
 said good-night, but the signora made him 
 enter with them, and then abruptly left him 
 standing with the Paronsina in the gallery, 
 while she was heard hurrying away to her
 
 238 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 own apartment. She reappeared, extending 
 toward Tonelli both hands, upon which 
 glittered and glittered manifold skeins of 
 the delicate chain of Venice. 
 
 She had a very stately and impressive 
 bearing, as she stood there in the moonlight, 
 and addressed him with a collected voice. 
 "Tonelli," she said, "I think you have 
 treated your oldest and best friends very 
 cruelly. Was it not enough that you should 
 take yourself from us, but you must also 
 forbid our hearts to follow you even in 
 sympathy and good wishes ? I had almost 
 thought to say adieu for ever to-night ; but," 
 she continued, with a breaking utterance, 
 and passing tenderly to the familiar form of 
 address, " I cannot part so with thee. Thou 
 hast been too like a son to me, too like a 
 brother to my poor Clarice. Maybe thou 
 no longer lovest us, yet I think thou wilt 
 not disdain this gift for thy wife. Take it, 
 Tonelli, if not for our sake, perhaps then for 
 the sake of sorrows that in times past 
 we have shared together in this unhappy 
 Venice. " 
 
 Here the signora ended perforce the 
 speech, which had been long for her, and 
 the Paronsina burst into a passion of weep-
 
 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 239 
 
 ing, not more at her mamma's words 
 than out of self-pity and from the national 
 sensibility. 
 
 Tonelli took the chain, and reverently 
 kissed it and the hands that gave it. He 
 had a helpless sense of the injustice the 
 .signora's words and the Paronsina's tears 
 did him ; he knew that they put him with 
 feminine excess further in the wrong than 
 even his own weakness had ; but he tried 
 to express nothing of this, it was but part 
 of the miserable maze in which his life was 
 involved. With what courage he might he 
 owned his error, but protested his faithful 
 friendship, and poured out all his troubles, 
 his love for Carlotta, his regret for them, 
 his shame and remorse for himself. They 
 forgave him, and there was everything in 
 their words and will to restore their old 
 friendship, and keep it ; and when the gate 
 with a loud clang closed upon Tonelli, going 
 from them, they all felt that it had irrevo- 
 cably perished. 
 
 I do not say that there was not always a 
 decent and affectionate bearing on the part 
 of the Paronsina and her mother towards 
 Tonelli and his wife ; I acknowledge that it 
 was but too careful and faultless a tender-
 
 240 TOXELLI'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 ness, ever conscious of its own fragility. 
 Far more natural was the satisfaction they 
 took in the delayed fruitfulness of Tonelli's 
 marriage, and then in the fact that his 
 child was a girl, and not a boy. It was but 
 human that they should doubt his happiness, 
 and that the signora should always say, when 
 hard pressed with questions upon the matter : 
 " Yes, Tonelli is married ; but if it were to 
 do again, I think he would do it to-morrow 
 rather than to-day." 
 
 (EtJtnburgl) Eimticrsttu 33ress: 
 
 T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.
 
 This book is DUE on the last 
 date stamped below. 
 
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