• f 
 
 4 
 I • 
 
 1 , /S **\ /N s\ t T\ <C\ rv , 4V /> n tV t >nO,/v^ 
 
 wmmmmmmm n i m i T TW 
 
 THE-VENETIANS 1 
 
 aMMMMnam 
 
 MMKMMII
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 THE VENETIANS 
 
 <J Jtobcl 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,' -VIXEN," 
 "ISHMAEL," Etc. 
 
 j&tcreotgpcti 1£t>itton 
 
 LONDON 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. 
 
 LIMITED 
 STATIONERS' HALL COURT 
 
 1893 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED. 
 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAG IT 
 
 I. In the City by the Sea ... ... ... 1 
 
 II. After-thoughts ... ... ... ... 14 
 
 III. "Fairies!" ... ... ... ... ... SO" 
 
 IV. "The Prelude to some Brighter World"... 40 
 V. Teatime in Arcadia ... ... ... ... 5G 
 
 VI. Why should he refrain? ... ... ... 67 
 
 VII. He would take his Time ... ... ... S3 
 
 VIII. A Face in the Crowd ... ... ... 92 
 
 IX. "Though Love, and Life, and Death should 
 
 COME AND GO" ... ... ... ... 99 
 
 X. " As Things that are not shall these Things be " 106 
 
 XL "One Thread in Life worth spinning" ... 116 
 
 XII. "One born to love you, Sweet" ... ... 132 
 
 XIII. "The Time of Lovers is Brief" ... ... 137 
 
 XIV. As a Spirit from Dream to Dream ... 14;; 
 XV. "Love should be Absolute Love" ... ... 151 
 
 XVI. To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn ... 164 
 
 XVII. "She was more Fair than Words can say" ... 179 
 
 XVIII. " The Shadow passeth when the Tree shall 
 
 fall" .... ... ... ... ... 190 
 
 XIX. "He said, 'She has a Lovely Face" ... 196 
 
 XX. Peggy's Chance ... ... ... ... 212 
 
 XXI.- "From the Evil to come" ... ... 22S 
 
 XXII. " So very Wilful " ... ... 235 
 
 XXIII. The Little Rift ... ... ... ... 214
 
 av 
 
 Contents. 
 
 CHATTER 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " Poor Kind Wild Eyes so dashed with Light 
 
 Quick Tears" 
 "And every Gentle Passion Sick to Death" 
 "Closer and clo?er swam the Thunder-cloud " 
 " Thou mayst be False and yet I know it not " 
 In the Blue Chamber 
 
 " 'Tis not the Same now, never more can be " 
 A Double Exile 
 
 " Oh tell her, Brief is Life, but Loye is Long " 
 "A Scene of Light and Glory" 
 "Both together, he her God, she his Idol" 
 
 PAGE 
 
 257 
 268 
 284 
 298 
 303 
 311 
 321 
 325 
 333 
 335
 
 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 
 
 Little golden cloudlets, like winged living creatures, were hanging 
 high up in the rosy glow above Santa Maria della Salute, and all 
 along the Grand Canal the crowded gondolas were floating in a golden 
 haze, and all the westward-facing palace windows Hashed and shone 
 with an illumination which the lamps and lanterns that were tobe 
 lighted after sundown could never equal, burnt they never so merrily. 
 It was Shrove Tuesday in Venice, Carnival time. The sun had been 
 shining on the city and on the lagunes all day long. It was one ot 
 those Shrove Tuesdays which recall the familiar proverb — 
 
 " Sunshine at Carnival, 
 Fireside at Easter." 
 
 But who cares about the chance of cold and gloom six weeks hence 
 when to-day is fair and balmy ? A hum of joyous, foolish voices 
 echoed from those palace facades, and floated out seaward, and rang 
 along the narrow Calle, and drifted on the winding water-ways, and 
 resounded under the innumerable bridges; for everywhere in the 
 City by the Sea men, women, and children were making merry, and 
 had given themselves up to a wild and childish rapture of unreasoning 
 mirth, ready to explode into loud laughter at the sorriest jokes. An 
 old man tapped upon the shoulder by a swinging paper lantern — a 
 boy whose hat had been knocked off— a woman calling to her husband 
 or her lover across the gay flotilla — anything was food for mirth on 
 this holiday evening, while the great gold orb sank in the silvery 
 lagoon, and all the sky yonder towards Chioggia was dyed with the 
 crimson after-glow, and the Chioggian fishing-boats were moving 
 westward in all the splendour of their painted sails. 
 
 At Danieli's the hall and staircase, reading-room, smoking-room, 
 and saloons were crowded with people ; English and American for 
 the most part, but with a sprinkling of French and German. Shrewd
 
 2 The Venetians. 
 
 Yankees were bargaining on the sea-washed steps below the hall- 
 door with gondoliers almost as shrewd. Quanto per la notte — tutte 
 to notte, sul canale ? To-night the gondoliers would have it all their 
 own way, for every one wanted a gondola to row up and down the 
 Grand Canal, with gaudy Chinese lanterns, and singing men, twanging 
 guitar or tinkling mandoline to that tune which is almost the national 
 melody of Venice fin de siecle — "Funicoli, funicola." 
 
 The dining-rooms at Danieli's are capacious enough for all ordinary 
 occasions, but to-night there was not space for half the number who 
 wanted to dine. The waiters were flying about wildly, trying to 
 appease the hungry crowd with promises of tables subito, subito. 
 But travellers in Italy know what subito means in an Italian 
 restaurant, and were not comforted by these assurances. Amiable 
 Signor Campi moved about among his men, and his very presence 
 gave comfort somehow, and finally everybody had food and wine, 
 and a din of jovial voices rose up from the table d'hote to the grand 
 old rooms above, on that upper story which is called the noble floor, 
 a place of strange histories, perhaps, in those stern days when these 
 hotels were palaces. 
 
 The ubiquitous Signor Campi was near the door when a gondola 
 stopped at the bottom of the steps, and two ladies came tripping up 
 into the hall, followed by a young man who was evidently English, 
 handsome, tall, broad-shouldered, and clad in a suit of rough grey 
 cloth, whose every line testified to the excellence of an English tailor. 
 
 The ladies were as evidently not English, and they had a Carnival 
 air which was totally different from the gaiety of the American young 
 ladies in their neat tailor gowns, or the English ladies in their table 
 d'hote silks. One wore ruby plush, with a train which trailed on 
 the wet steps as she came up to the door. The other wore black 
 velvet, with a wide yellow sash loosely knotted round a supple waist. 
 The ruby lady was masked, the black velvet lady dangled her lace- 
 fringed mask on the end of a finger, and looked boldly round the 
 crowded hall with her big black eyes — eyes which reflected the 
 lamplight in their golden splendour. 
 
 Signor Campi was at the Englishman's side before the ladies 
 could pass the threshold. 
 
 "You were thinking of dining with those two ladies, sir?" he 
 inquired, in excellent English. 
 
 "Certainly. You can give us a private room, if you like." 
 
 " There is not a room in the house unoccupied; " and then, in a 
 lower voice, Signor Campi murmured, "Quite impossible. Those 
 ladies cannot dine here." 
 
 The Englishman laughed lightly. 
 
 " You are not fond of your own countrywomen, it seems, Monsieur
 
 In the City by the Sea. 3 
 
 Cam pi ; " and then to the hall-porter, " Keep that gondola, will .you ? " 
 and then in Italian, to the larger lady in ruby plush, who might have 
 been mother or aunt to the lovely girl in black velvet, " They have 
 no room for us anywhere. We should have to wait ages, ages for 
 our dinner. Shall we try a restaurant? " 
 
 " Yes, yes," cried the girl eagerly. " Ever so much more fun. Let 
 us go to the Black Hat. No gha megio casa per el disnar." 
 
 " Where is the Black Hat?" 
 
 " On the Piazza. We often dine there, la Zia and I. We shan't 
 want the gondola, it is only five minutes' walk." 
 
 " Shall I engage him for the evening '? " 
 
 " No, no. You are going to take us to the opera." 
 
 " As you will."' 
 
 He offered the girl his arm, and left la Zia to follow him across 
 the hall to the door opening on to the Quay of the Slaves — that 
 quay whose stones are beaten nowadays chiefly by the footsteps of 
 light-hearted travellers drunken with the enchantment of Venice. 
 They crossed the bridge, the girl hanging on the young man's arm, 
 chatting gafly, and holding up her long black skirt with the other 
 hand, revealing glimpses of feet and ankles which were far from 
 fairy-like, feet that had been widened by the flip-flopping shoe which 
 the damsel had worn when she was a lace-maker on the island of 
 Burano. 
 
 If he wanted a good dinner — a real Venetian dinner — nowhere 
 would he get it better than at the sign of the Black Hat, and good 
 wine into the bargain, the girl told her cavalier. 
 1 They turned by the Vine Corner, and then threaded their way 
 along the crowded Piazzetta, whence the sacred pigeons had been 
 banished by the tumult of the throng. They crossed the Piazza in 
 front of St. Mark's Moorish domes, and entered a low doorway 
 under the colonnade, only a few paces from the Torre del Orologio, 
 with its ultramarine and gold clock and its bronze giants to beat the 
 time. At the end of a long, narrow, stuffy passage, they found them- 
 selves in a low-ceiled room where there were numerous small tables, 
 and where the heat from the flare of the gas, and the steam of cooked 
 viands, was too suggestive of the torrid zone for comfort. 
 1 The waiters were evidently devoted to the dark-eyed Si'ora in 
 black and yellow, for room was speedily found where there was 
 apparently no room. Some diners were hustled away from a snug 
 little table in a corner by a window, where by opening one side of 
 the casement one might get a breath of cool air — flavoured by sewage, 
 but still a boon. 
 
 | " May I order the dinner? " pleaded the dark eyes, smiling at the 
 young man in rough grey woollen, while la Zia looked about her, turn- 
 ing her head to survey the groups of diners at the tables in the rear.
 
 4 The Venetians. 
 
 The waiter set a huge flask of Chiante on the table unbidden, and 
 stood, napkin in hand, waiting for Fiordelisa's orders. Fiordelisa — 
 otherwise Lisa — was the name of the dark-eyed damsel, who to the 
 Englishman's eye looked as if she had just stepped out of a story in 
 the Decameron. 
 
 She ordered the dinner, discussing the menu confidentially with 
 the waiter; she ordered, and the dishes came, and they all ate, 
 Vansittart being too hungry to be daintily curious as to the food set 
 before him after a long day on the lagoons and an afternoon on the 
 Lido, and all the fun and riot of the Grand Canal at sunset. He 
 never knew of what his dinner at the Black Hat was composed, 
 except that he ate some oysters and drank a pint of white wine, 
 and helped to finish a couple of bottles of champagne — which he 
 ordered in lieu of the big flask of Chiante — that they began with a 
 frittura of minnows, and that the most substantial dish which the 
 brisk waiter brought them was a savoury mess of macaroni, with 
 shreds of meat or choppings of liver mixed up in an unctuous gravy. 
 Lisa was in high spirits, and ate ravenously, and drank a good many 
 glasses of the sparkling wine, and told him, half in broken English 
 and half in her Venetian dialect, of the old days when she had 
 worked in the lace factory, where her earnings were about seven 
 soldi per diem, and where she lived chiefly on polenta. 
 
 This was the sole knowledge Mr. Vansittart had of her history, 
 shce he had only made her acquaintance three or four hours ago 
 at the concert hall on the Lido, where he had offered this young 
 person and her aunt a cup of coffee, and whence he had brought 
 them back to Venice in his gondola. He knew nothing of their 
 histories and characters, cared to know nothing, had no idea of 
 seeing them ever again after this Carnival day. He had taken them 
 to his hotel without stopping to consider the wisdom of such a course, 
 thinking to feast them in one of those grand upper rooms overlooking 
 the broad sweep of water between the Quay of the Slaves and St. 
 George the Greater, meaning to feast them upon Signor Campi's 
 best ; but Signor Campi had willed otherwise, and here they were 
 feasting just as merrily upon a savoury mess of macaroni and chopped 
 liver at the sign of the Black Hat. 
 
 After the savoury dishes Fiordelisa began upon pastry, with an 
 appetite as of a giant refreshed. She rested her elbow on the table, 
 *ind the loose sleeve of her velveteen gown rolled back and showed 
 the round white arm. All the little crinkly curls danced upon her 
 pure white forehead and over her dancing eyes as she ate chocolate 
 Eclairs and creamy choux to her heart's content, while Vansittart 
 thought what a pretty creature she was, and what a pity Mr. Burgess 
 or Mr. Logsdaile was not there with palette and brushes, to fix that 
 gay and brilliant image upon canvas for ever.
 
 In the City by the Sea. 5 
 
 Vansittart was not in love with this chance acquaintance of an 
 idle afternoon. He was only delighted with her. She amused, 
 she fascinated him, just as he was amused and fascinated by this 
 enchanting city of Venice, which had always the same charm and 
 the same glamour for him, come here at what season he might. She 
 impressed him with a sense of her beauty, just as one of those 
 wonderful pictures in the Venetian Academy would have done. 
 
 His heart was unmoved by this sensuous, eager, earthly loveli- 
 ness. Her vulgarity, all her words and gestures essentially of the 
 people, interested him, yet kept him worlds away from her. 
 
 He was rich, irlle, alone in Venice, and he thought it was his 
 right to amuse himself to the uttermost at this Carnival season. 
 That offer of a cup of coffee, arising out of mutual laughter at 
 some absurdities among the crowd, had been the beginning of the 
 friendliest relations. 
 
 He strolled on the loose, level sands with Lisa and her aunt, those 
 sands over which Byron used to ride, the poet of whose existence 
 Lisa had never heard, yet who had wasted lightest hours with just 
 such girls as Lisa. And then how could he go back to Venice 
 alone in his gondola and leave this black-eyed girl and her chaperon 
 to struggle for standing room among the crowd on the twopenny 
 steamer, in their fine clothes and jewels, those jewels in which 
 lower-class Venetians love to invest their savings ? No ; it was 
 the most natural thing in life to offer them seats in his gondola, and 
 then to see the fun of the Grand Canal in their company ; and what 
 young man with Ins note-case plethoric with limp Italian notes, and 
 a reserve of English bank-notes in a close-buttoned inside pocket, 
 could refrain from offering dinner, and then, hearing that Lisa was 
 pining to go to the opera, a box at that entertainment ? No sooner 
 had she expressed her desire, while they were on the Grand Canal, 
 than he sent oft' a Venetian guide, whom he knew of old, to engage 
 a stage box for the evening. 
 
 Fiordelisa told him about her life at Burano, while she devoured 
 her pastry, the aunt listening placidly, replete with dinner and wine, 
 caring for nothing except that those old days were a thing of the 
 past, and that neither she nor her handsome niece need toil or 
 starve any more — not for the present, at any rate ; perhaps never. 
 La Zia was not a woman to peer curiously into the future while the 
 present gave her a comfortable lodging and meat and drink. 
 
 The girl talked her Venetian, and Vansittart, who had spent 
 most of his holidays in Italy, and had a quick ear for dialects, was 
 able to understand her. Now and then she spoke English, better 
 than he would have expected from her youthful ignorance. 
 
 " How is it that you can talk English, Signorina mia, and how is 
 it that you left Burano ? " he asked in Italian.
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 K 
 
 For one and the same reason. A young English gentleman 
 fell in love with me, and brought my aunt and me to Venice, and 
 is having me educated, in order to marry me and take me to 
 England with him." 
 
 Vansittart did not believe in the latter half of the story, but he 
 was too polite to express his doubt. 
 
 " Oh, you are being educated up to our idea of the British matron, 
 we you, bella mia ? " he said, smiling at her, as she wiped her coral 
 lips with the coarse serviette, and flung herself back in her chair, 
 satiated with cream and pastry. " And pray in what docs the 
 education consist? " 
 
 " I am learning to play on the mandoline. A little old man with 
 a cracked voice comes to our lodgings twice a week to teach me — 
 and we sing duets, ' La ci darem ' and ' Sul aria.' " 
 
 "The mandoline. Ah, that is your English friend's notion of 
 education," said Vansittart, laughing. "Well, I dare say that it is 
 as good as Greek or Latin, or the pure science that gave Giordano 
 Bruno such a bad time in this very city.' ' 
 
 He leant back with his head in an angle of the wall, idle, amused, 
 interested, taking life as it seemed to him life ought to be taken — 
 very lightly. 
 
 He had been in Venice only a few days, days of sunshine and 
 sauntering in gondolas to this or the other island, to dream away an 
 idle afternoon. It was his third visit, and he seemed to know every 
 stone of the city almost as well as Ruskin — every palace front and 
 Saracenic window, every mouldering flight of steps, every keystone 
 of every bridge which he passed under almost every clay with lazy 
 motion, drifting as the cabbage leaves and egg-shells drifted on the 
 dark green water. He never stayed very long anywhere, being free 
 to wander as he pleased at his present stage of existence, and having 
 a dim foreshadowing of the time when he would not be free, when 
 he would be bound and fettered by domestic ties, and travelling 
 would be altogether a different business from this casual rambling. 
 He pictured himself at the head of his breakfast table discussing 
 the summer holiday with his wife, while perhaps his mother-in-law 
 sat by and put various spokes into the family wheel, opposing every 
 preference of his on principle. 
 
 He would have to marry some day, he knew. It was an obliga- 
 tion laid upon him together with the family seat and comfortable 
 income to which he had succeeded before his two-and-twentieth 
 birthday. The thing would have to be done — but he meant to 
 delay the evil hour as long as he could, and to be monstrously 
 exacting as to the fairy princess for whose dear sake he should put 
 on those domestic fetters. 
 
 He had enjoyed this particular visit to Venice with a keener
 
 In the City by the Sea. 7 
 
 relish than either of his previous visits. Though the year was still 
 young, the weather had been exceptionally lovely. Sun, moon, 
 and stars had shed all that they have of glory and of glamour over 
 the romantic city, painting the smooth lagoons with a rare splendour 
 of colouring which changed city and sea into something supernal, 
 unimaginable, dreamlike. 
 
 His windows at Danieli's looked over an enchanted sea, where 
 the great modern Peninsular and Oriental steamer moored between 
 the Kiva and St. George the Greater seemed an anachronism in 
 iron. All else was fairylike, historic, mediaeval. 
 
 The steamer was to sail for Alexandria in the afternoon, they 
 had told him, whenever he made any inquiry about her ; but the 
 days and afternoons had gone, and she was still lying there, block- 
 ing out a little bit of the opposite island and the famous church. 
 
 "And so you sing as well as play, Fiordelisa?" he asked, 
 presently, after a silence in which they all three smoked their 
 cigarettes. 
 
 " Sing! I should think she did sing," answered the aunt. " She 
 warbles like a nightingale. Signor Zefferino, her master, says she 
 night to come out at the opera." 
 
 Vansittart smiled. Idle flattery on the maestro's part, no doubt ; 
 the flattery of the small parasite who knows where the macaroni is 
 savouriest, and where the salad reeks with oil. 
 
 And yet, if this girl sang at all, she should sing sweetly. Those 
 dark, sunny eyes of hers gave promise of the artistic temperament. 
 The tones that came from that round, full throat, ivory white 
 against the tawdry black and yellow of her gown, should be rich 
 and ripe. 
 
 He asked no questions about her English lover. Had he been 
 ever so little in love with her himself he would have been full of 
 curiosity — but for this flower of a day, this beautiful stranger, with 
 whom he ate and drank and made merry to-night, and whom he 
 might never see_ again, he had no serious concern. He cared not 
 who were her friends or followers ; whether the life she lived were 
 good, or evil. She had a fresh youthfulness, a look of almost child- 
 like innocence, in spite of her tousled hair and tawdry raiment, and 
 although Signor Campi's keen eye had condemned her. The aunt, 
 too, fat, common, too fine for respectability, seemed a harmless old 
 thing. No word of evil had come from her lips. She had not the 
 air of laying snares for the stranger's feet. She thought of nothing 
 but the enjoyment of the moment. 
 
 _ "Pray, where may your Englishman be to-day?" asked Van- 
 sittart, as it flashed upon his idle mind that there might be peril in 
 such a city as Venice in being seen with another man's sweetheart. 
 " Why didn't he escort you to the Lido ? "
 
 8 The Venetians. 
 
 "He went to Monte Carlo a fortnight ago," she answered. "I 
 am afraid he is a gambler." 
 
 "Is he rich?" 
 
 " No, not as you English count riches. He is rich for a Venetian. 
 He gave la Zia and me our gowns — she chose red, I black — last 
 Christmas. There are few Venetians who would give such hand- 
 some presents. He is very generous." 
 
 " Yes, he is very generous," echoed the aunt. 
 
 " It is time we went to the opera," cried Fiordelisa. " I want to 
 be there at the beginning." 
 
 The opera was "Don Giovanni;" the artists were third-rate; 
 but they sang well enough to lull la Zia into a comfortable slumber 
 and to lift Lisa to the seventh heaven. She sat with clasped hands, 
 listening in a rapture of content. She only unclasped her hands to 
 applaud vehemently when the house applauded. The theatre was 
 crowded, the audience were noisy, but Fiordelisa craned her long 
 neck out of the box to listen, and drank in every note with those 
 quick ears of hers, and was perhaps almost the only person in the 
 Kossini Theatre that night who listened intently : but before the 
 second act was over the crowd and the heat had increased to such 
 a degree that women were fainting in the boxes, and even Fiorde- 
 lisa was resigned to leaving before " Don Giovanni " was half done. 
 She wanted to walk in the Piazza before the shops were shut, or 
 the crowd began to thin, or the bands ceased playing. 
 
 There was to be a masked ball at the same theatre on the 
 following night. 
 
 " Shall I take you to the ball, Lisa? " asked Vansittart, as they 
 came out of the heat and the glare into the cool softness of a 
 Venetian night. 
 
 " No, I don't care about dancing. I only care for the opera. 
 The girls at Burano were mad about dancing, but I liked to hear 
 the organ at High Mass better than all their dances." 
 
 Vansittart thought of bidding his new friends good night at the 
 door of the theatre. Had Venice not been Venice, and had there 
 been any vehicles in waiting, he would have put his fair com- 
 panions into a coach, paid their fare, and bade them good night 
 for ever, without so much as inquiring where they lived. But 
 Venice has a romantic unlikeness to every other city. There was 
 no coach. To say good night and leave them to walk home 
 unescorted was out of the question. 
 
 "In which direction is your house, Signora?" he asked the 
 elder lady. 
 
 " Oh, we are not going home," cried Fiordelisa. " We are going 
 to the Piazza. This is the time when there will be most fun. 
 You'll take us, won't you? " she asked, slipping her hand through
 
 In the City by the Sea. 9 
 
 his arm, and boldly taking possession of him. " Come, come, aunt, 
 we are going to the Piazza." 
 
 Her feet threaded the narrow ways so swiftly that Vansittart 
 scarcely knew by which particular windings of the labyrinth they 
 came to the Bocca di Piazza, and emerged from the shadow of the 
 pillars upon the broad open square, all aflame with lamps and lan- 
 terns, and one roar of multitudinous voices, squeaking punchinellos, 
 barking dogs, blaring trumpets, tinkling guitars. They pushed their 
 way through the crowd, the two women masked, each hanging on 
 to his arm, and making progress difficult. 
 
 The Piazza was a spectacle to remember, full of life and moA'o- 
 ment, a military band braying out brazen music, music of Offenbach, 
 loud, martial, insistent, above the multifarious squeakings and 
 shoutings, the laughter and the clamour of the crowd. In the long 
 colonnades the throng pushed thickly ; but Vansittart had been one 
 of the strong men of the 'Varsity, a thrower of hammers, a jumper 
 of long jumps, a man with a name that was famous at Lillie Bridge 
 as well as at Oxford. He parted the throng as if it had been water, 
 and would have made bis way quickly to the brightest, largest, and 
 gi vest of the caffes, if it had not been for Lisa, who hung back to 
 look at the lighted shop windows, windows that she could have seen 
 any night of her life, but which had a particular attraction at 
 Carnival time. 
 
 The touters were touting at the shop doors, with that smiling 
 persistence which makes the Procuratie Vecclrie odious, and recalls 
 Cranbourne Alley in the dark ages. Lisa made a dead stop before 
 a shop where gaudy wooden figures of Moorish slaves, garish with 
 crude colour and much gilding, were grilling in the glare of the 
 gas. It was a kind of bazaar, half Venetian, half Oriental, and one 
 window was full of bead necklaces and barbaric jewels. At these 
 Lisa looked with such childish longing eyes that Vansittart would 
 have been hard as a stone if he had not suggested making a selection 
 from that sparkling display of rainbow glass and enamel. 
 
 The spider at the door was entreating the flies to go into his web, 
 a young Venetian with smiling black eyes and a Jewish nose — a 
 lineal descendant of Jessica, perhaps — a very agreeable young 
 spider, entreating the Signora and Signorina to go in and look 
 about them. There would be no necessity for them to buy. "To 
 look costs nothing." 
 
 They all three went in. Fioruelisa fastened upon a tray of jewels, 
 and lost herself in a bewilderment as to which of all those earrings, 
 brooches, and necklaces she most desired. Vansittart was interested 
 in the Moorish things — the bronze cups, the gold and scarlet slippers, 
 the embroidered curtains, and, most of all, the daggers, of which there 
 were many curious shapes, in purple-gleaming Damascus steel.
 
 io The Venetians. 
 
 While Fiordelisa and her aunt were choosing brooches and 
 necklaces— necklaces which by a double twist became bracelets — 
 Vansittart was cheapening daggers, and, as a young man of ample 
 means, ended by buying the dearest and perhaps the best, a really 
 serviceable knife, in a red velvet sheath. 
 
 He paid for as many things as Lisa cared to choose ; for a bead 
 necklace and an enamel brooch ; for a square of gold-striped gauze 
 to twist about her head and shoulders ; for a dainty little pair of 
 Moorish shoes which might admit Lisa's toes, but which would 
 certainly leave the major part of her substantial foot out in the 
 cold ; for a gilded casket to hold her jewels — for a fan — for a gilt 
 thimble— and for a little set of Algerian coffee-cups for her aunt. 
 
 All these things were to be sent next morning to the Signora's 
 lodgings near the Ponte di Rialto. Vansittart paid the bill, which 
 disposed of a good many of his limp Italian notes, put his dagger in 
 his breast-pocket, and left the shop, cutting short the compliments 
 and thanks of the Venetian youth. 
 
 The Cafle Florian — of which tradition tells that it closeth not 
 day or night, winter or summer — was filled with people and ablaze 
 with light. Lisa pushed her way to a table, making good use of 
 those fine shoulders and elbows of hers, and a little group of men 
 who had finished their coffee got up and made way for the brilliant 
 black eyes, and the red lips, which the little velvet mask did not 
 hide. Those finely moulded lips looked all the lovelier for the 
 fringe of lace that shadowed them, and the white teeth flashed as 
 she smiled her thanks. 
 
 She talked loud, and laughed gaily while she sipped her chocolate. 
 Vansittart himself was somewhat exhilarated by champagne, music, 
 and two or three little glasses of cognac taken between the acts at 
 the Rossini Theatre, and he was unashamed of his companion's 
 laughter and general exuberance, even although she was attracting 
 the attention of every one within earshot. Beautjr and vivacity are 
 not attributes to make a man ashamed of his companion, although she 
 may be only a Burnano lace-maker disguised in a tawdry velvet gown. 
 
 " Show me the dagger you chose after all your bargaining," she 
 said, leaning over towards him, with her elbows on the table. 
 
 He obeyed. She drew the dagger from its sheath and looked at 
 it criticalby. The red velvet sheath, embroidered with gold, took 
 her fancy much more than the damascened blade. 
 
 " It is too heavy to wear in one's hair," she said, throwing down 
 the sheath, and taking up the weapon. 
 
 " Take care. The blade is as sharp as a razor. It is not by any 
 means an ornament for a lady's toilette table. I bought it against 
 an excursion to the Zambesi, which I have been thinking about for 
 the last two years."
 
 In the City by the Sea. I r 
 
 " The Zambesi," she repeated wonderingly ; " is that in Italy ? " 
 
 " No, Signorina. It is on the Dark Continent." 
 
 She had never heard of the Dark Continent, but she only shrugged 
 her shoulders, incuriously, and leant further across the table to 
 examine a black pearl pin, shaped something like a death's head, 
 which Vansittart wore in his tie, and thus brought her smiling lips 
 very near his face. 
 
 While she leant thus, with the tip of her finger touching the 
 pearl, and her eyes lifted interrogatively, a heavy hand was laid 
 upon Vansittart's shoulder, and he was half twisted out of his chair 
 — tilted after the manner of chairs on which young men sit — by 
 sheer brute force on the part of the owner of the hand. 
 
 " Come out of that ! " said a voice that was thickened by drink. 
 
 Vansittart was on his feet in an instant, facing a man as tall as 
 himself, and a good deal more bulky — a son of Anak, sandy-haired, 
 pallid, save for red spots on his cheek-bones, spots that burnt like 
 hamc. 
 
 He was scowling savagely, breathless with rage. Lisa had risen 
 as quickly as Vansittart, and Lisa's aunt had moved towards tho 
 new-comer in evident trouble of mind. 
 
 " Signor Giovanni," she faltered, " who would have thought to 
 see you in Venice to-night? " 
 
 "Not you, evidently, you wicked old hag — nor you, hussy!" 
 cried the man, furious with jealousy and drink. "I've caught you 
 at your games, have I, you good-for-nothing slut! You couldn't 
 stay indoors like a decent woman, but you must needs walk the 
 streets late at night with this Cockney cad here." 
 
 " Take care what you say to her — or to me," said Vansittart, in 
 that muffled bass which means a dangerous kind of anger. 
 
 He put his arm round Fiordelisa, drawing her towards him as if 
 she belonged to him and it were his place to guard her from every 
 assailant. The crowd made a ring about them, looking on, amused 
 and interested, with no thought of interference which might spoil 
 sport. The comedy some of them had seen at the Goldoni Theatre 
 that night was not half so amusing as this bit out of the comedy of 
 real life— the cosmopolitan comedy of human passion. 
 
 " You infernal blackguard ! " cried the stranger, trying to tear the 
 girl from Vansittart's protecting clasp; "I'll teach you to carry on 
 
 with my " 
 
 l A foul word finished the sentence : a blow from Vansittart, 
 straight in the stranger's teeth, punctuated it. Then came other 
 fold words, and other blows; and the men were grappling each 
 other like pugilists fighting for the belt. The unknown was of 
 heavier build, and showed traces of former training, but Vansittart 
 was in much better condition, and was nearer sobriety, though by
 
 is The Venetians. 
 
 no means sober. He had the best of it for some minutes, till the 
 other man by sheer brute force flung him against the table, crashing 
 down among the shattered glasses and coffee-cups, and dealt him a 
 savage blow below the belt, kicking him as he struck. 
 
 The table reeled over and Vansittart fell. Under his open hand 
 as it struck the floor he felt the unsheathed dagger which Fiordelisa 
 had flung down, in careless indifference, after deciding that it was 
 too big for an ornament. 
 
 Infuriated by that foul blow, maddened by the brutality of the 
 attack, excited to fever heat by the surrounding circumstances, 
 even by the very atmosphere, which reeked with tobacco and 
 brandy, Vansittart sprang to his feet, clutched his foe by the collar, 
 and plunged the dagger into his breast. In the moment of doing 
 it the thing seemed natural, spontaneous, the inevitable outcome of 
 the assault that had been made upon him. In the next moment, as 
 those angry ej r es grew dim, and the man fell like a log, Vansittart 
 felt himself a coward and a murderer. 
 
 A sudden silence came upon the crowd, tumultuous a moment 
 ago. A silence fell upon the scene, like a dull, grey veil, gauzy, 
 impalpable, that had dropped from the ceiling. 
 
 " Dead," muttered a voice at Vansittart's elbow, as the man lay 
 in the midst of them, motionless. " That knife went straight to 
 the heart." 
 
 A shriek rent the air, wild and shrill, and the vibrating glasses 
 echoed it with a banshee scream. Lisa flung herself upon the 
 body, and tried to staunch the bubbling blood with her poor wisp 
 of a handkerchief. A man pushed his way through the crowd with 
 an authoritative air — a doctor, doubtless ; but before he reached 
 the little clear space where the victim lay with Lisa ci'ouching over 
 him, and Lisa's aunt wringing her hands and appealing to the 
 Madonna and all the Saints, a rough hand pulled Vansittart's arm, 
 and a man whispered in Italian, " Run, run, while you have the 
 chance ! " 
 
 " Run ? " Yes, he was a murderer, and his life belonged to the 
 law, unless he used his heels to save his neck. Quick as lightning 
 he took the hint, clove his way through the crowd, and made a 
 dash for the door nearest the Piazzetta. The crowd were busy 
 watching the doctor as he knelt beside that prostrate form — 
 interested, too, in Fiordelisa, with her mask flung off, her loosened 
 hair falling about her ivory neck, her dark eyes streaming, her red 
 lips convulsed and quivering. Vansittart was at the door, past it, 
 before a man cried — 
 
 " Stop him; stop the assassin." 
 
 There was a sudden tumult, and twenty men were g'ving chase, 
 a pack of human bloodhounds, perhaps as much for the sake of
 
 /// the City by the Sea. 13 
 
 sport as from actual horror at the deed. They rushed along the 
 Piazzetta, knocking down more than one astonished lounger on 
 their way. They made for the Pillars of St. Mark and St. Theodore 
 — for that spot where of old the Republic put her felons to death, 
 and where now the gondolas wait in sunshine and in starshine for 
 the holiday visitors in the dream-city. 
 
 He would make for the water naturally, and jump on board the 
 first gondola he could find, thought his pursuers ; but when they 
 reached the quay there was not a gondola to be seen. The 
 gondoliers had all got their fares to-night, and all the gondolas were 
 on the Grand Canal, with flaunting paper lanterns flying at their 
 beaked prows, and coloured fires burning, and mandolines and 
 guitars tinkling and twanging, and " Funicoli, funicola," echoing 
 from boat to boat. 
 
 " We shall have him ! " cried the foremost of that yelping pack, 
 and even as he spoke they all heard the sound of a great splash, by 
 the steps yonder, and knew their quarry had taken to the water. 
 
 The Venetians, warm with macaroni and wine, and in no humour 
 for an improvised bath under those starlit ripples, pulled up, and 
 beg an to chatter ; then whistled and shouted for gondolas, hope- 
 lessly, as to the empty air ; and anon, by common consent, ran to 
 the bridge hard by the furthermost corner of the Doge's Palace, and 
 from that vantage point looked over the water. 
 
 It was covered with holiday craft. Far as the eye could see the 
 gaily decked boats were crossing and recrossing the broad reach 
 between the Riva and the island church, and in the midst of them, 
 like a sea-girt fortress, rose the dark hulk of the P. and 0. steamer, 
 her lights showing bright and high above those fantastical Chinese 
 lanterns, her boilers throbbing, her cables groaning, all prepared 
 for instant departure. 
 
 There was a deep-toned blast of the steamer's whistle, the 
 clamour of the donkey engines suddenly ceased, and the beating of 
 the screw lashed up the water : and, lo, all the gondolas were tossed 
 and swung about like a handful of rose-leaves on a running brook. 
 
 " She's off! " cried one of Vansittart's pursuers, almost forgetting 
 the chase in the pleasures of watching that big ship getting under 
 way. 
 
 " Do you think he could have got on board her ? " asked another ; 
 "he " meaning their quarry. 
 
 "Not he, unless he were a better swimmer than ever I knew." 
 
 -■) 
 
 He was a better swimmer than anybody among that Venetian's 
 acquaintance — or, at any rate, he was good enough to swim out to 
 the P. and 0. steamer and to get himself on board her before the 
 engines began to beat the water with their first deliberate pulsa*
 
 14 The Venetians. 
 
 tions. The last boat had left the side of the vessel ; the sailors 
 were drawing up the accommodation ladder, as he called to them 
 with a voice of command which they did not question. In three or 
 four minutes he was on deck, and had made his way, dripping as 
 he was, to the captain of the vessel. 
 
 He explained himself briefly. He had got into a row — a Carnival 
 frolic only — and wanted to get clear of Venice, and knowing the 
 steamer was to sail for Alexandria that night, had swum out to her 
 at the last moment. He had plenty of money about him, and as 
 for change of clothes, he must do the best he could. 
 
 "I hope it wasn't anything very bad," said the captain doubt- 
 fully, looking at this dripping stranger from top to toe. 
 
 " Oh no ; a man hit me in a caffe just now, and I hit him." 
 
 The steamer was imperceptibly moving seaward at every steady 
 throb of those ponderous engines, threading her way along the 
 tortuous channel so slowly and cautiously at first that Vansittart 
 wondered if she were ever going to get away. Venice the lamplit, 
 the starlit, the beautiful, glided into the distance, with all her domes 
 and pinnacles, her gondolas and Chinese lanterns, torches and sky- 
 rockets, music and laughter. Vansittart's heart ached as he watched 
 the fairy city fading like a vision of the night. He had loved her 
 so well — spent such happy, light, unthinking days upon those 
 waters, in those labyrinthine streets, laughing and chaffering with 
 the little merchants of the Rialto, following Venetian beauty through 
 the mazy ways and over the innumerable bridges — happy, uncaring. 
 And now he was an escaped murderer, and would never dare to 
 show his face in Venice again. "Good God !" he said to himself, 
 in a stupor of horrified shame, " that I, a gentleman, should have 
 used a knife — like a Colorado miner, or a drunken sweep in Seven 
 Dials!" 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 
 
 There was nothing but fair weather for the P. and 0. steamer 
 Berenice between Venice and Alexandria — fair weather and a calm 
 sea; and John Vansittart had ample leisure in which to think over 
 what he had done, and to live again through all the sensations of his 
 last night in Venice. 
 
 He had to live through it all again, and again, in those long days 
 at sea, out of sight of land, with nothing between him and his own 
 dark thoughts but that monotony of cloudless sky and rolling waters. 
 What did it matter whether the boat made eighteen or twenty knots 
 an hour, whether progress were fast or slow ? Each day meant an 
 eternity of thought to him who sat apart in his canvas chair, staring
 
 After-thoughts. 1 5 
 
 blankly eastward, or brooding with bent head, and melancholy eyes 
 fixed on the deck, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, irritated and 
 miserable when some officious fellow-passenger insisted upon plump- 
 ing down by his side in another deck chair, and talking to him about 
 the weather, or his destination, with futile questionings as to whether 
 this was his first voyage to the East, and all the idle inquisitiveness 
 of the traveller who has nothing to do, and very little to think about. 
 
 Captain and steward had been very good to him. The former 
 had asked him no questions after that first inquiry, content to know 
 that he was a gentleman, and had a well-filled purse ; the latter had 
 put him to bed in the most comfortable of berths, and had given 
 him a hot drink, and dried his clothes ready for the next morning. 
 And in that one suit of clothes, with changes of linen borrowed from 
 the captain, he made the voyage to Alexandria in the bright spring 
 weather, under the vivid blue that canopies the Mediterranean. 
 Perhaps the fact of living in that one suit of clothes all through 
 those hot days intensified his sense of being a pariah among the 
 other passengers ; he who had come among them with a hand rod 
 with murder. 
 
 Hour after horn 1 he would sit in his corner of the deck, always the 
 most secluded spot he could find, and brood over the thing that he 
 had done. 
 
 He had an open book upon his knee for appearance's sake, and 
 pretended to be absorbed in it whenever a curious saunterer passed 
 his way. He smoked all day long for comfort's sake, the only 
 comfort possible for his troubled brain, and all day long he thought 
 of his last evening in Venice and the thing that he had done there. 
 
 To think that he, a gentleman by birth and education, should 
 have slain a man hi a tavern row ; that he, who in his earliest boy- 
 hood had been taught to use his fists, and to defend himself after 
 the manner of Englishmen, should have yielded to a tigerish im- 
 pulse, and stabbed an unarmed foe to the heart ! He, the well-bred 
 Englishman, had behaved no better than a drunken Lascar. 
 
 He scorned — he hated — himself for that blind fury which had 
 made him grip the weapon that accident had placed in his way. 
 
 He was not particularly sorry for the man he had killed ; a violent, 
 drunken brute, who for the sake of the rest of humanity was better 
 dead than alive. A profligate who had betrayed that lovely igno- 
 ramus under a promise of marriage, a promise which he had never 
 meant to keep. He hated himself for the manner of the brute's 
 death rather than for the death itself. If he had killed the man in 
 fair fight he would have felt no regret at having made an end of 
 him ; but to have stabbed an unarmed man ! There was the sting, 
 there was the shame of it. All night long, between snatches of 
 troubled sleep, he writhed and tossed in his berth, wishing that he
 
 1 6 The Venetians. 
 
 were dead, wondering whether it were not the host thing he could 
 do to throw himself overboard before daybreak and so make an end 
 of these impotent regrets, this maddening reiteration of details, this 
 perpetual representation of the hateful scene, for ever beginning and 
 ending and beginning again in his tortured brain. 
 
 He would have decided upon suicide, perhaps, not having any 
 strong religious convictions at this stage of his existence ; but his 
 life was not his own to fling away, however unpleasant he might 
 have made it for himself. 
 
 He had a mother who adored him, and to whom he, for his part, 
 was warmly attached. She was a widow, and he was the head of 
 the house, sole master of the estate, and to him she looked for 
 dignity and comfort. Were he to die the landed property would 
 pass to his uncle, a dry old bachelor, and though his mother would 
 still have her income, she would be banished from the house in 
 which her wedded life had been spent, and she would be the loser 
 in social status. Pie had an only sister, too, a fair, frivolous being, 
 of whom, in a lesser degree, he was fond ; a sister who had made 
 her appearance in Society at the pre-Lenten Drawing-Room, and 
 had been greatly admired, and who was warranted to make a good 
 match. 
 
 Poor little Maud ! What would become of Maud if he were to 
 throw himself off a P. and 0. steamer? Think of the scandal of it. 
 And yet, if he lived, and that brutal business in the Venetian caff e 
 were to be brought home to him — murder, or manslaughter — it 
 would be even worse for his sister. Society would look askance at 
 a girl with such a ruffian for a brother — an Englishman who used 
 the knife against his fellow-man. Daggers and stilettos might be 
 common wear among Venetians ; but the knife was not the less 
 odious in the sight of an Englishman because he happened to be in 
 a city where traditions of treachery and secret murder were inter- 
 woven with all her splendour and her beauty. It would be horrible, 
 humiliating, disgraceful for his people if ever that story came to be 
 known — a choice topic for the daily papers, with just that spice of 
 romance and adventure which would justify exhaustive treatment. 
 
 Thinking over the question from the Society point of view — and 
 in most of the great acts of life Society stands with the modern 
 Christian in the place which the religious man gives his Creator — ■ 
 Vansittart told himself that every effort of his intelligence must be 
 bent upon dissociating himself from that tragedy in the Venetian 
 caff e. He had got clear of the city by a wonderful bit of luck ; for 
 had the steamer started five minutes earlier, or a quarter of an hour 
 later, escape that way would have been impossible. 
 
 He had heard the men giving chase on the Piazzetta as he jumped 
 from the quay ; heard them shouting when he was in the water.
 
 After-thoughts. \ 7 
 
 Had the steamer been stationary those men would have boarded 
 her, and the whole story would have been known. She had weighed 
 anchor in the nick of time for him. But what then ? A telegram 
 to the police at Brindisi or Alexandria might stop him, as other 
 fugitive felons are caught every month in the year — men who get 
 clear off at Liverpool, to be arrested before they step ashore at New 
 York. 
 
 He paid his passage on the morning after his flight, and gave his 
 name as John Smith, of London. The captain scrutinized him 
 rather suspiciously on hearing that name of Smith ; but Vansittart 
 did not look like a swindler or a blackguard. He was under a cloud, 
 perhaps, the captain thought, and Smith was most likely an alias ; 
 but anyhow he was a gentleman, and the captain meant to stand 
 his friend. 
 
 " Are you going to stay long in Cairo ? " he asked Vansittart, 
 when they were within sight of Alexandria. 
 
 " Not lonsr. Perhaps only till I get my luggage. I shall go up 
 the Nile." 
 
 " You'll find it rather hot before you've been a long way." 
 
 "Oh, I don't mind heat. I'm not a feverish subject," said Van- 
 sittart, lightly, having no more idea of going up the Nile than of 
 going to the moon. 
 
 " You'll stop at Sheppard's, ol course ? " 
 
 " Yes, decidedly. I'm told it's a very good hotel." 
 
 While they were nearing their port he contrived to get a good 
 deal of information about the steamers that touched there. He 
 meant to get off on the first boat that sailed after he landed. All 
 the interval he wanted was the time to buy some ready-made clothes 
 and a valise, so that he might not appear on board the homeward- 
 bound steamer in the miserable condition in which he had introduce 1 
 himself to the captain of the P. and 0. 
 
 He parted with that officer with every expression of friendliness. 
 
 " I shan't forget how good you've been to a traveller in distress," 
 he said lightly ; "you may not hear of me for a month or two, 
 perhaps. I may be up the Nile " 
 
 " Take care of the climate," interjected the captain. 
 
 " But as soon as I go back to London I shall write to you. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 " Good-bye, Mr. Smith, and good luck to you for a fine swimmer 
 wherever you go." 
 
 " Oh, I won a cup or two at Oxford^" answered the other. " We 
 rather prided ourselves on our swimming in my set." 
 
 He went to a restaurant where he could sit under an awning and 
 read the latest papers that had found their way to Alexandria. 
 There were plenty of Paris papers— Galignani, Le Figaro, Le 
 
 C
 
 1 8 The Venetians. 
 
 Temps. There was a Turin paper, very stale — and there was a 
 copy of the Daily Tdegraph that had been left by some traveller, 
 and which was a fortnight old. Nothing to fear there. Vansittart 
 breathed more freely, and thought of going on to Cairo. But 
 second thoughts warned him that Cairo was very English, and that 
 he might meet some one he knew there. Better to stick to his first 
 plan, and go back to England by the first steamer that would take 
 him. 
 
 He had to think of his possessions at Danieli's, and whether the 
 things he had left there would provide a clue to his identity. He 
 thought not. He had not given his name to the hall porter. 
 
 The hotel was crowded, and he had — like a convict — been simply 
 known as " 150," the number of his room. 
 
 Clothes, portmanteau, dressing-bag, bore only his initials, J. V. 
 He had been travelling in lightest marching order ; carrying no 
 books save those which he picked up on his way, no writing 
 materials, except the compact little case in his dressing-bag. It 
 was his habit to destroy all letters as soon as he had read them — 
 even his mother's, after a second or third reading. His card-case, 
 note-case, and purse were all in his pockets when Jie made the 
 plunge. No, he had left nothing at Danieli's ; nor had he left 
 Danieli's I'eep in debt, for he had paid his account on Tuesday morning, 
 with a half-formed intention of starting for Verona by the early 
 train on Wednesday. He could resign himself to the loss of port- 
 manteau and contents, and the plain pigskin bag, which had seen 
 good service and had been scraped and battered upon many a 
 platform. 
 
 Reflection told him that he had nothing to fear from the news- 
 papers yet awhile, since no newspaper could have travelled faster 
 than the steamer that had brought him, while the news of that 
 homicide at Venice was hardly important enough to be telegraphed 
 to any Egyptian journal. No, he was safe so far ; but he told him- 
 self that the best thing he could do was to get back to England and 
 the wilderness of London ; while the Berenice and her good-natured 
 captain went on to Bombay, where, no doubt, the captain would 
 read of that fatal brawl in the Venetian caffe, and identify his 
 passenger as the English tourist Avho had stabbed another man to 
 death. 
 
 Vansittart pulled himself together, counted his money, and re- 
 joiced at finding that he had enough for his voyage home, and a 
 trifle over for incidental expenses and a small outfit. The greater 
 part of his money was in English bank-notes, about which no 
 questions would be asked. 
 
 He went to the steamboat office, and found that there was a 
 P. and 0, boat leaving that night for London, so he took his passage
 
 After-thoughts. 1 9 
 
 on board her, selected his berth, and then drove off to an outfitter's 
 to get his kit, and a new cabin trunk, just big enough to hold his 
 belongings. He bought a few French novels, and those small 
 necessities of life without which the civilized man feels himself a 
 savage. 
 
 His ship sailed at midnight. He was on board her early in the 
 evening, pacing the deck in the balmy night, and looking at the 
 lighted town, the massive quays, which testify to English enterprise, 
 the Pharos sending out its long lines of bright white light seaward— r- 
 the gigantic breakwater — all that makes the Egyptian port of to-day 
 in some wise worthy of the Alexandria of old, when her twin 
 obelisks stood out against the sky, and when her name meant all 
 that was grandest in the splendour of the antique world. 
 
 Vansittart looked at the starlit sky and lamplit city with a dull 
 unobservant gaze, while the burden upon his mind deadened 
 his sense of all things fair and strange, and made him indifferent to 
 scenes which would once have aroused his keenest interest. How 
 often he had dreamed his summer daydream of Egypt, lying on a 
 velvet lawn in Hampshire, with a volume of old Herodotus, or some 
 modern traveller, flung upon the grass beside him, in the idlesse of a 
 July afternoon! How often he had promised himself a long winter 
 in that historic land ! He had not much of the explorer's ardour 
 in those boyish days, no bent towards undiscovered watersheds and 
 unpleasant encounters with blackamoors, no ambition to be reckoned 
 amongst the mighty marksmen of the world, or to be called the 
 father of lions ; though in some vague visions he had fancied himself 
 wandering in that lone land where the Zambesi leaps headlong into 
 the fathomless gorge, in blinding whiteness of foam and deafening 
 thunder of sound, a beauty and a terror to eye and ear. The 
 things he most wanted to see were the things that his fellow-men 
 had made, the palaces and statues, and fortresses and tombs that 
 mean history. He was not a naturalist or a scientific traveller, 
 had no hope of making the world any richer by his discoveries, or 
 of reading the smallest paper at the Geographical Society. He 
 wanted to see men and cities, and all splendid memorials of past 
 ag«s, for his own pleasure and amusement ; and Egypt was one of 
 the countries to which he had looked for delight, if ever satiety and 
 weariness should overtake him amidst the nearer delights of his 
 beloved Italy. 
 
 And, behold, to-day he had walked those Egyptian streets, and let 
 those Egyptian faces pass by him, with eyes that saw not, and with 
 a mind that felt no interest in the things the eyes looked at. The 
 distress in his thoughts, the perpetual labouring of his troubled 
 mind, would not allow of pleasure in anything. That aching agony 
 of remorse had taken hold of him, and left room for no other feeling,
 
 2 6 The Venetians. 
 
 To the eiid of Lis life all that was picturesque and individual in this 
 Egyptian seaport would be part and parcel of his self-humiliation, 
 associated for ever with the thought that he had slain a fellow- 
 creature, under circumstances for which he could find no excuse. 
 
 Again and again, as he paced the deck in the starlight, the face of 
 the man he had killed stood out against the deep azure of the sky 
 and sea, as it had looked at him in that awful moment when one 
 last ejaculation, " God 1 " broke from the parted lips, and the man 
 fell as if struck by a thunderbolt. There was scarcely any change 
 in his face as he fell — no ghastly pallor, no convulsion of the 
 features. As he lay there looking up at the ceiling, one might 
 hardly have thought him dead. No torrent of blood rushed from 
 those parted lips. The stream ebbed slow and dull from the pierced 
 heart. That savage thrust of the dagger had done its work well. 
 How many daggers and what a gory butchery had been needed to 
 make an end of Caesar ; and behold this man was done for with one 
 movement of an angry hand. For John Vansittart murder had 
 been made easy. 
 
 The homeward voyage seemed ever so much longer than the out- 
 ward, and the gloom of his mind deepened as the summer clays wore 
 out ; summer, for it was summer here on the Mediterranean, what- 
 ever season it might seem in London, summer at Genoa, summer all 
 along the Kiviera, where the mimosas flung their fairy gold across 
 the villa gardens, and the lateen sails shone dazzling white in the 
 vivid sun, and the berceaus were beginning to clothe themselves 
 with young vine leaves, unfolding out of crumpled woolly greyness 
 into tender, translucent green. 
 
 He thought of Fiordelisa, and his thoughts of her were bitterest of 
 all. He could not doubt that he had robbed her of her protector, the 
 man whose purse provided for the little household of which she and 
 her aunt had talked so gaily. It might be that he had left her to starve 
 — or worse. Was it likely she would ever go back to Burano, and 
 her lace-work, and her threepence-halfpenny a day, and her slipshod 
 shoes, and her polenta, after having tasted the flesh-pots of Venice, 
 the pallid asparagus and fat cauliflowers from the market in the 
 Rialto, the savoury messes at the sign of the Black Hat ? Would 
 she go back and be a peasant again, after trapesing the Piazzetta in 
 her flashy black and yellow gown, and sitting in a lantern-lit 
 gondola, and twanging on her mandoline ? 
 
 His experience of her sex and degree inclined him to think that she 
 would not return to the old laborious life, with its hardships and 
 privations. The first step upon the broad high-road of sin having 
 been taken, there would be but little scruple about the second; and 
 those bold, beautiful eyes, that swan throat and graceful form, would 
 belong to somebody else. The easy-going aunt would hardly stand
 
 After-thoughts. 2 1 
 
 in the way of a new settlement, when the last of their poor posses- 
 sions had been carried to the Monte di Pieta, and hunger was at 
 hand. Somebody else would pay the little old singing-master, and 
 listen admiringly while Lisa sang to the wiry tinkling of her mando- 
 line ; and the "lanterns would swing from the beak of the gondola in 
 the festival evenings, and the rockets would shoot up through the 
 purple night in front of Santa Maria della Salute, and all the palaces 
 on the Grand Canal would shine rosy red, reflecting the Bengal 
 fires, and Lisa would forget her murdered man, while those sub- 
 stantial feet of hers tripped gaily down the brimstone path. 
 
 If that tall, broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man had lived he 
 might have kept his promise and married her. Who is to be sure 
 that he would not ? There are men in the world who will wed the 
 girl they love, be she barmaid or ballet-dancer ; and that this man 
 was fond of Fiordelisa there could be little doubt. His savage 
 jealousy indicated the passionate force of the civilized savage's love. 
 
 Alas for Fiordelisa, widowed in the very morning of life ! He 
 who had wrecked her fortune could do nothing to help her. He 
 dared not stretch out his hand towards her. His interest, for the 
 sake of others as well as for his own sake, lay in severing every 
 link that could connect him with the catastrophe of that fatal night. 
 No, he could do nothing for Fiordelisa. He would not have grudged 
 her the half of his income ; and he dared not send her so much as a 
 ten-pound note ! She must sink or swim. 
 
 The thought of her peril doubled the sum of his remorse. 
 
 He landed at Marseilles, and here, too, it was summer — summer 
 at her brightest, with azure skies, and a sea deeper, bluer, more 
 darkly glorious than the lapis lazuli in a jewelled chasse. The 
 streets were full of traffic and abloom with flower-girls, noisily 
 pressing their bunches of roses and pale Parma violets upon him as 
 he walked up the Rue de la Cannebiere on his way from the quay 
 to the railway hotel. There had been a time when the sights and 
 sounds of that southern port were like strong wine, exhilarating, 
 delighting him, when he could not have too much of the animation 
 and picturesqueness of the place, the Corniche road, the wide- 
 stretching bay with rocks and lighthouses, the sea marks of every 
 kind, and that glittering point where the waterways divide — to the 
 left, for Hindostan, China, Japan ; to the right for the New World 
 and the setting sun ; two paths upon the trackless blue that seemed 
 each to lead direct to fairyland. 
 
 And behold he had come from the land of glamour and mystery, 
 from the tombs of the Pharaohs, from the ashes of Cleopatra, heart- 
 weary, caring for nothing. 
 
 He went into one of the big caffes on his right hand, seated him- 
 self at a table in mi obscure corner, and began to examine the paper*,
 
 22 The Venetians. 
 
 hastily turning them over one after another, worried by the sticks to 
 which they were fastened. Yes, here it was, in the Paris Figaro. 
 
 " A fatal brawl occurred last Tuesday night in one of the caries in 
 the Piazza at Venice. Two Englishmen fought savagely about a 
 Venetian girl who had entered the caffe in the company of one of 
 them. Both men appeared to have been drinking, and after a 
 desperate encounter with fists, in the English fashion, the younger and 
 better-looking of the two snatched up a dagger and stabbed his 
 antagonist to the heart. Death was almost instantaneous. The 
 murderer managed to get away in the confusion caused by the un- 
 expected catastrophe, the crowded state of the Piazzetta and the 
 Piva favouring his escape. It is supposed that he jumped into the 
 water, and either managed to scramble into a gondola and get him- 
 self conveyed to the railway station or was drowned — though the 
 latter supposition seems unlikely when it is considered that the canal 
 was crowded with boats. Every effort to discover traces of the 
 missing man has been made by the Venetian police, but as yet 
 without success. The name of the murdered man was John Smith. 
 He had been some time resident in Venice, but did not bear a good 
 character in the city, where he was in debt to several of the smaller 
 tradespeople in the Rialto. Very little seems to have been known 
 about his surroundings, even by the elderly woman who kept house 
 for him, or the girl whose existence cost him his life." 
 
 John Smith. An assumed name, no doubt ; just as false as that 
 name of Smith which Vansittart had given to the captain and steward 
 of the Berenice. 
 
 It did not seem to him, as he re-read this paragraph among the 
 Faits Divers in the Figaro, that the fatal event had created so much 
 stir as he had supposed it would create. It seemed to him that he 
 was getting off cheaply, and that he might go down to the grave 
 without being called upon to answer for that deadly stroke. The 
 man's isolation saved him. Had his victim been the member of a 
 respectable English family, had there been father and mother, brothers 
 and sisters to bewail his loss, much more stringent efforts might have 
 been made to find his murderer. But a reprobate Englishman, a man 
 who had perhaps severed every link that bound him to kindred and 
 country, a scampish individual, living under an assumed name and 
 unable to pay his way, was not the kind of person whose death in a 
 tavern brawl was likely to make a great stir. 
 
 Had he disappeared, had there been the attraction of mystery about 
 his doom, a riddle to solve, a crime unexplained and seemingly un- 
 cxplainable. French and English newspapers might have given 
 columns of florid writing to the case. But here there was no 
 mystery, no dark enigma of love and murder. In the full glare of 
 the gas, in sight of the crowd, these two men had fought, and on©
 
 After-thoughls. 
 
 23 
 
 had proved himself unworthy of his British birthright by using a 
 dagger against an unarmed antagonist. 
 
 Vansittart found the same paragraph repeated in several papers, 
 and amongst his researches, aided by a waiter who brought him the 
 accumulation of the last ten days, he found an old Daily Telegraph 
 in which his crime formed the basis for a spirited leader, full of 
 vivacity and local colour, written by a journalist who evidently 
 knew Venice by heart. In this article the picturesqueness of the 
 city, the riot of Carnival time, the historical associations of Doge and 
 Republic, were more insisted upon than the brutality of the fight, or 
 the unfair use of the dagger. 
 
 He felt a little easier in his mind after his examination of the 
 papers. It seemed to him that by the time he arrived at Charing 
 Cross most people would have forgotten all about an event which 
 was already three weeks old, and it would hardly occur to any one 
 to connect him with the fatal brawl in the Piazza di San Marco. 
 
 He dined in the crowded, bustling restaurant in the Station Hotel 
 with a little better appetite than he had felt for a long time, and 
 took his seat in a corner of a compartment of the Rapide — not 
 affecting the stuffy luxury of the " Sleeping " — for the long night 
 journey to Paris, with a calmer mind than he had known since 
 Shrove Tuesday. He looked out into the darkness when the train 
 stopped at Avignon, and it was winter again, the bleak March winter 
 before the Easter Noon ; and at Lyons the blasts from the two rivers 
 blew colder still, and he felt that he was near home. 
 
 He was in Charles Street by afternoon teatime, sitting in the cosy 
 drawing-room with his mother and sister, being petted and made 
 much of in a manner calculated to stimulate any young man's self- 
 love. His mother adored him, and he had been away from her 
 nearly half a year. His sister was seven years his junior, a pretty, 
 frivolous young creature, whose mind rarely dwelt upon any more 
 serious question than the fashion of her next ball-dress or how she 
 should wear her hair, or the newest toy on her silver table. Yet she, 
 too, adored Jack Vansittart in her pretty frivolous way, and had not 
 yet begun to adore anybody else. 
 
 The room was full of flowers and old china, and little tables 
 crowded with silver, and enamels, and Dresden boxes, and ivory 
 paper-knives ; and there were books in every available corner ; an 
 old room with panelled walls and a low ceiling, in a somewhat 
 shabby old house which had belonged to Mrs. Vansittart's grand- 
 father, an East India director, in the days when the Pagoda tree was 
 still worth shaking. The furniture was seventy years old, a quaint 
 mixture of old-fashioned English things, before the influence of 
 Sheraton and Chippendale had died out, and Indian things, really 
 and intensely Indian, bought in the East, long before Oriental goods
 
 24 The Venetians. 
 
 began to bo manufactured wholesale for English buyers. Bombay 
 blackwood, with its clumsy bulkiness enriched by elaborate carving, 
 ivories, screens of black and gold, rainbow-hued embroideries which 
 time had scarcely faded, porcelain jars and enamelled vases, relieved 
 t'.ie stern simplicity of rosewood and pale chintz. A few choice 
 water-colours on the walls, and an abundance of flowers harmonized 
 everything, and made Mrs. Vansittart's drawing-room a fitting nest 
 for a very elegant woman and her very pretty daughter. 
 
 The London house was Mrs. Vansittart's own property ; the house 
 in Hampshire belonged to her son, and she spoke of herself and her 
 daughter laughingly as caretakers. 
 
 "When you rnarry," said Maud, tossing up her pretty head, with 
 pale gold hair crisped and curled in the prevailing fashion, "mother 
 and L will have to budge. Whatever slut you may choose to fall in 
 love with will be mistress of Merewood." 
 
 " Why must you needs suppose I may fall in love with a slut? " 
 
 " Oh, by the doctrine of opposites. You are one of those orderly, 
 superior persons who are foredoomed to admire some wild girl of the 
 woods, some harum-scarum minx, with fine ej'es and half an inch of 
 mud on the edge of her gown." 
 
 " However fine the eyes were, I think the half-inch of mud would 
 be a warning that I could hardly ignore. But I do not claim to be 
 cither orderly or superior. My father's Irish blood has infused a 
 spice of disorder into my Anglo-Saxon character." 
 
 And now on this bright April afternoon Jack Vansittart was being 
 petted and fed by these two loving women, who could not do too 
 much to prove their devotion to him after the long severance. 
 They had only given him time to wash his hands and brush the 
 Kentish dust and chalk out of his hair and clothes before he sat down 
 between them to a cup of tea. He had to assure them that he had 
 lunched heartily at Calais, and wanted nothing but tea, or else a 
 substantial meal would have been set out in the dining-room below. 
 
 "And you have come straight through from Marseilles?" said 
 Mrs. Vansittart. " What a terrible journey ! " 
 
 "Hot and dusty, mother; not very appalling to a traveller. But 
 you are such a stay-at-home." 
 
 "To my cost," pouted Maud. " I haven't the least idea of what 
 the world is like. I have to take other people's word that it is 
 round." 
 
 " We found your telegram from Marseilles at two o'clock this 
 morning when we came home from Mrs. Mountain's dance, and, re- 
 joice! as 1 was to know you were coming back to us, I took it for 
 granted you would loiter in Paris for a week," said Mrs. Vansittart. 
 
 " Paris is always delightful," replied her son ; " but I was tired of 
 wandering, and was honestly homesick. And here I am safe at
 
 After -thoughts. 2 5 ' 
 
 homo, and ever so much better off' than poor old Odysseus. By the 
 way, mother, your Italian spaniel did her level best to bite me as 
 I came upstairs, and she and I were once such friends. Dogs have 
 altered since the days of Argus." 
 
 " How silly of her ! but she'll love you again after a day or two. 
 And now tell me, Jack, all you have been doing and seeing since you 
 left Merewood last October. You are such a bad correspondent that 
 one knows nothing about your wanderings, and if I were not well 
 broken to your neglect I should be miserable about you." 
 
 " See how wise my system is," he said, laughing ; " were I a good 
 correspondent an interval of a week without a letter would scare 
 you. I have heard of men who' write regularly once a week to their 
 people, or who keep a journal of their travels and send it home 
 every fortnight for family perusal. But since you and Maud both 
 know that I detest letter-writing, you expect nothing of me, and are 
 never anxious." 
 
 " Indeed you are wrong, Jack," said his mother, with a sigh. " I 
 have had many an anxious hour about you. But I'm not going to be 
 doleful now I have you at home again, and for a long time, I hope." 
 
 •' Yes, for a long time," echoed Jack. " I am sick of travelling." 
 
 Tnere was a weariness in his tone that sounded as if he meant 
 what he said. 
 
 " And now tell me your adventures." 
 
 The word hurt him like the sharp edge of a knife. 
 
 " I have had none. No one has adventures nowadays," he said. 
 " I had a fortnight on an American friend's yacht in the Mediter- 
 ranean, and we had some rather dirty weather, but nothing to hurt. 
 That's my nearest approach to an adventure. I had a month at 
 Monte Carlo, shot a good many pigeons, aud missed nearly as many 
 as I shot ; played a little, with varying luck, but am not ruined ; 
 came off on the whole a winner, though to no substantial amount, 
 perhaps enough to buy a pair of solitaires for Maud's pretty little 
 ears " — pinching the ear that was nearest him, as the girl sat on a 
 low chair at his side. " No, I have had no adventures. I have only 
 been in familiar places. Let me see, from where did I write last V " 
 
 " From Bologna, ages ago ; a shabby little letter," answered Maud. 
 
 " Ah, I spent a few days in Bologna after I left Florence. I am 
 rather fond of Bologna." 
 
 " And after that ? Where did you go after Bologna ? It must 
 be nearly two months since you were there." 
 
 " Oh, I. went to Padua and — and Verona," he answered care- 
 lessly, " and then back to Genoa, and then I dawdled along the 
 Riviera, stopping a night or two here and there, to Marseilles ; and 
 here I am. That is my history — and I am ready for another cup 
 of tea"
 
 26 The Venetians. 
 
 Maud filled his cup, and offered him dainty biscuits and tempting 
 cakes, and hung about him fondly, touching the thick hair which 
 made such a waving line across the broad forehead. 
 
 " Why, how tremendously sunburnt you are ! " she exclaimed. 
 " You look as if you had just come off a sea voyage." 
 
 "Do I? Well, I have basked in the sun that shines upon the 
 Mediterranean ; and a March sun on the Riviera is a blazer." 
 
 " And you were at Bologna and Padua, and did not go to your 
 beloved Venice ? " said his mother. " I thought you were so fond 
 of Venice? " 
 
 " Yes, I delight in the place, but I wanted to go back to the 
 Riviera, where I should be more secure of sunshine and balmy air." 
 
 "And you left Italy without revisiting Venice?" exclaimed 
 Maud, who had often listened to his raptures about the City by the 
 Sea. 
 
 There was no more to be said. For the first time in his life lie 
 had deliberately lied, and to his mother and sister, of all people — to 
 those who in all the world most trusted and believed in him. He 
 hated himself for what he had done ; and yet he meant to maintain 
 that false assertion doggedly. He had not been to Venice. Let 
 no casual acquaintance come forward to allege that he had been 
 seen there. In the very teeth of assertion he would declare that 
 in this springtime of 1886 he had not been in Venice. He rejoiced 
 in the thought that he had told his name to no one at Danieli's, 
 and that he had entered the hotel as a stranger, having stopped at 
 one of the hotels on the Grand Canal on his previous visits. He 
 told himself that no one could convict him of having been in the 
 fatal city last Shrove Tuesday — no one who knew him as Jack 
 Vansittart. 
 
 "And now that you've had the history of my travels " 
 
 " A sorry history, forsooth ! " cried Maud. " You men have no 
 capacity for description. When Lucy Calder came home from her 
 Italian honeymoon she talked to me for hours about the places and 
 things she had seen there." 
 
 " Pretty prattler ! Would you like me to recite a few pages of 
 Murray or Joanne ? All travelling is alike nowadays, Maud, and 
 pleasure and comfort are only a question of good railway service 
 and well-found hotels. We have done with romance and adventure. 
 Life is pretty much the same all over Europe. And now tell me 
 what you have been doing ; there is more interest in a girl's life in 
 her first season than in all the cities of Europe." 
 
 "Well, Jack, to begin with, I was presented at the February 
 Drawing-Room. I went out with mother a goodish bit last 
 November, don't you know, but I was not actually out. That only 
 began after the Drawing-Room. - '
 
 After-thoughts. 27 
 
 "And had you a pretty frock, and did the Royalties look kindly 
 at you when you made your curtsy?" 
 
 " The Royalties might all have been waxwork, from Her Majesty 
 downwards, for anything I knew to the contrary," said Maud. "I 
 saw no faces — only a cloud of feathers, and a splendour of jewels, 
 and velvet, and satin, all vague and troubled, like the figures in a 
 dream — but I got through the business somehow, and mother said 
 I made no mistakes." 
 
 " And the frock ? " 
 
 " Oh, the frock was just as pretty as a frock can be. It was 
 mother's taste. She talked out every detail with Mdlle. Marie. She 
 was not content to hear that Lady Lucille Plantagenet had worn 
 this sort of thing, or Lady Gwendoline Tudor that sort of thing. 
 She insisted on having just the frock she thought would suit me, 
 Maud Vansittart. The train and petticoat were white satin — the 
 satin you see in old pictures, satin in which there are masses of 
 deep, steel-grey shadow and floods of white, silvery light — and then 
 there was a cloud of aerophane arranged as only Marie can arrange 
 a drapery, and in the cloud there were clusters of lilies of the valley 
 and fluffy ostrich tips. The papers — the lady-papers mostly — went 
 into raptures about my frock." 
 
 "And did the lady-papers say nothing of the wearer? " 
 
 " Oh, some of them were so good as to say I was not quite the 
 most hideous debutante of the year, and that they liked the way 
 I had my hair dressed — and now I find our French hair-dresser has 
 the impertinence to advertise the style as the Vansittart Coiffure." 
 
 " What a frightful outrage ! And having been presented, and 
 being now actually out, I conclude you have found London a very 
 pleasant place, under mother's wing ? " said Jack. 
 
 " Oh, it is all very quiet so far, and will be till after Easter, no 
 doubt ; but we have been to a few friendly dinners and a good many 
 luncheons, and we have a cloud of invitations and engagements for 
 May, and some of our Hampshire friends are in town, so there is 
 plenty to do." 
 
 "And have you seen anything of your Yorkshire friend, Sir 
 Hubert Hartley?" asked Jack. 
 
 " Yes. " Sir Hubert is in town." 
 
 " And did he see you in your debutante's finery ? " 
 
 " Yes, mother had a tea-party that afternoon, and there were a 
 good many people — and, yes, Sir Hubert dropped in." 
 
 " And didn't that finish him ? " 
 
 " Finish him ! oh, Jack, what a horrid expression ! I don't 
 understand you in the least ! " 
 
 " Of course not. Well, I'll say no more about my old friend 
 Hubert. I can look him up at the Devonshire to-morrow."
 
 28 The Venetians, 
 
 " The Devonshire," sighed Maud. " How sad to think that he 
 is one of the few respectable people who can find it in their hearts 
 to be Liberals ! " 
 
 " Yes, he is on the wrong side, no doubt, but that doesn't matter 
 to us," said Jack. 
 
 Mrs. Vansittart sighed slightly as she touched her daughter's 
 fluffy hair, the girl sitting on her low chair between mother and 
 brother. 
 
 " My Maud would like her friends to be of the same opinion as 
 herself," she said, " and she is such an ardent Conservative, and 
 knows so much about politics/' 
 
 " At least, I know that I am not a Radical, and that I hate what 
 people call Progress," protested Maud. " Progress means pulling 
 down every historical house and widening every picturesque street, 
 cutting railways through Arcadian valle} r s, and turning romantic 
 lakes into reservoirs." 
 
 " And progress sometimes means feeding the hungry, and teach- 
 ing the ignorant," said her mother, " and building health} 7 dwellings 
 for people who are herding in poisonous slums. I think we are all 
 agreed as to the necessity for reform, Maud, whether we are Whigs 
 or Tories." 
 
 " Oh, of course I want people to be taken care of all over the 
 world," replied Maud, " and I am prouder of our sound, roomy 
 cottages than anything on our estate." 
 
 " Ah, that's the mother's work," said Vansittart. " One can see 
 that a woman's eye watches over the parish." 
 
 " Sir Hubert tells me they have very good cottages at Hartley," 
 pursued Maud, " but I cannot imagine either comfort or picturesque- 
 ness within twenty miles of Sheffield." 
 
 " Yet there are some romantic spots and some fine, bold scenery 
 in that part of the world, I believe," said her brother. 
 
 Later in the evening mother and son were alone together in the 
 room which had always been John Vansittart's sanctum and tabagie, 
 a snug little room on the ground floor ; and here the conversation 
 was more serious than it had been at teatime, for wherever Maud was 
 frivolity reigned. She had not yet discovered that life is a trouble- 
 some business. For her life meant new frocks and new admirers. 
 
 " Dear Jack," sighed the mother, looking fondly at the young 
 man's sunburnt face, as he sat silently enjoying his pipe, " I hope 
 now we have you home again you are going really to settle down." 
 
 ''Really to settle down," he repeated; "that sounds rather alarm- 
 ing. Settle down to what, mother ? Not to matrimony, I hope ! " 
 
 " To that in good time, dear ; but at your own good time, not 
 mine. That is a crisis I would be the last to hasten — not because
 
 After-thoughts. 29 
 
 I am afraid of being turned out of the big house at Mercwood ; this 
 house will be more than enough for me — but because a hasty union 
 is seldom a happy union." 
 
 " Ah, that's the old-fashioned way of looking at it. I believe in 
 the love of a day, the happiness of a lifetime. I believe in elective 
 affinities, and upon this teeming earth there is somewhere just the 
 one woman who could make me happy. Don't be frightened, 
 mother, the chances are against my meeting her; but till I do, till 
 my heart goes tick-tack at the sight of her face, at the first sound 
 of her voice, I shall not marry. I shall not marry because tho 
 wisdom of my elders says that it is good for a man to marry. I 
 shall not marry just to place a handsome woman at the head of my 
 table. I will be content with a round table, where there need be 
 no headship." 
 
 " I was not thinking of marriage, Jack. I only want to see you 
 settle down to the real business of life. I should be sorry to sec 
 you always an idler — sauntering through a London season, yachting 
 a little in the Cowes week, shooting a little in September and 
 "October, hunting a little in November, and running away from the 
 winter to amuse yourself at Nice or Monte Carlo. Independent as 
 you are, you ought to do something better with your talents." 
 
 " My talents are an unknown quantity. I doubt if any one in 
 this world, except my fond mother, gives me credit for being even 
 moderately clever." 
 
 "I remember what you were as a boy, Jack, and how well you 
 got on at Balliol." 
 
 "Oh, that was in the atmosphere, I think. I was in love with 
 Greek because I worshipped Jowett. That was a boyish dream. 
 All scholarly ambition is a thing of the past. I shall never do any- 
 thing in that line." 
 
 " Perhaps not. You have too much energy and activity for a 
 student's life. I should like to see you a power in the House." 
 
 " Dearest flattei'er, you would like to see me Prime Minister. I 
 have no doubt you think that it simply rests with myself to become 
 First Lord of the Treasury at an earlier age than William Pitt." 
 
 " No, no, Jack, I am not a foolish mother, fondly as I love you. 
 But I know that you have good gifts, and I want the world to profit 
 by them. I should like to see you in Parliament. There is so much 
 to be done by good men in the shaping of our new England — the 
 England of enlightenment and humanity — and I want to see my 
 son's hand at the plough." 
 
 " The field to be ploughed is wide and the soil is stubborn ; but 
 I don't know that my hand would be strong enough to drive a 
 furrow." 
 
 " You could help, Jack ; every good man can help."
 
 30 The Venetians. 
 
 " Mother, I believe you are at heart a Radical." 
 
 " I don't think one need be a Radical to wish that the masse3 
 were better off and more thought of than they are. Some of the 
 best and noblest things that have been done for the poor have been 
 done by Conservatives. No, Jack, it is because I am not a Radical 
 that I want to see you in Parliament. You are rich, well-born, 
 well-educated. You could fill a place that might be filled by some 
 Radical adventurer who would look to Parliamentary life as a means 
 of pushing his own fortune." 
 
 " If I can find any constituency willing to elect Conservative me 
 instead of that Radical adventurer — who would in all probability be 
 a much better speaker than I am, and appeal to a larger electorate 
 — well and good. I have no great aversion to Parliament, but oh, 
 you artful woman, I know why you would have me write M.P. after 
 my name. ' If I can pen him up with the other sheep in the House 
 of Commons he can go no more a-roving.' That is what you say 
 to yourself, mother mine." 
 
 " No, no, Jack. I sadly want you at home, but I am not a 
 hypocrite. Most of all I want to see you with higher aims than 
 those of a mere pleasure-seeker. I want to be proud of my son." 
 
 She drew her chair nearer his and took his strong, broad hand in 
 both her own. In her eyes he was all that youth and manhood 
 should be. She was proud of him already, though he had done 
 nothing for fame. She was proud of his height and strength, 
 proud of his good looks, courage, good temper, of all those qualities 
 which go to make an English gentleman. 
 
 "Proud of me," he echoed. "Poor mother!" He drew his 
 hand away, remembering that it was stained with the blood of his 
 fellow-man. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " FAIRIES 1 " 
 
 Nearly three years had gone by since that fatal night in Venice. 
 It was mid-winter, only a few days after Christmas, and Mrs. 
 Vansittart and her son were spending their Christmas holidays 
 within twenty miles of Merewood. 
 
 Maud Vansittart had become Maud Hartley, but before bestowing 
 herself upon her adoring lover she had insisted that he should buy 
 a place within reasonable distance of the house in which she had 
 been born and reared, the home in which she could so vividly recall 
 the image of a beloved father, and where all her happy years of 
 girlhood had been spent with the mother she fondly loved. Sir 
 Hubert had a fine place in the wild Yorkshire hills, half an hour's 
 journey from Sheffield, a solid red-brick manor house in the Georgian
 
 u Fairies /" 31 
 
 style, built by his great-grandfather ; but to that house as a home 
 Maud would not consent to go. Her lover being rich enough to 
 buy a second country seat as easily as some men buy a second 
 horse, there had only remained the trouble of choosing a home that 
 Maud could approve. 
 
 j A house was found, neither too old nor too new, upon the side of 
 Blackdown, in that rich and picturesque country between Petworth 
 and Haslemere — Redwold Towers, a roomy, well-built mansion, 
 with just land enough to satisfy Hubert Hartley's idea of a home- 
 farm, without diverting his capital from that wider domain of Hartley 
 Manor, where he had fields and pastures of a hundred acres each, 
 and where he grew prize oxen and cart-horses worth their weight in 
 gold, as it seemed to Maud, when she heard of six or seven hundred 
 pounds being given for one of these creatures. 
 
 i Merewood, John Vansittart's patrimonial estate, was near Liss, in 
 Hampshire, a long, low, capacious house, on a ridge of pineclad hill, 
 and fronting a wild valley, which grew very little of a profitable 
 nature for man or beast, but where the perfume of the pine woods 
 and the gold and purple of gorse and heather were worth all that 
 the fattest soils can produce. Fertile pastures and spacious corn- 
 fields were not wanting to the estate, but those lay behind the crest 
 of the hill. 
 
 I Maud had been married nearly two years, and there was a short- 
 coated baby in the nursery at Redwold, albeit Sir Hubert would 
 rather the eyes of his firstborn had opened upon the light that shono 
 into the family bed-chamber at Hartley Manor, the patriarchal bed- 
 chamber with its patriarchal bed, birth chamber and death chamber, 
 room in which the good old great-grandsire's eyes had closed peace- 
 fully, verily " falling on sleep," after a life of ninety years, and after 
 having enriched the world with many useful inventions, and estab- 
 lished a wealthy progeny. Unhappily, Maud hated Hartley Manor 
 House, and only went there for a mouth in the shooting season as a 
 concession to the best of husbands. 
 
 " Of course, I always meant to marry him," she told her brother, 
 " and he is the only man for whom I ever cared a straw ; but I 
 wanted to have my fling in London ; and I liked being talked about 
 as the pretty Miss Vansittart. I was, you know, Jack. You needn't 
 laufth at rne. And I liked making other young men miserable, by 
 leading them on a little, meaning nothing all the time." 
 I " Had you many victims ? Were there any suicides ? " 
 
 "Don't talk nonsense. You know how little young men care 
 nowadays. There were some of them who would have liked to 
 marry me, had everything been made easy, settlements, and all that. 
 And," with sudden solemnity, " I might have had a coronet if I had 
 made the most of my chances."
 
 32 The Venetians. 
 
 " A hard-up coronet, do you mean ? A coronet that wanted re- 
 gilding." 
 
 " No, sir. All those go to America. My coronet was well pro- 
 vided for — but it was not to be," with a faint sigh. " I could not 
 throw Hubert over. He was so ridiculously fond of me." 
 
 "Was? Is, I hope," said Jack, this retrospective survey of a 
 girl's career being made one afternoon in the snowy Christmas week, 
 as Jack and his sister tramped home with the shooters, after a day 
 on the hills. 
 
 "Yes, he still adores me, poor fellow, though he has found me 
 out ever so long ago." 
 
 " Found you out — how ? " 
 
 "Oh, he has found that I am frivolous and selfish, and utterly 
 worthless, from the socialist's point of view. He has found out that 
 although I am fond of pretty cottages and cottage gardens, I don't 
 care much about the cottagers, and that I never know what to say 
 to them. He has found out that I haven't the interests of the poor 
 really at heart. In short, he has found that I am a thorough-bred 
 Tory instead of a hot-headed Radical, as he is. I'm afraid we ought 
 never to have married. It is like trying to join fire and water." 
 
 " Oh, but I think you manage to get on capitally together, in spi e 
 of any difference in your political views. Indeed, 1 did not think 
 you knew much about politics." 
 
 "I don't. I know hardly anything. I never read the debate-, 
 and my mind always wanders when people are talking politics; but 
 my Conservatism and Hubert's Radicalism enter into everything — • 
 into our way with servants, into our treatment of our friends, into 
 our ideas about dress, manners, church. I cannot even shake hands 
 with a cottager as he does. I have tried to imitate him, but I c «n*t 
 achieve that unconscious air of equdity which comes so natural to 
 him. And do what I will I can't help feeling ashamed of that great- 
 grandfather of his who began life in Sheffield as a poor lad, and who 
 invented something — some quite small thing, it seems to me — and 
 so laid the foundations of the Hartley wealth. That is a little bit 
 of family history which I should so like everybody to forget, while 
 poor Hubert is quite proud of it. At Hartley Manor he loves to 
 show strangers the great-grandfather's portrait in his working clothes 
 — just as he looked when he invented the thing, whatever it was." 
 
 " You would not have him ashamed of the founder of his fortune. 
 I have heard of a house in which the portrait of the good man who 
 made the family wealth has a looking-glass in front of it, so that the 
 will which ordained that that portrait should hang on one particular 
 panel in the dining-room as long as the family mansion stood may 
 be kept to the letter, while it is broken in the spirit. But this was 
 a particularly irksome case, for the good man had made his money
 
 u Fairies /" 3 3 
 
 out of tallow, and had been painted with a pound of mould candles 
 in each hand. Think of that, Maud ! Fustian and corduroy are 
 paintable enough ; but not even Ilerkomer could make anything 
 out of two bunches of tallow candles." 
 
 " I wish Hubert would let me hang a tine Venetian glass in front 
 of his worthy great-grandfather. However, since he himself is a 
 gentleman, I suppose I ought to be satisfied," said Maud ; " I don't 
 believe there is a finer gentleman in England than my husband, 
 Radical as he is." 
 
 Vansittart's sister was perfectly happy in her married life. She 
 had a husband who petted and indulged her, with inexhaustible good 
 humour, and who thought her the most enchanting of women, with 
 infinite capacities for soaring to a higher level than she had yet 
 attained. She had as much money as ever she cared to spend, and 
 a house in which she was allowed to do what she liked, so long as 
 she did not trample on the rights and privileges of the old servants 
 from Hartley Manor, who had been dominant there since Hubert's 
 infancy; servants whose proud boast it was to have been associated 
 with every circumstance of their master's life, from the cutting of 
 his first tooth to the bringing home of his bride. It is strange what 
 Conservative ways these Radicals sometimes have in the bosoms of 
 their families. 
 
 Sir Hubert Hartley was not like David, ruddy and fair to sec. 
 He was a small, dark man, who looked as if some of the original 
 Sheffield tmoke, the smoke inhaled by the inventor day after day 
 for half a century, had given its hue to his complexion. He was 
 wiry, and well built, active, energetic, a good shot, a good horseman, 
 a lover of field sports and wild animals, loving, after the sportsman's 
 fashion, even the creatures he destroyed, curious about their habits, 
 keen in his admiration of their strength and beauty. For the rest, 
 he was a man of widest beneficence, charitable, hospitable, and he 
 was a man whom the better-born Jack Vansittart loved and honoured. 
 
 They were about the same age, and had been at Eton and Oxford 
 together, and Jack knew his friend by heart. He could have chosen 
 no better husband for his sister ; he could have chosen no man he 
 would have preferred to call his brother-in-law. It seemed to him 
 sometimes that he could have hardly liked a brother better than he 
 liked Hubert Hartley. 
 
 Vansittart was still a gentleman at leisure. He had coquetted 
 with politics, and had allowed himself to be spoken of as a young 
 man who might prove an acquisition to the Conservative party, but. 
 he had not allowed himself to be nominated for any constituency. 
 " The party is strong enough to get on without me," he said ; " I'll 
 wan till the General Election, and then I'll go in for all I know, 
 and try to gain them a seat from the enemy. I should like to try 
 
 u
 
 34 The Venetians, 
 
 my luck in Yorkshire, and win an election against Hubert and all 
 his merry men. I might stand for Burtborough — attack Hartley in 
 his own stronghold." 
 
 Burtborough was the small market town that supplied the 
 necessities of Hartley Manor House. The Hartleys had repre- 
 sented Burtborough for two generations, but Hubert had withdrawn 
 from the political arena, disgusted at the turn of events, and finding 
 more pleasure in turnips and prize cattle than in the art of legisla- 
 tion. He had never been brilliant either as an orator or debater, 
 and he thought he had done his duty by country and party when 
 he had secured the election of a conscientious Liberal for Burt- 
 borough. Marriage had helped to make him lazy. He loved his 
 home; stable and gardens; farm and woods; his pretty wife and 
 cooing baby. His brother-in-law thought him the most enviable 
 among men. 
 
 "He has all the desires of his heart," thought Vansittart. " He 
 has not an unsatisfied ambition. He has a clear conscience, can 
 look his fellow-men straight in the face and say, ' I have injured no 
 man : ' as I cannot, God help me : as I never can so long as I live. 
 At every turn of the road I expect to meet some one whom I have 
 injured — a mother who may have loved that man as my mother 
 loves me — a sister whose life has been made desolate by his death, 
 reprobate though he was. No man stands alone in the world. 
 Whoever he may be, when he falls, he will drag down some one." 
 
 And then he thought of Fiordelisa, with her sunny Italian eyes, 
 and her light-hearted acceptance of such good things as Fate threw 
 in her way — the lodgings on the Bialto, the mandoline lessons, the 
 fine dress and good food. She had taken these things as if they 
 were manna from heaven ; and assuredly no rigid principle, no 
 adherence to her Church Catechism, would restrain her from seek- 
 ing manna from new sources. What had she become, he wondered, 
 in the years that had made his crime an old memory ? An artist's 
 model, or something worse? In these days of photography that 
 beautiful face of hers would have less value than in the golden age 
 of Tintoret and Veronese. 
 
 He had done his best to forget that scene at Florian's ; but the 
 image of Fiordelisa returned to his memory very often, harden 
 himself as he might against the pangs of remorse, and the thought 
 of her always saddened him. He had the same kind of sorrow for 
 having spoilt her life as he might have felt had he been cruel to a 
 child. Her ignorance, her friendlessness appealed so strongly to 
 his pity — and even the old aunt, who so placidly accepted the 
 situation, did not appear to him as odious as a hard-headed English- 
 woman would have appeared under the same conditions. 
 
 Nearly three years had passed, and he knew no more about the
 
 " Fairies /'* 35 
 
 man lie stabbed than lie had known when the dagger dropped from 
 his hand warm with the stranger's life-b'ood. The most watchful 
 attention to the newspapers had resulted in no further knowledge. 
 There had been an occasional paragraph about the fatal brawl in 
 Venice. He was thankful to observe that no one had written of 
 his crime as murder. The fact that the dagger had been bought 
 within an hour of its fatal use — the accidental nature of the en- 
 counter — and the brutality of the unknown's attack had been 
 discussed at length, and there had been a good deal of speculation 
 as to his own character and social status. Had the event happened 
 a few years later some keen-witted special correspondent would 
 doubtless have contrived to interview Fiordelisa ; and the girl's 
 artless prattle and her Venetian environment would have furnished 
 material for a spirited article. 
 
 The interest in the death of a nameless Englishman soon died 
 out, and the newspapers found no more to say about the fatal brawl 
 in the Piazza, and as the years went by Vansittart told himself that 
 this dark chapter in his life was closed for ever, that the mother who 
 loved him would never know that his conscience was burdened with 
 the death of a fellow-creature. 
 
 Looking backward he remembered an occasion in his boyhood 
 when a sudden impulse of fury had brought disgrace upon him, and 
 had caused his mother much distress of mind. It was at a time 
 when he was reading hard at home with a private tutor, shortly 
 before he went to Oxford. A groom had ill-used one of his horses, 
 or Vansittart believed he had, and the young man had attacked and 
 belaboured him severely. The lad had been able to defend himself, 
 and the two had been fairly matched as to weight and size, but 
 Vansittart had all the science on his side, and he felt afterwards 
 that he had disgraced himself by the encounter. His mother's 
 distress grieved him deeply ; and he went so far as to apologize to 
 the vanquished hireling, which apology raised him to the pinnacle 
 of honour in the opinion of the stable generally. 
 
 " There's plenty of young masters as would chuck a sovereign to 
 a lad he'd whacked, but it's only a thoroughbred one that would 
 say, ' I beg your pardon, Bates ; I ought to have known better,' " 
 said the old family coachman, who had driven Master Jack to be 
 christened. 
 
 The burden upon his conscience was an old burden by this time, 
 and he was able to carry his load so that no one suspected evil 
 under that pleasant, open-hearted aspect of a man who fulfilled all 
 the social duties. He was a good son, a kind and affectionate 
 brother, a generous landlord and master. As the world saw his 
 life there was no flaw in it. He had troops of friends, an honourable 
 status, plenty of money, everything that this world can give of good,
 
 36 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 in that moderate measure which the poet-philosopher has taught 
 us to esteem as life's best. 
 
 '• I suppose the sword is hanging by a hair somewhere, and will 
 drop when I least expect it," he said to himself, in the hour of dark 
 memories. 
 
 A chance allusion — some loving word of praise from his mother, 
 the turn of a conversation, the plot of a play or a novel — would 
 sometimes stir the dark waters of memory ; but he did his best to 
 forget, since there was nothing that he could do to atone; and he 
 tried to convince himself that it was all the better for humanity at 
 large that there was one reprobate less in the world. 
 
 This had been his temper for the last year or so, as memory lost 
 something of its vivid colouring; and he had come to take that act 
 of his in Venice as part and parcel of his life and character. 
 
 lie bore himself gaily enough in this Christmas holiday at 
 lledwold Towers, and Lady Hartley declared that he was the life 
 and soul of her house-party. 
 
 " You have not such a passion for field-sports as the rest of the 
 men," she said. " One may hope to be favoured with your society 
 for an occasional hour between breakfast and dinner, while those 
 other wretches troop off in their horrid thick boots before I come 
 downstairs in the morning, and I hear no more of them till dinner, 
 unless 1 go with the luncheon cart." 
 
 " I'm afraid my superiority must be put down to advancing years 
 and growing laziness. I never was so good a shot as Hubert, and 
 I have never been as keen a sportsman." 
 
 " Perhaps that is because you have spent so much of your holiday 
 life on the Continent. Hubert would be miserable if he were asked 
 to spend a winter out of the British Isles, unless he were pig-sticking 
 in India, or fishing in Canada, or hunting lions in Africa. He can- 
 not get on without killing things. You are not like that. You 
 have no thirst for blood." 
 
 "No," answered Jack, with a laugh ; " I am not great at killing 
 things, though I am just English enough to think poorly of the 
 straightest run if it doesn't end in blood." 
 
 " Oh, of course, I know you can ride, and that you have a proper 
 English love of hunting and shooting, but you don't give your life 
 up to sport and farming as Hubert does. You have only to look 
 at his boots, and you can understand his life. Such an array of 
 bluchers, tops, brogues, waterproof fishing boots and dreadful hob- 
 nailed, broad-toed things, that look like instruments of torture — as 
 if they had been modelled upon the Loot that one reads of under 
 the Plantagenets and Tudors. People talk of writing as an index 
 of character. I would rather see a man's boots than his penmanship 
 if I wanted to know what kind of man lie was."
 
 "Fairies /" 37 
 
 " And you put me down as a single-soled, effeminate person ? " 
 said Jack ; whereat there was a laugh from the house-paiiy, sitting 
 cosily round the morning-room fire, with the exception of one 
 industrious matron who sat by the window, toiling at an early 
 English counterpane which required to be worked upon a frame. 
 
 " No, no. I don't consider you womanish. You would never 
 sink into the useful family friend, or the tame cat, even if you were 
 to remain a bachelor all your life. But your boots are more human 
 than Ilule.t's; and you are fond of art, and books, and music, for 
 which I fear he cares very little." 
 
 " He cares for something much better," said Vansittart. " lie 
 'cares for humanity, and is always thinking how he can improve the 
 condition of the people who are dependent upon him. His cottages 
 at Hartley are models of all that cottages should be, and there is 
 not a good point about them that he has not thought out for himself."' 
 
 "Yes, he is always his own architect, and he has really some 
 very good notions, though he is not as picturesque as I should like 
 him to be in his ideas. The cottages about here may not be as 
 commodious as ours in Yorkshire, but they are ever so much 
 prettier— dear old cottages, more than half roof, and with the 
 quaintest casements." 
 
 " And very little light or air inside, I dare say ; capital cottages 
 for the landscape, but not so agreeable for the folks inside." 
 
 The party in the morning-room consisted of the three Mi^s 
 Champernownes, daughters of a Cornish baronet, all three hand- 
 some, stylish, accomplished, everything in short that Mrs. Vansittart 
 would have approved in a daughter-in-law ; Mrs. Baddington, the 
 lady of the counterpane, who was so completely absorbed in her 
 needlework that she might as well have stopped at her own 
 fireside; but as her husband, Major Baddington, was a good shut 
 and a pleasant companion, the lady's inoffensive dulness was tolerated 
 in country houses. 
 
 The other ladies present were Mrs. Vansittart and a Miss Green, 
 a young lady who gave herself airs on the strength of her people 
 being the Greens—the Greens of Peddlington— in whose particular 
 case the name 'of Green was supposed to rank iwith Guelph or 
 Ghibelline. Miss Green was plain, but clever, and was as boastful 
 of her plainness as of her good old name. Her people were rich, 
 and she had inherited an independent fortune from a bachelor uncle, 
 who had bequeathed his wealth to her with an embargo against 
 marriage with any man — less than a Beer — who should refuse to 
 assume the name of Green. And even in the case of her marriage 
 with a Peer, it was ordained that her second son should be called 
 G ree n — by letters patent — and should inherit the Green wealth, 
 strictly tied up in the case of the. liein '<>
 
 38 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 Miss Green was economical to meanness — perhaps with some dim 
 idea of enriching that hypothetical scion of nobility — and was proud 
 of her economy. Her chief delight in the metropolis was to go long 
 distances— generally in an omnibus — in quest of cheapness ; and she 
 was a scourge to all the young matrons of her acquaintance by her 
 keen interest in their housekeeping, her knowledge of prices, and 
 her outspoken condemnation of their extravagance. She had one 
 original idea which had achieved a kind of distinction for her from 
 the housekeeping point of view, and that was her non-belief in tbe 
 Co-operative Stores. 
 
 Such was the feminine portion of the house-party at Bedwold 
 Towers, and it was to this party that John Vansittart had succeeded 
 in making himself eminently agreeable. He had admired the 
 artistic shading and Tudoresque scroll-work ot Mrs. Baddington's 
 counterpane, and had surprised that lady by what seemed a profound 
 knowledge of early Florentine needlework. He had tramped Black- 
 down in the wind and the weather with the Miss Champernowmes, 
 turn and turn about, and was no nearer falling in love with any of 
 the three than when he began these rambles ; he had discussed the 
 art of dressing well upon fifty pounds a year with Miss Green, and 
 had allowed her to convince him that the Greens of Peddlington 
 were a purer race than the Plantagenets ; and to-day he had given 
 himself up to idleness in the gynseceum, otherwise morning-room, 
 and had offered himself for two round dances apiece to the four 
 young ladies, at the hunt ball in the little rustic town, to which 
 they were all going that evening. 
 
 " It will be an awful drive, " said Maud Hartley ; ' : think what 
 the hills will be like in this weather." 
 
 There had been an " old-fashioned Christmas," and the world 
 outside the windows was for the most part a white world. 
 
 " The horses have been roughed, and your coachman tells me lie 
 has no fear of the hills," said Vansittart. " Pie is going to take 
 four horses." 
 
 " I'm sure they'll be wanted, poor things, with that big omnibus 
 and a herd of us to drag up those terrible hills," said his sister. 
 
 " If you have any feeling for the brute creation you can get out 
 and walk up the hills," said Jack. 
 
 " What, in our satin slippers ? How very delightful ! " 
 
 There was no one heroic enough to propose walking up the hills 
 at ten o'clock that evening, when the omnibus from Kedwold went 
 bowling merrily over the frost-bound roads, uphill and downhill, at 
 a splendid even pace, and with a rhythmical jingle of bars and 
 chains, as the four upstanding browns laid themselves out for their 
 work, going as if it was a pleasure to go through the steel-blue 
 pigb.t, with the quiet fields and pastures stretching round them,
 
 "Fairies !" 39 
 
 silvery in the moonshine, while in every dip and hollow the oak 
 and chestnut copses lay wrapped in shadow, darkly mysterious. 
 
 They skirted Bexley Hill, they passed by "sleeping villages and 
 wind-swept commons. 
 
 " Are we nearly there ? " asked Hilda Champernowne. 
 
 " Hardly halfway," answered Lady Hartley. " I told you it was 
 a long drive. 1 ' 
 
 There was a bright lain}) inside the omnibus, a lamp which lit 
 up the three Miss Champernownes in a cloud of gauze and satin, 
 white as the snow-drifts in the valleys, a lamp which shone on 
 three heads of glittering gold-brown hair, and three pairs of fine 
 eyes, and three cherry mouths, and three swan-like throats rising 
 out of ostrich plumage. It shone on Maud Hartley's cloak of scarlet 
 and gold and blue-fox fur, and sparkled on the diamond solitaires 
 in her ears, clear and white as dewdrops on a sunny morning. 
 
 They were a very merry party. Major Baddington and Sir 
 Hubert were outside, wrapped to the ears in fur coats and caps, 
 and enjoying their smoke in the frosty air. Vansittart and two 
 other young men rode inside with the feminine contingent, who 
 were glad of this leaven of masculine society, though they pretended 
 to be in alarm at the crushing of their draperies. 
 
 " I feel a dark foreboding that all the dancing men will have 
 engaged themselves for the evening before we arrive," said Claudia 
 Champernowne. 
 
 " Not if they know the Miss Champernownes are going to be 
 there," said Mr. Tivett, a young man with a small voice and a 
 reputation for all the social talents. 
 
 "AVho cares anything about us?" cried Claudia. "We are 
 strangers in the land." 
 
 " I think that some of the dancing men will wait for my party," 
 said Maud. "I am famous for taking pretty girls to our local 
 dances." 
 
 They were steadily ascending the worst hill they had to climb ; 
 the omnibus was on an inclined plane, and Hilda Champernowne 
 in her place at the back of the vehicle looked down upon Jack 
 Vausittart seated in a hollow by the door. They were near the 
 top, when the brake was put on suddenly, and the horses were 
 pulled up. A ripple of silvery laughter rang out upon the frosty air. 
 
 " Fairies ! " cried Vansittart. 
 
 " Who can it be, and why are we stopping ? " asked Miss 
 Champernowne, " when we are so late, too ! " 
 
 There were voices, two or three feminine voices, all talking at 
 once, and then Hubert was heard answering. Anon more laughter. 
 Sir Hubert and a groom got off the 'bus, and the former came to 
 the door.
 
 40 The Venetians. 
 
 " Can you make room for three girls ? " he asked. 
 
 " Not for a mouse," replied his wife. " We are hideously crushed 
 already. I believe all our gowns are spoilt." 
 
 " Then a little more squeezing won't hurt," said Sir Hubert. 
 "Look here, you three men can come outside. It'll be a tight 
 pack, but we'll manage it, and the three ladies can have your places. 
 It's a lovely night. You're none of you bronchial, I hope." 
 
 " A chronic sufferer, from my cradle," said Mr. Tivett, in a meek, 
 little voice. 
 
 "Oh, Tivett can stay inside. He is the nearest approach I know 
 to Euclid's definition of a line — length without breadth." 
 
 Jack Vansittart was out by this time, and Reggie Hudson, a 
 soldierly young man, slipped out after him. The women drew 
 themselves together discontentedly. Each would have had an 
 omnibus to herself if she could. 
 
 " I haven't the faintest idea whom we are making room for," 
 grumbled Maud. 
 
 " I know we shall be dreadfully late," sighed Claudia. 
 
 "I say, you good folks out there, hurry up, please," cried the 
 gallant Tivett. " It's getting on for eleven, and this isn't a picnic- 
 party." 
 
 He was talking to the empty air. A ripple of that elfin laughter 
 from the top of the hill was all that answered him. Sir Hubert, 
 Vansittart, and Major Baddington were all standing round a most 
 melancholy specimen of the genus fly, the very oldest and mouldiest 
 of one-horse landaus, which had broken down hopelessly on the top 
 of the hill. 
 
 " We knew that the springs were weak," said a silver-clear voice 
 out of a swansdown hood. "They've been getting weaker and 
 weaker ever since we've had anything to do with the fly ; but we 
 had no idea the shafts were all wrong." 
 
 " The shafts were right enough when we started, miss," growled 
 a voice that was half muffled in a red comforter, such a comforter 
 as denotes the rustic fly-man. " It was your weight coming up the 
 hill as did it." 
 
 " My weight ! " cried Swansdownhood, lifting herself up on her 
 springy feet like a feminine Mercury. "Do I look such a Daniel 
 Lambert?" 
 
 Her hood fell off with that arch toss of the head, and looking at 
 her in the vivid moonlight it seemed to Jack Vansittart as if that 
 jocular exclamation of his had been well founded, and that the 
 woman who stood before him on the crest of the hill, her beauty 
 and her whiteness shining out against the steel-blue sky — " like a 
 finer light in light" — was enchanting enough to have stood for 
 Titania,
 
 " Fairies ! " 41 
 
 She was very tall, but so slim and willowy of form that her height 
 made her no less sylph-like — a queen of sylphs, perhaps, but as- 
 suredly of that aerial family. She was dazzlingly fair, and her 
 small head was crowned with a nimbus of pale gold hair, in which 
 there sparkled a galaxy of diamond starlets. Her small nose was 
 tip-tilted, but with a tilt so archly delicate as to be more beautiful 
 than the purest Grecian, or so Vansittart thought, seeing her thus 
 for the first time in the glamour of night and moonshine, and with 
 all the piquancy of the unexpected. 
 
 " The horse fell down, and the shafts went crash," said another 
 young person, who presented to view only a nose and narrow slip 
 of face between the folds of a red plaid shawl, just^such a shawl as 
 a well-to-do farmer's wife might have worn driving to market. " I 
 thought we should all be killed." 
 
 " And so you would have been,, if I hadn't put the brake on 
 sharp, and got down and sat on 'is 'ed," said the fly-man. "That 
 horse didn't ought to have been sent out on such roads as this, and 
 if I'd been master he wouldn't have been." 
 
 "We won't trouble you for your opinions, my friend," said Sir 
 Hubert, throwing a florin lightly into the man's hand. '-You'd 
 better take your beast home, and give yourself a hot drink. I'll 
 take care of Miss Marchant and her sisters." 
 
 "Oh, but really," said Swansdownhood, "it is immensely good 
 of you — only they had better send a fly for us after the dance. We 
 can't encroach upon you for the home journey." 
 
 " Why not '? Of course we shall take you home. Come along ; 
 I'm afraid you're catching cold while we're talking." 
 
 He marched the three girls — the spokeswoman and tallest all in 
 white from top to toe, the second with a black lace frock showing 
 below her Stuart shawl, the third muffled in a blue opera cloak and 
 a blue Shetland scarf, commonly called a cloud. 
 
 " Here are the Miss Marchants, come to claim your hospitality." 
 said Sir Hubert to his wife ; whereupon Maud replied, graciously — ■ 
 
 "Oh, how do you do, you poor things? Pray come in. How 
 cold you must be ! Did your carriage break down? How dread- 
 ful! I'm afraid' there's not much heat left in our foot-warmers, 
 but it is tolerably warm here still " — the atmosphere inside the 'bus 
 was tropical — " and I hope you'll be able to make yourselves 
 comfortable." 
 
 " Such a dreadful intrusion ! " 
 
 " Such a herd of us ! " 
 
 " How you must all detest us ! " cried three fresh young voices 
 all at once. 
 
 The three Champernowncs and the Green maintained a stobd 
 silence. Those four pairs of eyes were coldly appraising the in-
 
 42 The Venetians. 
 
 traders — their faces, their dress, their social status, everything ahout 
 them . 
 
 The fair tall girl in the swansdown hood was very pretty. That 
 fact the most unfriendly observer could not deny. Whether that 
 dazzling fairness was in some part artificial remained to be proved 
 under a more searching light than the omnibus lamp ; but even if 
 that alabaster complexion were due to blanc de something the girl's 
 eyes were real — lovely dancing blue-grey eyes, softened by dark 
 brown lashes. Her nose was the prettiest thing in that unrecognized 
 order of noses ; mouth and chin were in perfect harmony ; and she 
 looked round at the strange faces with the sweetest smile, as if she 
 had never suffered from prejudice or undeserved disdain. 
 
 The other two girls were of the same type, but not so pretty. 
 The blue girl was freckled and weather-beaten ; the Stuart plaid 
 girl was too pale. Titania had taken the lion's share of the family 
 beauty. 
 
 But their dress — that at least afforded widest scope for the scorner. 
 The swansdown hood was of the year one, or perhaps might have 
 been fashionable in the historic winter of the Crimean war ; the 
 blue cloud and tawdry blue opera cloak suggested all that is com- 
 monest in cheap finery ; and what manner of surroundings could a 
 girl have whose people allowed her to go to a hunt ball with her 
 head and shoulders skewered in a tartan shawl with a blanket pin ? 
 
 " We arc taking no chaperon," said Titania, brightly. " Mrs. 
 Ponto is to chaperon us." 
 
 Mrs. Ponto was the wife of a solicitor at Mandelford, the little 
 town where the ball was being given. It was the first hunt ball 
 there had been at Mandelford within the memory of Sussex, and 
 the fact that this ball was taking place at Mandelford was due to 
 the enterprise of a local cabinet-maker, who had built a public hall 
 or assembly room at the back of his shop, and had thus provided a 
 place for festivity or culture ; music, amateur theatricals, Oxford or 
 Cambridge lectures, conjuring or Christy Minstrels. 
 
 After that little apologetic remark about the chaperon, there 
 followed a silence, the Champernownes and Miss Green remaining 
 figures of stone, and Maud Hartley feeling that she had done her 
 duty as hostess. The carriage rolled merrily over the frost-bound 
 road, and the hoofs of the four horses sounded like an advance of 
 cavalry in the winter stillness. Perhaps the silence inside the 
 omnibus would have lasted all the way to Mandelford had it not 
 been for little Mr. Tivett, who sat between two Miss Champer- 
 nownes, half hidden among billows of snowy gauze, peeping out at 
 the three pretty faces on the other side of the 'bus, with bright, 
 inquisitive eyes, like a squirrel out of his nest. 
 
 "J. don't know what I have done to offend you, Lady Hartley,
 
 11 Fairies /" 4 
 
 •> 
 
 that you should not think me worthy to he introduced to these young 
 ladies," said the good little man at last. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Tivett, it was an oversight on my part, I forgot 
 that you and the Miss Marchants had not met before. Of course, 
 you are dying to know them. — Miss Marchant, allow me to introduce 
 Mr. Tivett, a devoted admirer of your sex— a gentleman who knows 
 more about a lady's dress, and a lady's accomplishments and amuse- 
 ments, than one woman in a hundred." 
 
 "My dear Lady Hartley," remonstrated Tivett, in his piping 
 voice, "Miss Marchant will run away with the idea that I am a 
 horrible effeminate little person." 
 
 " She will very soon discover that you arc the most obliging little 
 person, and I dare say she will end by being as fond of you as I am." 
 
 " Dearest Lady Hartley, how delightful of you to say that ! " 
 exclaimed Mr. Tivett, with a coquettish giggle, darting out his little 
 suede glove to give his hostess an affectionate pat on the shoulder ; 
 " and now you have heard my character, Miss Marchant, please will 
 you give me a dance ? " 
 
 "With pleasure," replied Eve, wondering whether she would look 
 very ridiculous spinning round a public ball-room with this funny 
 little man, who was small enough to be almost hidden in the Cham- 
 pernowne draperies ; " which shall it be ? " 
 
 " Oh, the first waltz after our arrival, and I hope your sisters will 
 each give me one of the extras." 
 
 "I shall be very glad," said the girl in the tartan shawl. "I 
 don't suppose I shall have too many partners." 
 
 Mr. Tivett looked at the three faces critically. The eldest girl 
 was much the prettiest, but there was a family likeness. The faces 
 were all of one type, and they were all pretty. It smote Mr. Tivett's 
 gentle heart to think these nice girls should be so badly dressed, 
 while the Champernownes, who always snubbed him, and whom he 
 hated, were glorious in frocks fresh from Bond Street. Lady Hartley 
 had not exaggerated Mr. Tivett's devotion to the fair sex. He loved 
 the society of young matrons and girls in their teens, was never 
 happier than when making himself useful to the ladies of the family, 
 and especially rejoiced when consulted upon any question of etiquette 
 or costume. He was reputed to have faultless taste in dress, and an 
 exquisite tact in all social matters ; and when two matrons of hi 
 acquaintance happened to quarrel, each was apt to impart the story 
 of her wrongs to Mr. Tivett, whose only difficulty was to be the 
 adviser of both, without seeming unfaithful to either. He was not 
 a sportsman, and he pleaded a weak chest as a reason for loving 
 easy-chairs, and cosy corners in boudoirs and morning-rooms, and 
 a seat in a carriage when other men were walking. His Christian 
 name was Augustus ; but he was always known as Gus, or Gussie. 
 
 s
 
 44 The Venetians. 
 
 Having been introduced to the eldest sister, Mr. Tivett was on 
 easy terms with the three girls in about five minutes, and for the 
 rest of the journey the four were prattling gaily, Lady Hartley 
 chiming in now and then, just for civility's sake, while the other 
 women maintained their unfriendly silence. 
 
 "I knew we should be late," Claudia Champernowne exclaimed 
 at last, as the omnibus drew up at a lighted door, and sbe saw the 
 long line of carriages filling the rustic street from end to end. 
 
 Miss Green and the Champernownes marched at once to the 
 cloak-room, an upper room over the shop, whither Lady Hartley 
 followed. The Marchant srirls fell back, and lingered in the vesti- 
 bule — said vestibule being neither more nor less than the cabinet- 
 maker's empty shop, transformed by scarlet and white draperies 
 and evergreens in pots. The Marchants felt that Lady Hartley's 
 hospitality came to an end at the door of the ball-room, and that 
 they would do ill to attach themselves to her party. 
 
 "I think we had better wait here for our chaperon," said Eve, as 
 Maud looked back at her from the stairs. "I'm sure we can never 
 be too grateful to you for bringing us, Lady Hartley." 
 
 " Please don't speak of such a trifle. I am to take you home, 
 remember. You must look out for us at three o'clock." 
 
 "At three o'clock," thought Jenny, of the tartan shawl ; "that's 
 as much as to say, ' In the mean time we don't know you.' " 
 
 They waited in a little group near the stairs, and saw the three 
 Champernownes come sweeping down, swanlike, beautiful, "in 
 gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls," ami .Miss Green in a very 
 severe, tight-fitting yellow silk frock, with a shortish skirt, and 
 round her homely-complexioned throat a collet necklace of emeralds 
 without flaw or feather ; and Lady Hartley in a fuss and flutter of 
 palest blue, which seemed just the most telling background for her 
 diamonds. She had diamonds everywhere, butterflies, stars, true 
 lovers' knots, hearts, and horseshoes, dotted about bust and shoulders 
 amongst the soft fluffiness of azure gauze ; diamonds in her hair, in 
 her ears, on her arms. And yet she did not look vulgarly fine. The 
 slender elegance of her form, the delicate colouring of her face and 
 neck harmonized the jewels. 
 
 While the Hartley party were composing themselves for their 
 entrance to the dancing-room, a stout matron in red satin and black 
 lace came sailing in, wrapped to the eyes in a white Shetland shawl, 
 and at once made for the Marchants, whom she deliberately kissed, 
 one after the other. 
 
 " I hope you haven't been waiting long, dears," she said, in a fat, 
 good-natured voice. "Ponto had a business appointment at Hasle- 
 raere, and didn't get back to his dinner till nine o'clock." 
 
 Mr. Ponto was grinning in the background, very red and puffy,
 
 Jbairies / 45 
 
 as from a hurried toilet, and with a scarlet camelia in his button- 
 hole ; scarlet out of compliment to the hunt. 
 
 "Oh no, we have only just come," answered Eve, troubled by 
 the supercilious stare of the youngest Miss Cbampernowne, who was 
 looking back from the threshold of the ball-room while the others 
 went in, looking at Mrs. Ponto as at some natural curiosity; and 
 indeed to a young lady whose evening frock had been produced new 
 and immaculate from a Bond Street carton Mrs. Ponto's crimson 
 satin, lately "done up" with Nottingham lace, and obviously "let 
 out " to accommodate Mrs. Ponto's increasing bulk, was a thing to 
 wonder at. 
 
 The three Marchants and their chaperon entered the ball-room 
 in a cluster. The Eedwold Towers party was absorbed in the 
 brilliant throng, had gone straight into the zenith, where the two 
 local peeresses were holding a kind of court, a court splendid with 
 family diamonds and hereditary point cVAlenron. Mrs. Ponto made 
 a dash for a corner of the raised bench that went round the room, 
 and established herself and her charges in this coign of vantage. 
 
 "If we don't get seats at once we mightn't have a chance of 
 sitting down for an hour," said Mrs. Tonto. " Ain't the room full V 
 Now, dears, I shall stay here till some one takes me in to supper, so 
 you can leave your fans with me, and feel you've got some one to 
 come to between your dances. 1 had my cup of tea before I came, 
 so I shan't trouble about the tea-room. It's a pretty sight, ain't it ? " 
 
 A waltz was just ending. The room was very full, but there was 
 the usual surplus of nice-looking girls sitting down, with the usual 
 sprinkling of men who wouldn't dance, and who were quite satisfied 
 to stand about and get in the way of the dancers. 
 
 The peeresses and their court were on the opposite side of the 
 room, in a central position, which commanded dancers, band, and 
 the festooned archway leading to the tea-room. Lady Hartley had 
 seated herself next old Lady Mandelford, a dowager with white hair, 
 whose son was the well-known Lord Mandelford, a man of pro- 
 digious wealth and local importance, a rustic Royalty. 
 
 Eve had shaken out her well-worn w 7 hite frock. It was made of 
 sunie soft woollen stuff, which her old servant Nancy had washed, 
 so it had at least the merit of purity. On that tall and perfectly 
 balanced figure the cheap, simple gown looked exquisite, and the 
 fair fluffy head, with its glitter of starlets, could not have looked 
 more enchanting had the starlets been old Brazilian diamonds, like 
 Lady Mandelford's, instead of cut glass mounted at Birmingham. 
 Theyounger sisters had aimed higher than Eve. One in blue, the 
 other in red, straining after Parisian fashion, in cheap silk and satin, 
 had only achieved tawdriness. Eve, in her white frock, might 
 challenge criticism.
 
 46 The Venetians. 
 
 There was some one on the other side of the room who thought 
 her lovely as a dream, the same man whose eyes had gazed on her 
 beauty in the moonlight an hour ago, and who had told himself that 
 such a face belonged to fairyland rather than to this dull, everyday 
 earth. He stood looking at her now, across the dancers and the 
 crowd, as she sat demurely in her corner, her alabaster fairness set 
 off by the scarlet background. He put his arm through Sir Hubert's. 
 " When you've done talking to Miss Champernowne I want you to 
 introduce me to Miss Marchant," he said. 
 
 " With all my heart. But there are three Miss Marchants. 
 Which of the three are you dying to know? " 
 
 " The fair girl, in white." 
 
 " Oh, she's the eldest. They are all fair, but I suppose she's the 
 fairest. Come along, then. I'm to dance the Lancers, Maud tells 
 me," he added, lowering his voice, " and with Lady Mandelford. 
 I'm to steer the doAvager through that complicated performance." 
 
 Sir Hubert wore the hunt colours, a scarlet coat with black velvet 
 collar and white satin facings, and he felt that it behoved him to 
 make some sacrifice in honour of a dance that was called the hunt 
 ball. 
 
 "Don't forget that you have engaged yourself to us, Mr. Van- 
 sittart," said Miss Green, severely. " You are bespoken for eight 
 dances out of eighteen. Three of the eighteen are gone already. 
 You will have to make the most of the seven that remain to you 
 after you have done your duty to us." 
 
 He had forgotten all about those pledges given in the morning- 
 room. Eight dances with young women for whom he cared not a 
 straw, about whom familiarity had bred something not very far 
 from contempt. Eight dances, a veritable bondage; while Eve 
 Marchant was sitting meekly in her corner, partnerless. No, not 
 partnerless ; even as he looked little Mr. Tivett marched up to her 
 with an all-conquering air, and led her in among the dancers, just 
 beginning a waltz. 
 
 Vansittart took Miss Green's programme out of her hand with a 
 desperate air. 
 
 " Let's begin at once — if you are disengaged," he said. 
 
 " That makes one off," she answered, laughing, as she rose and 
 took his arm. " How dreadfully sorry for yourself you look ! " 
 
 " Then my looks belie me. I was never gladder for myself. I 
 see you have ever so many engagements already. Shall I put my- 
 self down for number eighteen ? " 
 
 " Certainly. You are sure we shall have left before that number 
 arrives." 
 
 They were moving slowly among the dancers by this time, and a 
 minute later they spun off with a fine rhythmical swing. Miss Green
 
 "Fairies!* 47 
 
 was what the hunting men called a splendid mover. She had taken 
 trouble to excel in her paces, knowing that her appearance was 
 against ball-room triumphs. Men liked to dance with her— for 
 three reasons. She was rich; she waltzed well; and she had a 
 malevolent tongue, which amused her partners. 
 
 It was her delight to criticize her fairer sisters — the flaws in their 
 beauty ; the tricks which helped them to be beautiful ; their affecta- 
 tions ; their vanities ; their bad taste. 
 
 " Did you ever see three young women ' fagotees ' like those 
 Marchant girls ? " she murmured, in a low, clear voice, which she 
 had cultivated for speaking evil of people near at hand. " That 
 blue girl — that red girl ! I don't know which is worse ! The blue 
 frock is an inch and a half shorter on one side than on the other 
 — an advantage, as it shows off the blue slipper, which doesn't 
 match the frock, and the blue stocking, which doesn't match the 
 slipper. But the red girl ! Please notice the lacing of the red 
 bodice. I assure you the girl isn't humpbacked, though that bodice 
 certainly suggests deformity." 
 
 "How observant you are, Miss Green; and with what a keen eye 
 for the infinitesimal ! " 
 
 " I am looking at their chaperon now — the enormous person in 
 dyed crimson satin. It must have been her wedding-gown ages 
 ago — a sweet silver-grey. You don't call that lady infinitesimal, I 
 hope?" 
 
 "Physically large, perhaps — but, from your mental standpoint, 
 microscopic. Now, confess, Miss Green, don't you think these 
 eople infinitely insignificant, simply because they happen not to 
 e rich ? " 
 
 " I think them immensely amusing. One sees such people only 
 at public balls in the heart of the country. That is why public 
 balls are such fun. Do look at the glass stars in the tallest Miss 
 Marchant's hair ! Did you ever see anything so absurd ? " 
 
 " What does it matter whether they are glass or diamonds of the 
 purest water ? All the gems that were ever ground at Amsterdam 
 could not make her more like a beautiful sylph— Undine — Titania 
 — what you will." 
 
 " Your comparisons are not flattering to the young lady's intellect. 
 Undine was mindless and soulless ; Titania— if Shakespeare knew 
 anything about her — was a silly little person who fell desperately in 
 love with a donkey." 
 
 Their waltz was over, but Miss Green wanted tea, or an ice, ora 
 change of atmosphere — anything which would retain Vansittart in 
 attendance upon her as long as possible. She kept him sitting by 
 her side while she sipped her tea, and ridiculed the people who 
 came in and out of the tea-room. She kept him in bondage while 
 
 i;
 
 43 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 Mr. Tivett conducted Eve Marchant to the buffet, and talked and 
 laughed with her gaily as she ate her ice. How prettily she ate 
 that pink ice — with such a graceful turn of the delicate wrist! 
 Vansittart had leisure to study every line of head and figure, while 
 Miss Green prattled in his ear. He gave a little automatic laugh 
 now and then, feeling that the lady meant him to be amused. 
 Miss Marchant was a long time eating her ice, and was evidently 
 interested in Mr. Tivett's conversation. Vansittart watched her 
 dreamily, not more jealous of Tivett than if he had seen her a few 
 years earlier, playing with her doll; hut just as she had resigned 
 the empty ice-plate, and was moving towards the door, a man in a 
 hunt coat met and stopped her with a semi-authoritative air that 
 made Vansittart's blood rush angrily to his brow, almost as if the 
 man had insulted him. 
 
 " You are saving some dances for me, I hope, Miss Marchant? " 
 said the unknown, with an easy, off-hand manner. 
 
 " I don't know," faltered Eve. "I mean I think I am engaged 
 for a good many waltzes — as many as I shall care to dance." 
 
 " Let me sec," taking her programme out of her hand. " Oh, 
 you fair deceiver ! Why, you might answer about this programme 
 us Olivia did about her history — ' A blank, my Lord.' I shall write 
 myself against number seven — the dear old Manola — and eleven — 
 a Waldteufel waltz — and, let me see, shall we say fifteen. ? " 
 
 The man was good-looking, dark-haired and dark-eyed, well set 
 up, showing to advantage in the hunt coat — a man likely to be in 
 request at a dance ; yet it was evident that Eve Marchant wanted 
 to avoid him. She looked pained and even angry at his persistence. 
 •• My engagements are not upon that card," she said ; " and I am 
 sure you must have a great many people with whom you ought to 
 dance — sooner than with me." 
 
 " That's my business. I have set my heart upon at least three 
 dances with you." 
 
 "Then I am sorry to disappoint you; I am engaged for all those 
 numbers." 
 
 " But you are free for others? Tell me which." 
 " That is Mr. Sefton, of Chadleigh," said Miss Green, con- 
 fidentially. " Rather handsome, ain't he? But not good form. 
 He is not a favourite in his own neighbourhood ; but he and Miss 
 Marchant are evidently upon very friendly terms." 
 
 Eve had left the tea-room with Mr. Tivett, closely followed by 
 Mr. Sefton, and Vansittart sat looking after the three retreating 
 figures till they were absorbed in the crowd that filled the dancing- 
 room. 
 
 ''Did you think so?" he said coldly. "It seemed to me that 
 the gentleman was not a favourite with the young lady."
 
 " The Prelude to some Brighter World." 49 
 
 "If you had seen them on Christmas Eve on the ice you would 
 have a very different opinion. He was teaching her the outside 
 edge. He was devoted, and she seemed delighted. He would he 
 a great catch for her ; but I'm afraid he's too much a man of the 
 world to be trapped by a pretty face. He will lock higher than 
 Miss Marchant." 
 
 " What and who is he ? " 
 
 " Oh, he belongs to an old Sussex family, and has a fine place on 
 the other side of Blackdown. I am told he is clever ; but he is 
 not nice, somehow. People don't seem to trust him. And there 
 are ugly stories about him, I believe, stories that are not told to 
 ladies, but which have made him unpopular in his own neighbour- 
 hood, especially among his own tenant-farmers and cottagers. 
 There are the Lancers, and I am engaged to a callow youth who 
 came with the Mandelford party." 
 
 She rose hurriedly, relinquishing her teacup, which Vansittart 
 had been wearily waiting for, with an air of having been detained 
 by his assiduity. The callow youth, looking very fair and pretty in 
 his brand-new pink coat, appeared in the doorway. 
 
 " Oh, Mith Gween, I have been looking for you evewywha'," he 
 murmured ; and they went off to take their places. 
 
 Their vis-a-vis were Mr. Sefton and Miss Marchant. 
 
 " So she is dancing with him, after all," thought Vansittart, 
 curiously vexed. " Valium et mutabile semper femina ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "the prelude to some brighter world." 
 
 While the Lancers were being danced to the good old hilarious 
 tunes, which always give an air of boisterous gaiety to a public 
 ball-room, Vansittart, ignoring all further obligations to his home 
 party, went in search of little Mr. Tivett, so that by impounding 
 that gentleman he should make sure of an introduction to Miss 
 Marchant before the next dance. 
 
 He found the agreeable Tivett in an anteroom, an apartment 
 much affected by sitters out, and peculiarly congenial to flirtation, 
 where the good little man had found agreeable occupation in pinning 
 up the lace flounce of a portly matron in yellow satin, not too portly 
 to indulge in round dances, which imparted an alarmingly purple 
 shade to the pearly whiteness of her complexion. " Only mother- 
 of-pearl," as Mr. Tivett said afterwards. " You may be quite happy 
 about your Mechlin, dear lady," said Tivett, after planting the last. 
 pin ; "nothing but the stitches gone. No harm done to your lo\ eiy 
 
 lace, I assure you." 
 
 11
 
 50 The Venetians. 
 
 " lie was a clumsy bear all the same. How sweet of you, dear 
 Mr. Tivett ! Ten thousand thanks. And now I'll run back to my 
 party, or my young man will be looking for me for the next waltz ; " 
 and the lady waddled away pantingly, to be steered carefully round 
 the room by-and-by, in the protecting arm of a tall youth, who had 
 an eye to free luncheons and dinners in the best part of Belgravia. 
 
 "You lucky little man," cried Vansittart, when the lady was 
 gone, "in favour with both youth and age. You save Mrs. 
 Fotheringay's priceless Mechlin, and you secure your first waltz 
 with the belle of the ball." 
 
 Tivett gave a little conscious laugh, and shook his suede glove at 
 Vansittart airily. 
 
 "Pretty girl, that Miss Marchant, ain't she?" said he, "and not 
 a bit of nonsense about her ; naivete itself. You should have heard 
 her and the sisters prattle in the 'bus, while the Champernownes 
 sat looking thunder." 
 
 "You dog, I believe that bronchitis of yours was all humbug. 
 Come along with me, Tivett ; I am going to waylay Miss Marchant, 
 and you must introduce me to her." 
 
 " She'll be parading about with that black-muzzled man, most 
 likely. I don't like to shoot another fellow's bird." 
 
 " Nonsense. She doesn't like the black man. She didn't want 
 to dance with him. I am going to be Ivanhoe and rescue her from 
 that black-bearded Templar." 
 
 " I couldn't quite make her out," said Tivett. " She seemed not 
 to want to dance with him, and yet she let him march her off. I 
 fancy there's an understanding between them. No doubt the puss 
 is an arrant flirt," said Tivett, with his little coquettish shrug, as if 
 he were flirting himself. 
 
 Miss Marchant and Sefton, the black-bearded, came into the 
 anteroom at the head of a procession of youths and maidens, and 
 in the confusion made by so many couples pouring out of the big 
 room into the small room, Vansittart contrived to waylay the lady. 
 She dropped Sefton's arm and turned smilingly to Tivett, and in 
 the next moment the introduction was made, while Sefton was 
 captured by the eldest Miss Champernowne, to whom he was 
 engaged for the next dance. 
 
 Miss Marchant's programme was still a blank, and she allowed 
 Vansittart to write down his name for a couple of waltzes. There 
 was no question now of unwritten engagements blocking the way. 
 He gave her his arm, and they walked slowly to the ball-room, 
 talking those commonplaces with which even the most fateful 
 acquaintance must needs begin. 
 
 Vansittart talked of the long, cold drive ; of the rooms, with their 
 red and white panels, and vizards and other emblems of the chase j
 
 " The Prelude to some Brighter World." 51 
 
 of tlie heat and the draughts ; of the people, the faces, the frocks. 
 Easily as she had prattled with the lively Tivett, Vansittart found 
 her somewhat reticent, and even shy. But she waltzed delightfully, 
 and he had never enjoyed a dance better than this dance, in which 
 his arm was round that slender waist, and that pretty, fair head 
 with its crystal starlets was almost level with his own. so tall and 
 straight was she. 
 
 The waltz ended, these two dancing till the final chord, he took 
 her for the conventional scamper through anteroom and tea-room, 
 which communicated with each other by a canvas corridor, 
 delightfully cool and dangerously draughty, and so back to the 
 ball-room, where he restored her to the worthy lady in the red 
 gown, with whom sat the younger Marchant girls, who were glad to 
 dance one dance out of three ; like those hunting men of modest 
 pretensions who were satisfied with a day a week. They were 
 quite aware that although tolerated by the county, and invited to 
 garden-parties, they were not in society, and must not expect that 
 the fine flower of the hunt, greatly in request among a majority of 
 the fair sex, would indulge them with more than an occasional 
 dance. Secure of an after-supper waltz with Eve, Vansittart 
 remembered his home engagements, tore himself away from Miss 
 Marchant, and went across the room to that galaxy of the 
 best people in which his sister had her place. The Champernownes 
 were wandering with their partners, but Miss Green was sitting by 
 Lady Mandelford, and entertaining that mild old lady with the 
 cheap cynicism which passes current for wit. 
 
 Vansittart booked himself for his second dance with Miss Green, 
 and then went to look for the Champernownes. He found Claudia 
 enjoying a confidential chat with Mr. Sefton in a corner of the 
 anteroom, and avoided them both as if they had been plague-stricken. 
 
 He discovered a younger Champernowne in the tea-room, and 
 offered himself for those dances so lightly promised in the morning. 
 She had kept some numbers open for him. He went to the other 
 sister and wrote his name on her programme for other two waltzes, 
 and this, with his number on Miss Green's programme, and the 
 two still owing to Claudia, left him a very poor chance of sitting 
 out a dance or two with Miss Marchant. He pined for one quiet 
 quarter of an hour of confidential talk with her. He wanted to 
 make friends with her; so that she should prattle to him as freely 
 as she had prattled to little Tivett. 
 
 That golden opportunity did not come till late in the evening. 
 His dance with Claudia Champernowne came at just the hour when 
 all the best people were pouring into the supper-room. _ When their 
 waltz was over he could not avoid asking her to go in to supper, 
 and she promptly accepted.
 
 <2 The Venetians. 
 
 " There will be a crowd," she said, " but we shall get the first of the 
 oysters, and the scrimmage will be more fun than a half-empty room." 
 
 It was an hour later when he danced his extra with Eve Marchant. 
 The next dance was the Caledonians. 
 
 " Surely you are not going to dance the Caledonians? " he said. 
 '• It is a cruelty to keep the floor from all those portly matrons ia 
 fine raiment who are sighing for a square dance." 
 
 " I am happy to say I am not engaged for the Caledonians." 
 
 " Then let us go into that little talking-room. Of course you have 
 been in to supper? " 
 
 Miss Marchant owned blushingly that she had not supped. 
 
 " Poor dear Mrs. Ponto had been sitting so long in her corner," 
 she said, "so I asked my last partner to take her in." 
 
 '• Poor dear partner, I think. What a sacrifice for him ! Why, 
 you must be famishing. And I'm afraid all the oysters must have 
 been eaten by this time." 
 
 " I can be quite happy without oysters." 
 
 "Can you? The youngest Miss Champernowne was inclined to 
 scold the waiters because of the poor supply of natives." 
 
 "The Miss Champernownes are used to such luxuries as oysters, 
 and can't do without them," laughed Eve. " My sisters and I have 
 been brought up in a harder manner." 
 
 " Curious, isn't it, how fashion changes ? " said Vansittart, taking 
 her to a little table in the furthest corner of the room — a tiny table 
 that would only just accommodate two people. " When Byron was 
 in society it was considered odious for a young woman to care what 
 she eat, or to have a healthy appetite. Nowadays, it is rather chic 
 for a girl to be a gourmet. We have bread-and-butter Misses 
 affecting a fine taste in dry champagne and a passion for quails. 
 And now what can I get you — mayonnaise lobster, truffled turkey, 
 boar's head, chicken ? " 
 
 She decided for chicken, and trifled with a wing while Vansittart 
 sipped a glass of champagne, enchanted to have her all to himself 
 in this corner, wishing that the Caledonians might last for ever, and 
 inclined to be reckless about his engagement for the waltz that was 
 to follow. 
 
 " You have been dancing every dance, I think," he said. 
 
 " No ; not all. I sat in my corner with Mrs. Ponto all through 
 a most exquisite waltz." 
 
 " Was it possible you had no partner? " 
 
 "Mr. Sefton asked me to dance — and I told him I was tired." 
 
 " I have an idea you don't much like Mr. Sefton ? " 
 
 " No, he's not a favourite of mine ; but he has always been very 
 kind, and he has given my father some shooting ; so I don't want 
 to be rude to him."
 
 " The Prelude to some Brighter World? 53 
 
 "Was that why you danced the Lancers with him, after refusing 
 him a dance? " 
 
 " How did you know I refused him? Ah, I remember, you were 
 sitting in the tea-room. You must have hea*d all we said." 
 
 " Every syllable." 
 
 " How flattering to the lady who was talking to you ! " 
 
 " Dear Miss Green ! Oh, she would not mind. She is so pleased 
 with her own conversation that it does not matter whether peoplo 
 listen or not. She is a lady who shakes hands with herself every 
 morning, and says, 'My dear soul, you are really the cleverest, 
 wittiest, brightest creature I know — not exactly beautiful, but 
 infinitely charming,' and in that humour she comes smiling down to 
 breakfast, and lets us all see what poor creatures she thinks us." 
 
 " I find you can be ill-natured, Mr. Vansittart. You are not like 
 Lady Hartley, who has always a kind word to say of every one." 
 
 " That is my sister's little way. She pays most of her debts with 
 kind words." 
 
 " Ah, but she has given us more than words. She asks us to her 
 delightful summer parties, and seems always glad to see us." 
 
 '• She is very lucky to have such young ladies at her parties. 
 What would a garden-party be if there were not faces in the crowd 
 worth following and asking questions about? But what of Mr. 
 Sefton ? I am interested in Mr. Sefton." 
 
 " Why ? " she asked, with innocent wonder. 
 
 " Oh, for various reasons. My father and his father were once 
 friends. And then he is a landowner, a great man in these parts, 
 and one always wants to know about such people." 
 
 "Yes, he has a fine estate, and he is said to be rich; but he is 
 not as popular as his father was. I remember old Mr. Sefton, a 
 splendid gentleman. But this Mr. Sefton and my father get on very 
 well together." 
 
 " You say he has been kind. How kind ? " 
 
 " He asks my father to shooting parties, and he sends us game, 
 and grapes, and pines. I would rather for my own part that he 
 didn't, for we can give him nothing in return. Sophy wanted to 
 work him a pair of slippers— preposterous — as if he were a curate ! 
 My two nursery sisters offered to make him a set of mats in Bussian 
 cross-stitch. Imagine sending Mr. Sefton mats for his toilet table." 
 
 " He scarcely looks the kind of man to appreciate that particular 
 form of attention. Tivett, now, would be delighted with such a 
 gift. There is nothing too microscopic or too feminine to interest 
 that dear little man." 
 
 "He is a dear little man. It is quite delightful to hear him talk 
 about London people and London parties." 
 
 " Did he set you longing to be in the whirl of a London season? "
 
 54 The Venetians. 
 
 " I don't know. It would be very nice, for once in one's life ; 
 but I am quite bappy in our country borne, as long as — as," she 
 faltered a little, " fatber is well and contented." 
 
 He felt tbat in tbis faltering phrase there was a bint of domestic 
 cares. Hubert Hartley had told him, during a few minutes' talk on 
 the omnibus, tbat Colonel Marchant was something of a Bohemian, 
 and a difficult man to get on with. 
 
 " I always feel sorry for those five girls of his," Sir Hubert con- 
 cluded. 
 
 " You are wise in liking your country life," said Vansittart. " It 
 is the happier life. All my best days are at Merewood — our place 
 near Liss. Do you know Liss, by-the-by ? " 
 
 " No, indeed. I know there is such a place somewhere between 
 here and Portsmouth." 
 
 "You must have passed it, I think. I dare say you sometimes 
 go to Southsea or to the Isle of Wight for your summer holidays." 
 
 "You dare to say too much," she answered, with her frank, 
 girlish laugh. " We never go anywhere for our summer holidays. 
 We live in the same house all the year round. When a poor man 
 has five daughters he can't afford to carry them about to seaside 
 lodgings, which are always dreadfully dear in the season, I am told. 
 I think we ought to go back to the ball-room. I am engaged for 
 the next waltz." 
 
 " And I, to a most exacting partner." 
 
 The waltz was half over when they entered the dancing-room, 
 and Hilda Champernowne, who saw them enter side by side, looking 
 very happy, was evidently offended. 
 
 " It is hardly worth while standing up," she said ; " the waltz is 
 just over." 
 
 " I thought it had only just begun." 
 
 " That shows how engrossed you must have been." 
 
 " I was giving a young lady some supper, and a young lady who 
 might have starved but for me." 
 
 " Impossible ! The young lady was Miss Marchant, whom you 
 yourself pronounced the belle of the ball. Mr. Tivett told me so." 
 
 " In such an assembly as this — where there is some of the best 
 blood in England — there are many belles," said Vansittart. " Will 
 you come for a turn round the rooms, if you won't dance ? " 
 
 The lady rose, and took his arm, somewhat mollified, and in the 
 course of that turn — which could not, from the limited space, last 
 very long — she questioned Vansittart sharply about Miss Marchant. 
 Did he think her good style ? Had he found her bright and clever 
 in conversation, or was she very dull ? 
 
 " The poor things go nowhere, I am told, except to garden-parties, 
 where they are lost in a crowd of nobodies. It has been too sad to
 
 " The Prelude to some Brighter World" 55 
 
 see them sitting with that awful woman in the red gown. Why do 
 girls go to dances to endure such purgatory ? I would as soon sit in 
 the pillory, like Daniel Defoe, as in that corner with the crimson lady." 
 
 " Oh, but they have been dancing a good deal. Theirs is not quite 
 such a piteous case as you make out." 
 
 "Have they really?" asked Miss Champernowne, with a dis- 
 paraging drawl; "I'm glad some one has taken compassion upon 
 them. They've always been sittin' when I happened to look their 
 way." 
 
 The Champernownes and the Marchants met an hour later in the 
 cloak-room, and this time Lady Hartley formally introduced the 
 Miss Marchants to the haughty Devonians, in the hope that this 
 might make the return journey a little more sociable ; a vain hope, 
 for the Champernownes and Miss Green affected to be overcome 
 by sleep as soon as they had settled themselves in the omnibus. 
 So Mr. Tivett and the Marchants had all the talk to themselves, 
 as before, with an occasional kindly word from the hostess, who 
 was genuinely sleepy, and who dreamt that she and the Marchant 
 girls were travelling in Italy, and that their carriage was stopped 
 by brigands. 
 
 The brigand-in-chief was her own groom, who came to open the 
 door, and assist the young ladies to alight at their garden gate. 
 But he was not allowed to do more than hold the door open, for 
 Vansittart was standing on the whitened road ready to hand his 
 partner and her sisters to the ground. They alighted as airily as 
 Mercury on the heaven-kissing hill. 
 
 " Dear Lady Hartley, we have no words to express our gratitude," 
 said Sophy, as Maud shook hands with her at parting. 
 
 Eve was less demonstrative, but not less grateful, and the youngest 
 of the three only murmured something unintelligible from between 
 the folds of her tartan shawl. 
 
 Vansittart opened a low wooden gate. The house stood boldly 
 out against the clear moonlit sky ; but he had no time to look at it, 
 for he was absorbed in guiding Eve Marchant's footsteps on the 
 slippery garden path, while the groom followed in attendance on 
 her sisters. The path was smooth as glass, and he almost held her 
 in his arms as they went slowly up the sharp little hill that led to 
 the rustic porch. 
 
 An old woman opened the door, and the three girls were speedily 
 absorbed into a dark vestibule, a single candle glimmering in the 
 distance. 
 
 " Are we very late, Nancy? " asked Eve. 
 
 " Not later than I thowt you'd be," answered the woman, with a 
 north-country accent ; and then there was nothing for Vansittart 
 to do except to wish the three sisters good night, and go back to
 
 55 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 the 'bus, where Sir Hubert was beginning to be uneasy about his 
 horses waiting in the frosty air. 
 
 " Cuts into them like knives," said Sir Hubert, as his brother-in- 
 law clambered on to the box. " You might have made shorter 
 work of seeing Miss Marchant to her door." 
 
 "I might have let her fall on that inclined plane," growled 
 Vansittart. " Capital for tobogganing, but very dangerous for a 
 young lady in satin shoes." 
 
 " Poor girl, I wonder where her next satin shoes will come from," 
 said Hubert. 
 
 " Is the Colonel so very hard up ? " 
 
 "Very, I should think, since he is always in debt to the little 
 tradespeople about here." 
 
 " And on the strength of that you all talk about those three girls 
 as if they were lepers," retorted Vansittart. " I have no patience 
 with the pettiness of village society." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TEATME IN AKCADIA. 
 
 It was long since Vansittart had been haunted by the face of a 
 woman as he was haunted by the face of Eve Marchant. He had 
 not come to nine and twenty years of age without one or two 
 (jrandes passions, which had begun out of a mere fancy, a glance — 
 like one of those once fashionable toys called Pharaoh's Serpents — 
 had swollen to colossal dimensions, and had ended, like the serpent, 
 in a puff of smoke. This time he wondered at his own feelings 
 when he found himself so deeply interested in the girl he always 
 thought of as Titania. He was inclined to ascribe this sudden 
 interest to the eccentric manner of their first meeting, the three 
 pretty faces springing out of a turn in the wooded road, like sylphs 
 in fairyland, the light, silvery laughter, and the something of sadness 
 in the fate of this bright, light-hearted girl which appealed to his 
 deeper feelings. 
 
 To whatever cause he might ascribe his interest, the fact remained 
 that he was interested ; for he found himself thinking about Eve 
 Marchant a great deal more than he had ever thought of any one 
 subject, except that one fatal subject of his misadventure at Venice ; 
 and he found himself very bad company for other people in 
 consequence. 
 
 For ten days after the ball at Mandelford he lived in expectation 
 of seeing Miss Marchant again, somewhere, somehow; and to further 
 that desire of his heart he lived in a state of perpetual locomotion ; 
 now driving one of the Hartley dog-carts to Mandelford or Midhurst,
 
 Teaiime in Arcadia. 57 
 
 Fernhurst or Haslemere, as the case might be ; and anon patrolling 
 those towns and villages on foot, in the ardent expectation of meet- 
 ing Co oncl Marchant's daughters upon some shopping or visiting 
 expedition. 
 
 Go where he would he drew blank. Could it be that the Colonel 
 was so deep in debt to the local tradespeople that his daughters 
 dared not show themselves in those rural streets, where, after all, 
 as the local gentry said condescendingly, one could really get almost 
 everything one wanted ? 
 
 He walked, he drove, he haunted the great pond in Redwold Park, 
 which was thrown open to the public for skating, and where the men 
 and maidens of the neighbourhood came daily to disport themselves : 
 but vainly did he look for the Marchants. 
 
 " I thought the Miss Marchants were skaters," he said to Miss 
 Green, on the third morning, as he helped her to put on her Mount 
 Charles skates. 
 
 " So they are. They almost lived on this pond before Christmas. 
 Perhaps they have worn out their boots, and are obliged to stay at 
 home." 
 
 Those ten days of expectancy and disappointment made Jack 
 Vansittart desperate. It seemed to him ages since the night of the 
 ball. He began to think he should never see Eve Marchant again, 
 and panic-stricken at this idea, he started after a morning's pheasant 
 shooting to walk to the Homestead, Fernhurst, to make a formal call 
 upon the sisters. Surely he had the right to call and inquire how they 
 had survived the fatigue of the dances, the perils of the cold drive 
 home. He was quick to make up his mind that he had such a right, 
 and no walk taken for pleasure or for health had ever been more 
 exhilarating than that tramp from the westward shoulder of Black- 
 down to the further side ot Fernhurst. The roads were hard and 
 dry, the wind was north-west, and the sun was going down in wintry 
 splendour. It was late in the afternoon to make a ceremonious 
 visit, but there was all the better hope that he would find Colonel 
 Marchant's daughters within doors. 
 
 The house stood high above the road, on a ridge of meadow-laiul 
 which had been encroached upon for half an acre of garden. It was 
 a long, low house, with steep gable ends, and a high slanting roof, 
 red tiled and lichen grown. Originally only a farm labourer's cottage, 
 it had been expanded and improved by more than one tenant, the 
 last addition being made by Colonel Marchant, who at the beginning 
 of his tenancy had built a comfortable covered porch, which served 
 as vestibule, and a large room on the ground floor, which had been 
 first known as the nursery, then as the schoolroom, and which was 
 now simply the parlour, or general living-room for the whole family. 
 The resident governess, that element of respectability, had shaken
 
 53 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 the dust of Colonel Marchant's Bohemian dwelling-place off her feet 
 a year ago, and had vanished into space, leaving a long arrear of 
 salary behind her. 
 
 It was twilight, the grey twilight of a frosty winter day. Vansit- 
 tart noted the snowdrops peeping over the box border as he walked 
 up the steep gravel path that made the only approach to the 
 Marchant dwelling. Carriage approach there was none. The 
 Marchant girls' cheap satin slippers had to trip along that gravel 
 path, in fine weather or foul, when they went to a party, and the 
 poor little feet inside the slippers had to dance away any feeling of 
 chilly dampness which the sodden gravel might occasion. 
 
 Vansittart looked about him in the evening grey as he waited for 
 the opening of the door. He had rung a bell that sounded twice too 
 loud for the size of the house, and had set up much barking of indoor 
 and outdoor dogs. 
 
 There were two long strips of grass sloping down to the holly- 
 hedge that shut off the road, and a long flower border on either side 
 of the gravel path. This was the garden, so far as ornamental 
 garden went, but beyond the grass strip on one side of the house 
 there were cabbage rows, and the usual features of a vegetable 
 garden. Beyond, right and left, stretched meadow-land, away to the 
 dark background of copse and hillside. 
 
 The house, even alter all its improvements, had a humble and 
 homely aspect; walls roughly plastered, small lattice windows, and 
 that steep slant of the roof, which Vansittart could have touched 
 with his hand. The porch was a square enclosure, with a sloping 
 thatch, and two little windows, right and left. An old woman, in a 
 blue stuff gown and white cap and apron, opened the door, and even 
 as it opened Vansittart heard again that ripple of silver-clear laughter 
 which he had heard on the hilltop in the snowy night, nearly ten 
 days ago. 
 
 Ten days. Only ten ! Until ten days ago he had lived in happy 
 ignorance that there was such a woman as Eve Marchant in the 
 world. It seemed to him now as strange not to have known of her 
 as it would be not to know of her namesake — the universal mother. 
 
 The same sweet laughter, not loud or boisterous, but soft and 
 clear ! Her laugh ! He would have known it amidst a chorus of 
 laughing girls. 
 
 Miss Marchant was at home, the old woman told him, and there- 
 upon led him through a small, dark room — the original cottage 
 parlour — through another room, faintly lit by a low fire, into a third 
 and much larger room, which was bright with fire and lamp light. 
 
 Here the whole Marchant family, except the Colonel, were 
 assembled at afternoon tea, which in this establishment had come to 
 be the most enjoyable meal of the day.
 
 1 eat i me in Arcadia. 59 
 
 Happily Vansittart had lunched lightly in the woods with the 
 shooters, so was hungry enough to find the odour of toasting bread 
 rather a comfortable addition to the atmosphere ; or, at any rate, he 
 was in a humour to be pleased with everything, even the sprawling 
 attitude of a tall overgrown girl in a yellow cotton pinafore, sitting 
 on the hearthrug, and making toast, watched and assisted by a 
 smaller sister. 
 
 The three grown-up Miss Marchants sat at the table, two of them 
 with their elbows on the board, where a large home-made cake — in 
 north-country phraseology, a plum-loaf— a glass dish of marmalade 
 and another of jam, and a pile of thick bread and butter, testified to 
 the serious purpose of the meal. 
 
 Eve, the tea-maker and mistress of the feast, rose as Mr. Vansit- 
 tart was announced, and came forward two or three steps to greet 
 him, half in firelight, half in lamplight, brilliant and full of colour as 
 an early Italian picture. Her gown was bright red merino, which 
 set off the fairness of her complexion, and the pale gold in her brown 
 hair ; such a cheap gown, if he had only known, bought at one of 
 the sales for halt its value, timid beauty being afraid of the strong 
 colour. 
 
 The other two girls were in somewhat tawdry attire, skirts of one 
 colour, bodices of another; but they were fond of colour at the 
 Homestead, and girls with scanty purses cannot bend to the iron 
 rule of fashion. 
 
 To Vansittart's admiring eyes, Eve's red gown was the most 
 exquisite and artistic of garments. He who was generally so much 
 at his ease in all kinds of company found himself hesitating a little 
 as he said that he had come to ask them if they had quite recovered 
 from the fatigue of the dance ; and, if so, how it was they had not 
 been on the ice in Redwold Park. 
 
 " But perhaps you are tired of skating." 
 
 " Tired ? Why, we all adore it," cried Eve. "But we have been 
 dreadfully busy, making our winter gowns." 
 
 The second week in January seemed to Mr. Vansittart a late date 
 at which to set about the making of winter raiment. He did not 
 know that for many young women with slender purses the January 
 and July sales are the only periods for the purchase of drapery. 
 Twice a year the Marchant girls treated themselves to third-class 
 tickets from Haslemere to Waterloo, and spent a long day going 
 from shop to shop to secure the utmost value for their poor little 
 stock of cash. 
 
 " Yes ; it's really dreadful to lose a week of this delicious hard 
 frost, ain't it ? " exclaimed Sophy, much readier of speech this even- 
 ing than her elder sister. 
 
 " Run to the kitchen and get me another teapot, Peggy," whis-
 
 60 The Venetians. 
 
 pered Eve ; whereupon the youngest girl started up from the rug 
 and bounded off on her errand. 
 
 "Just as we were all improving in our skating," said Jenny. 
 " We had conquered the outside edge, and Sophy and I were begin- 
 ning to grasp the right idea of the Dutch roll, and were even 
 aspiring to the grape vine." 
 
 "And then the hockey," interjected Sophy ; " the hockey was too 
 delightful." 
 
 Again the fair head bent itself towards the hearthrug. There 
 was another whisper, and the elder girl bounced up and ran off. 
 
 " She has gone for a cup and saucer, and I am going to give you 
 some fresh tea," said Eve, smiling at the visitor as he sat in the 
 Colonel's chair, in that corner of the room which bore no traces of 
 girlish litter. " I hope you don't mind our waiting upon ourselves. 
 We have only our old Yorkshire Nancy, and a little parlour-maid ; 
 and as it is the little maid's afternoon out, here we are, five intelli- 
 gent young people, ready to help each other." 
 
 " I cannot conceive a more delightful spe .tacle. But why make 
 fresh tea, Miss Marchant ? I am sure there is some of your last 
 brew which would do capitally for me." 
 
 " If I did not know you are saying that for kindness, I might think 
 you one of those unsympathetic people who don't care for tea." 
 " Do tea and sympathy go together ? " 
 
 " I think most nice people are tea-drinkers. Indeed, it seems to 
 me that tea is the link that holds society together. Oh, what 
 should we do with our afternoons — however could we go and call 
 upon people — if it were not for afternoon tea? " 
 
 " And I see that afternoon tea, with you young ladies, is a some- 
 what serious function," said Vansittart, with a glance across the 
 well-spread table to the pile of toast which Sophy was buttering. 
 
 The younger girls had come back, one with a china teapot, the 
 other with a cup and saucer, and Eve was busy with her second 
 brew. 
 
 " Please don't laugh at us. We are a very irregular family in the 
 matter of luncheon, and this is our hungriest meal." 
 
 The youngest girl, who had resumed her seat on the hearthrug, 
 was at this juncture seized with a giggling fit, which she vainly en- 
 deavoured to suppress, and which speedily communicated itself to 
 the youngest but one, also seated on the rug. 
 
 " Those children are too absurd," exclaimed Sophy, after trying 
 to frown them into propriety. "They are always laughing at 
 nothing." 
 
 " Happy age," said Vansittart ; " the time so soon comes when 
 we can't laugh at anything." 
 
 " She said it was our hungriest meal 1 " gasped Hetty, of the
 
 Teat iine in Arcadia. 61 
 
 yellow pinafore, in convulsions of undisguised laughter; "I should 
 rather think it was." 
 
 " I suppose these young ladies are not j r et promoted to late 
 dinners? " hazarded Vansittart, wondering a little why this question 
 of afternoon tea could afford such scope for mirth. 
 
 "No, we don't dine late," protested Hetty, more and more 
 hilarious. " We don't, do we, Peggy ? " 
 
 Peggy, the white-pinafored youngest, was speechless with laughter. 
 
 Vansittart began to divine the mystery. In this household of 
 narrow means there was no late dinner for the ladies of the family. 
 There was doubtless a dinner for the Colonel. Man cannot long 
 support life without the regulation evening meal ; but for this house- 
 hold of girls bread and jam and plum-loaves were an all-sufficient 
 repast. Was low living — this diet of innocent bread and butter — 
 one of the causes of Eve's peerless complexion, he wondered? All 
 the girls were more or less pretty. It might be that this Arcadian 
 fare had something to do with their prettiness. 
 
 Never had he enjoyed a meal so much as that afternoon tea in 
 the Marchants' parlour. As he sat looking at the room in the lamp- 
 light he began to think he had never seen a prettier room for a 
 family to live in. The fireplace was wide and spacious, an open 
 hearth, with a high projecting mantelpiece, and narrow shelves over 
 that, slanting upward to the ceiling, and dotted about with trumpery 
 blue teacups, and yellow and red vases from the Riviera. The 
 Colonel had begun with the intention of making an ingle nook, but 
 being told, in the rustic builder's phraseology, that an ingle nook 
 would run into money, he had contented himself with a wide fire- 
 place and a projecting chimney. There was only black and white 
 on the walls, a few etchings, and a good many photographs of 
 pictures, against a dark red paper. There was a cottage piano in 
 a corner, draped with a Bellagio rug of vivid amber, and there were 
 other Bellagio nigs on the sofa, and on the Colonel's armchair. For 
 the rest the furniture was of the shabbiest ; clumsy substantial old 
 chairs and tables that suggested the hindermost dens of the second- 
 hand furniture dealer, those yards and back premises in which he 
 keeps his least attractive goods. The room was uncarpeted, but 
 crudely coloured Indian rugs of the cheaper kind brightened the 
 oak-stained floor here and there, and gave a suggestion of luxury. 
 The lamp in the middle of the round table was subdued by a large 
 shade of art muslin, daintily frilled and ribboned, evidently a home 
 production ; the German tablecloth was of white and red damask, the 
 crockery was white, cheap but pretty, and there were a few winter 
 flowers and bright berries in brown glass vases. Altogether that 
 tea-table had a delightful aspect to John Vansittart. The room, 
 the firelight, the fresh young faces, with that one fairest face shining
 
 62 The Venetians. 
 
 like a star among the others, the hoydens upon the hearthrug 
 giggling at the idea of a dinnerless household, made up a scene of 
 homely enchantment. Even a white fox-terrier which had begun 
 by snapping at him, and which was now at his knee begging for 
 toast, seemed part and parcel of the pleasant homeliness. It was 
 teatime in a domestic fairyland ; a fairyland where people eat slices 
 of buttered plum-loaf and hot frizzling toast; a fairyland odorous 
 of strawberry jam ; a land where young women put their elbows on 
 the table, and had no need of a chaperon to keep them in counte- 
 nance during the visit of a young man ; in a word, the fairyland of 
 Bohemia. To Vansittart, who in England had known only the 
 respectabilities, the everlasting laws and conventionalities of smart 
 people, differing in detail with the fashion of the hour, but funda- 
 mentally the same — to Vansittart, the young man of property and 
 position, this glimpse of an unconventional household was as novel 
 as it was fascinating. Pretty as Eve Marchant was, he would not 
 have admired her half so much at a ball in Grosvenor Square. It 
 was the touch of pathos, the touch of comedy in the girl's history 
 and surroundings which interested him. 
 
 He sat long at the tea-table, and eat more buttered toast than he 
 had eaten at a sitting since he was an undergraduate. He forgot even 
 to ask if Colonel Marchant were at home, and had almost forgotten 
 the existence of that gentleman when Hetty, the youngest but one, 
 on being reproved for noisy utterance, replied, "It don't matter, 
 father can't hear me at the Bag." 
 
 "Colonel Marchant is in town, I conclude," said Vansittart. 
 
 " He went up by the afternoon train," Eve answered with a 
 stately air. " He is dining with some old chums to-night, and I 
 don't think he'll be home before Saturday." 
 
 " I have not been fortunate enough to meet him yet." 
 
 "I'm afraid he's rather unsociable," answered Eve, suddenly 
 serious, while over all the young faces there spread a shadow of 
 seriousness. " He lets us accept invitations — and I'm sure people 
 are very kind to go on asking us when we can't pay them the proper 
 respect of new frocks." 
 
 " What do people care about frocks ? " exclaimed Jenny, the 
 third daughter, with a Eepublican ah. "If we are asked out it is 
 because we are liked, in spite of our old frocks." 
 
 " Or because people are sorry for us," said Eve, gravely. 
 
 "I don't think people are ever sorry for youth and beauty," 
 said Vansittart. " Both are objects of envy rather than of com- 
 passion." 
 
 "Oh, I can't follow you there," answered Eve; "everybody is 
 young once. Youth is as common as chickweed or groundsel, and 
 it lasts such a short time ; and if one has to spend that one bright
 
 Teatime in Arcadia. 63 
 
 little bit of life in a state of perpetual hard-uppishness, I am sure 
 one deserves to be pitied." 
 
 She talked of her poverty with an alarming frankness. Most 
 people hide their indigence as if it were an ugly sore, or if they 
 speak of it, speak softly, apologetically, or with an assumed light- 
 ness, as if their poverty were not really poverty, but only a genteel 
 limitation of means, implying none of the shortcomings of actual 
 want. But this girl talked of her old frock and her father's poverty, 
 without a blush. 
 
 "Father won't visit anywhere now," she said. " He can't forget 
 that he once lived in a big house, and had a thousand acres of 
 shooting, and bred his own pheasants. He can hardly bring himself 
 to shoot other people's birds, even when they ask him to their big 
 shoots." 
 
 "Your old home was in the North, I think?" said Vansittart, 
 delighted at being let into the family secrets. 
 
 " In Yorkshire — within ten miles of Beverley. Do you know 
 Beverley?" 
 
 " Yes ; I was there once — a queer sleepy old place, once re- 
 nowned for its corrnption ; now from a political point of view nil. 
 A town with a Bar — a Bar which did something to Charles the 
 First, I believe. Did Beverley shut him out, or did Beverley let 
 him in after Hull had shut him out? My common or Gardiner 
 history is at fault there." 
 
 " Beverley is a dear old town," asserted Eve. " I haven't seen 
 it since I was twelve years old, but I can remember the countenance 
 of every house in the market-place, and the colouring of every 
 window in the Minster. Father won a cup at the races when I was 
 eleven, and I took it home in the carriage with me. I remember 
 having it in my lap, a great gilt cup. I thought it was gold till my 
 governess told me it was only silver-gilt. Heaven knows what 
 became of that cup ! Father despised it. The race was a paltry 
 affair, I believe, and his horse was a poor creature. He had won 
 ever so many better cups at bigger races ; but I only remember the 
 cup I carried home, and the broad, bright common, and the blazing 
 July day, and the happy-looking people. It was my last summer 
 in Yorkshire, my last summer in the house where I was born. 
 Before the next summer we all came here. Mother, and the 
 governess, and the rest of us. Peggy was a baby in long clothes, 
 and mother was only just beginning to be seriously ill." 
 
 " And if you could have seen this place when we first came to it 
 you would have pitied us," said Sophy. " A parson's family had 
 been living in it, an overgrown family like us, but without the 
 faintest idea of the beautiful. The parson's wife kept poultry, and 
 there were horrid wired enclosures close to the parlour window, and
 
 64 The Venetians. 
 
 there was no porch, and no possibility of saying ' Not at home ' to 
 callers. There were only vegetables in the garden, potatoes and 
 scarlet-runners, where we have made lawns." 
 
 " She calls those long strips of grass lawns," interjected Peggy, 
 irreverently disposed towards a dictatorial grown-up sister who was 
 not the eldest. Against Eve no one rebelled. 
 
 "And think how squeezed we all must have been till father built 
 this room, and picture to yourself the mess and muddle we had to 
 endure all the time it was being built. It didn't matter to him, for 
 he was out of the worst of it." 
 
 " He had to take mother to the South that winter," explained 
 Eve. " She had been in weak health for ever so long before we 
 left Yorkshire. A weakly plant can't bear being torn up by the 
 roots, can it ? I think that change in our fortunes broke her heart 
 — added to — to other things." 
 
 She did not say what the other tilings were, and he could not ask 
 her; nor would he ask her what had brought about the Colonel's 
 ruin. He could make a shrewd guess upon the latter point. The 
 value of landed property had gone down, and the man had kept a 
 racing stud. Between those two facts there was ample room for 
 change of fortune. 
 
 "Mother never came back to us," said Eve, with a gentle sigh. 
 "She is lying-in the cemetery at Cannes. People have told me 
 about her grave, and that it is in a lovely spot. There is some 
 comfort in being able to think of that, after all these years." 
 
 " I know that resting-place well," said Vansittart. " There is no 
 lovelier home for the dead." 
 
 There was a brief silence. Even the children on the hearthrug 
 were dumb, and there was no sound but the contented purring of 
 Hetty's colossal cat, a brindled grey, with a fluffy white breast, a 
 cat that was satiated with the worship of pretty girls, and gave him- 
 self as many airs as if he had been kittened in Egypt, and ranked 
 among gods. 
 
 " Dear as Beverley was, I hope you all like your Sussex home, 
 said Vansittai't. 
 
 " Sussex is well enough, but when one is used to a big stone 
 house, with a picture-gallery, and one of the finest Jacobean stair- 
 cases in the East Biding, it is rather hard to come down to a 
 labourer's cottage that has been dodged and expanded into the most 
 inconvenient house in the neighbourhood," said Sophy, with a grand 
 air, and tilting her retrousse - nose a little higher than usual. 
 
 Again the girls on the hearthrug burst into inextinguishable 
 
 laughter. 
 
 "What a snob you are, Sophy!" cried the outspoken Hetty. 
 «■ You say all that as if you had learnt it by heart; and as for
 
 Teatime in Arcadia. 65 
 
 coming down, yon came down to the labourer's cottage when yon 
 were eleven years old. You ought to be used to it now you are 
 twenty." 
 
 Twenty. Sophy, the second, was twenty — and there was only 
 a year between her and Vansittart's incomparable she, who had 
 migrated to Sussex when she was twelve. One and twenty, in the 
 fair majority of her girlish charms. He thought it the most delight- 
 ful period in woman's life — fair as in her teens, but wiser : mature 
 for love and wisdom. 
 
 All earthly blisses must end. The blissfullest five o'clock tea 
 cannot last for ever ; but Vansittart was determined to make this 
 endure as long as he could. The meal was finished. Even those 
 long, lean hands of the youngsters had ceased to be stretched harpy- 
 like towards the table for more bread and jam, or another slice of 
 cake, which an elder sister dispensed with somewhat offensive com- 
 ments upon the ravenous maw of youth. 
 
 " Oh, come now," cried the offended Peggy. " Suppose I do eat 
 a lot ; I haven't stopped growing yet. You have, yet I've heard 
 you say you could sit and eat one of Nancy's plum-loaves all the 
 ev ming. But that was when there was no one here but ourselves." 
 
 Sophy blushed furiously, and Vansittart came laughingly to the 
 rescue. 
 
 " I can vouch for the seductiveness of Nancy's plum-loaf," he 
 said. " I think I must coax her to impart the recipe to my mother's 
 cook. Is your Nancy a coaxable person ? " 
 
 " Not very. She adores us, but she is rather gruff and grim to 
 the outside world. She was in father's service as kitchen-maid 
 when she was fourteen, at the time of his marriage, ages before I 
 was born," said Eve. 
 
 Ages. Yet she was the eldest. What did that word ages mean? 
 Three years, perhaps, in a young lady's vocabulary. 
 
 " And she followed your fortunes from the old house, and she is 
 as faithful as Cabel Balderstone, I dare say," said Vansittart, and 
 felt in the next moment that it was precisely one of those things he 
 had better have left unsaid. 
 
 " She is just like Caleb," replied Eve, frankly accepting the 
 suggestion, '"just as faithful and true. I feel sure that if it were 
 suddenly put upon us to give a dinner, and there were a saddle of 
 mutton or a fore-quarter of lamb hanging conveniently before a 
 neighbour's fire, Nancy would elope with it just as audaciously as 
 Caleb made off with the cooper's spit — all for the credit of the family. 
 She works like a slave for us from morning till night. She is a 
 splendid manager, and she makes tea-cakes as only a Yorkshire- 
 woman can." 
 
 " And in cooking she could give points to many of your professed 
 
 F
 
 66 The Venetians. 
 
 cooks," said Jenny. " Father is a difficult man in the matter of 
 dinner." 
 
 "And dinner is a difficult matter for poor people," laughed Eve, 
 to the annoyance of Sophy, who had not yet taken to heart the 
 foolishness of the ostrich family, and who was always anxious to 
 slur over an impecuniousness which was visible to the naked eye. 
 It was only Eve who had learnt to grasp the nettle. Perhaps it 
 was her country life, among green fields and blackthorn hedgerows, 
 and chestnut copses, and the barren heather-clad hills, which had 
 kept her free from the age's worst fever, the sickly longing for 
 wealth. Had she been reared in Pimlico or Brompton, she too might 
 have been spoilt, her nature warped, her mind tainted with the 
 sordid thirst for gold, the desire for finery and fine living, the aching 
 envy of rich men's daughters. The people she knew and mixed 
 with were county people, who wore their old gowns, and lived 
 simple, old-fashioned lives when they were in the country, and left 
 their modern vices behind them in London ready for use next 
 season. 
 
 Vansittart glanced at a cheap little American clock ticking among 
 the cups and vases on the chimney-piece. A quarter past six, and 
 his watch had told him that it was a quarter before five as he 
 approached the Homestead. 
 
 " I don't know how to apologize for staying so long," he faltered, 
 as he rose from the Colonel's comfortable chair and extricated his 
 hat from the reluctant paws of the grey cat. 
 
 " Don't apologize," said Jenny, who was the pertest of the sisters ; 
 " there is nothing so unflattering to one's amour propre as a short 
 visit. And then there are so many of us. A visitor must stay a 
 longish time in order to give each of us a civil word." 
 
 Vansittart's conscience smote him at this remark. He feared 
 that he had addressed his conversation exclusively to Eve. He had 
 no consciousness of having spoken to any one else. For him the 
 room had held only Eve ; only that one salient figure. The others 
 were faintly sketched in the background. She was the picture. 
 
 He got out of the room somehow, after shaking hands all round, 
 and even in his deep trance of love he was conscious that the two 
 youngest hands were sticky with traces of strawberry jam. There 
 being no one else to show him out — for who could disturb Nancy, 
 remote in the kitchen, with futile ringing of a ceremonial bell ? — 
 the whole bevy of sisters accompanied him to the outer door, the 
 youngest carrying a tall candle, which threatened to topple over 
 and sprinkle her with a shower of ozokerit. He had time to notice 
 the rooms through which they went — one shabbily furnished as a 
 dining-room, with an old harpsichord for sideboard ; the other evi- 
 dently the Colonel's den for books, boots, and tobacco. He had
 
 Why should he refrain? 67 
 
 time to note the porch or vestibule, where there hung much outer 
 apparel, feminine and masculine, hats, scarves, fishing basket, sticks 
 of all shapes and thicknesses, mostly from native woods and hedge- 
 rows. He had time to note everything during that lingering de- 
 parture, protracted by idle talk about the roads and the weather : 
 and yet while his eye took in the shabbiness and smallness of those 
 two rooms, the rustiness of the Colonel's overcoats, mind and eye 
 both were filled with but one image — the figure of a tall, fair girl, 
 whose fluffy head overtopped her sisters, and shone conspicuous 
 among them all (as it would have shone, he thought, amidst a 
 thousand), by its fresh and innocent beauty. 
 
 " And that is the girl I love ; and that is the girl I mean to 
 marry," he said to himself, as he walked briskly along the footpath 
 towards Blackdown. 
 
 After such dawdling in Armida's parlour he would have to walk 
 his fastest to be in time to dress for the eight o'clock dinner. 
 
 *»■- 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFRAIN? 
 
 Why should he not marry Colonel Marchant's daughter? Vansit- 
 tart asked himself, in the quiet of those night watches which are 
 said to bring counsel. 
 
 Why should he not marry Eve Marchant ? asked Jack Vansittart 
 of Counsellor Night. He was lord not only of himself but of a 
 handsome income and a desirable estate. He had nobody to please 
 but himself, and — well, yes, he wanted to please his mother, even 
 in a matter so entirely personal as his choice of a wife. She had 
 been so devoted a mother, and they had loved each other so dearly ! 
 In all his life he had kept only one secret from her — the secret of 
 that night at Venice. In all his life he had only once told her a lie ; 
 when he told her he had not been in Venice during that last Italian 
 tour. He wanted to please her, if it were possible, in this most 
 serious question of his marriage. He knew that she loved him too 
 unselfishly to be sorry that he should marry, albeit marriage must 
 in some wise lessen their companionship as mother and son. The 
 major half of his existence must needs belong to the woman he chose 
 for his wife. His mother was resigned to take her lesser place in his 
 life, she had often told him, provided that the wife were worthy. 
 
 " Pure as well as beautiful, sprung from an honourable race, 
 reared by a good mother." 
 
 These were the conditions she had laid upon his choice. What 
 would she think of Colonel Marchant's daughter, motherless, the 
 child of a disreputable father, a girl reared under every social dis-
 
 63 The Venetians. 
 
 advantage ; a girl who had dragged herself up anyhow, according 
 to village gossips ; a girl who had neither accomplishments nor 
 education, and who had shown herself an audacious flirt, said the 
 village — for Eve's frank freedom of speech and manner was the 
 rustic idea of audacity in flirtation ? To talk easily with a man 
 under forty was to be an outrageous flirt. The rustic idea of a well- 
 conducted young woman was simpering silence. 
 
 What w T ould his mother think of such a choice ; his mother, who 
 had been born and bred in just that stratum of English respectability 
 which is narrowest in its sociology and strongest in its prejudices ; 
 his mother, who belonged to the county families, those deeply rooted 
 children of the soil to whom the word trade is an abomination ; who 
 think that the Church and the Army were established for the main- 
 tenance of their younger sons, who consider they make a concession 
 when they send a son to the Bar, and who shudder at the notion of 
 a doctor or a solicitor issuing from their superior circles ? What 
 would Mrs. Vansittart think of an alliance with the daughter of a 
 man whose name was dishonoured, who, albeit he too had been 
 born of that elect race, and was indisputably " county," had made 
 himself a pauper and an outcast by his misconduct, and who had 
 lived for the last nine years in a Bohemian and utterly intolerable 
 manner, spending his time mysteriously in London, letting his 
 daughters run wild, and having to be summoned for his rates and 
 taxes? 
 
 The charges against Colonel Marchant, as Vansittart had heard 
 them, were manifold. He had begun life in a marching regiment, 
 without expectations, had married a lovely girl of low birth, or 
 supposed to be of low birth, since her pedigree was unknown to 
 Sussex, and her antecedents and uprising had never been explained 
 or expounded to the curious in the neighbourhood of the Colonel's 
 present abode. Within two years of this marriage he had succeeded, 
 most unexpectedly, by the death of a young cousin, to a fine estate 
 in Yorkshire, considerably dipped by previous owners, but still a 
 fine estate, and had immediately begun a career of extravagance, 
 horse-racing, betting, and disreputable company, which had ulti- 
 mately forced him to sell mansion and manor, farms and home- 
 steads, that had belonged to his family since the Commonwealth, 
 when the lands of East Grinley were bestowed by Cromwell on one 
 of his finest soldiers, Major Fear-the-Lord Marchant, an officer who 
 had helped to turn the fortunes of the day at Marston Moor, and 
 who had been left for dead on the field of Dunbar. 
 
 Colonel Marchant had kept race-horses, and in his latter and 
 worst days — when ruin was close at hand — had been suspected of 
 shady dealings in the management of his stud, and had been the 
 subject of a Jockey Club inquiry, which, albeit not important enough
 
 Why should he refrain f 69 
 
 to become a cause celebre, had left the Colonel with a tarnished 
 reputation on the Turf, and the dark suspicion of having made a 
 good deal of money by in and out running. He withdrew from the 
 racing world under a cloud, not quite cleaned out, for the money he 
 had won in the previous autumn served to buy the cottage near 
 Fernhurst, and to carry his family from Yorkshire to Sussex. Here 
 he began life anew, a ruined man, with five young daughters and an 
 invalid wife. 
 
 Of Colonel Marchant's existence at the Homestead local society 
 had very little to say, except in a general way that he was not 
 "nice." He neglected his daughters, he never went to church, and 
 he was always in debt. Maiden ladies and old women of the 
 masculine gender used to speculate upon how long he would be 
 able to go on before his creditors took desperate measures. How 
 I0112; would Midh urst and Haslemere bear and forbear with a man 
 who was known to be deep in debt in both towns ? All this and 
 much more had John Vansittart heard from various people since 
 the night of the hunt ball, for he had laid himself out with consider- 
 able artfulness to hear all he could about the Marchant family. In 
 the beginning of things, albeit Eve appeared to him in all the 
 innocent loveliness of Titania, he had told himself that he could 
 not marry into such a family. Such an alliance would blight his 
 life. He would have those four sisters upon his shoulders. He 
 would be disgraced by a disreputable father-in-law. 
 
 And now in the night watches he told himself a very different 
 story. He told himself that he should be a craven and a cur if he 
 allowed Eve Marchant to suffer for her father's sins. What was it 
 to him that the Colonel had squandered his money on third-rate 
 racers, and had been suspected of in and out running on second-rate 
 racecourses ? He loved the Colonel's daughter ; and as an honest 
 man it was his duty to take her away from unworthy surroundings. 
 Inclination and honesty pointing the same way, he was determined 
 to do his duty — yes, even at the risk of disappointing the mother 
 he loved. 
 
 So much for the night watches. He saw before him a fierce 
 battle between love and prejudice, but he was determined to fight 
 that battle. 
 
 The war began while this resolve was yet a new thing. 
 
 " So you have been calling at the Homestead, Jack," said his 
 sister at luncheon next day. 
 
 "Who told you that?" he asked curtly, reddening a little. 
 
 "One of those little birds of which we have a whole aviary. I 
 drove into Midhurst this morning to talk to the fishmonger, and 
 met the two Miss Etheringtons. They saw -you going in at < iolonel 
 Marchant's gate yesterday afternoon.''
 
 70 The Venetians. 
 
 " I wonder they didn't wait outside to see when I came out 
 again, 1 ' said Vansittart. 
 
 1 " I dare say they would have waited if it had heen warmer 
 weather. What could have induced you to call upon Colonel 
 Marchant? Colonel, indeed! Colonel of a Yorkshire Volunteer 
 regiment ! I don't believe he was ever anv hidier than ensign in 
 the 107th." 
 
 " Very likely not. But I didn't call upon the Colonel ; I called 
 upon my partners at the hunt ball." 
 
 " And no doubt they received you with open arms ! " 
 
 " They received me with true Yorkshire hospitality, and gave me 
 some excellent tea, to say nothing of buttered plum-loaf." 
 
 " And I dare say they were not in the least embarrassed at doing 
 the honours to a strange young man, without mother, or aunt, or so 
 much as a governess to keep them in countenance." 
 
 " Why should they require to be kept in countenance ? Surely 
 five girls ought to be chaperon enough for each other ? " 
 
 " They are the most unconventional young women I ever met 
 with," said the eldest Miss Champernowne, who was a good judge 
 of the conventional. 
 
 " They are very pretty, poor things," said Mrs. Vansittart. " It 
 is sad for them to belong to such a father." 
 
 " You might spare your pity, mother," exclaimed her son, grow- 
 ing angry. "I don't know anything about Colonel Marchant; but 
 I haven't the slightest doubt that the things that are said about him 
 in this neighbourhood are the usual exaggerations and distortions of 
 the truth. As for his daughters, I never made the acquaintance 
 of five brighter, healthier, merrier girls. The household is full of 
 interest for me ; and I want you to call at the Homestead with me, 
 mother, and see with your own eyes what manner of girls Eve 
 Marchant and her sisters are." 
 
 " I call upon them, Jack ! " exclaimed his mother. " I, who am 
 only a visitor here ! What good could that do ? " 
 
 "Plenty of good, if j t ou like. You don't live quite at the other 
 end of England. From Haslemere to Liss is not half an hour's 
 journey ; and if you happen to like Miss Marchant — as I think you 
 will — you might ask her to visit you at Merewood." 
 
 A light dawned upon the hitherto unsuspecting mother, a light 
 which was far from welcome. She sat looking at her son dumbly. 
 
 " Why not ask the whole five, while you are about it, Mrs. 
 Vansittart ? " said Claudia Champernowne, her thin lips contracting 
 a little, as if she, too, saw cause for offence in Vansittart's suggestion. 
 
 " My dear Jack, you must know I am the last person in the world 
 to invite strange young women to my house — young women whose 
 Bohemian ways would make me miserable," remonstrated Mrs.
 
 Why should he refrain f 7 1 
 
 Vansittart, severely. "I can't think what can have put such an 
 idea into your head." 
 
 " Christian charity, no douht," sneered Claudia. 
 
 " Well, after all, these girls are not actually disreputable," pleaded 
 Lady Hartley, who was always good-natured; "one sees them at 
 all the omnium gatherums in the neighbourhood, and they don't 
 behave worse than the general run of girls. If you had asked me 
 to take notice of them, Jack, I could understand you — but to bother 
 mother— mother who lives in another county, and who can't be 
 supposed to care about taking up strange girls." 
 
 " So be it, Maud. You shall go with me the next time I call at 
 the Homestead." 
 
 "What, you are actually going to keep up a calling acquaintance 
 with the Marchant girls? How very eccentric ! " 
 
 " Yes, I am going to keep up my acquaintance with the Miss 
 Marchants. I am going to make myself acquainted with their 
 father. I am going to see with my own eyes whether Lucifer is 
 quite as black as he is painted," answered Vansittart, doggedly. 
 
 " You won't like the Colonel. I am positive upon that point," 
 said Maud. " Hubert is an excellent judge of character, and he 
 couldn't stand the Colonel ; although he felt sorry for the man and 
 tried to be civil to him. Colonel Marchand is an impossible person." 
 
 " What has he done that makes him impossible? " 
 
 " Oh, I really can't give you the exact details ; but they say all 
 sorts of unpleasant things about him." 
 
 " ' They say.' We know who ' they ' are — an unknown quantity, 
 winch, when inquired into, resolves itself into half a dozen old 
 women of both sexes." 
 
 " Unhappily everybody knows that he is in debt all over the 
 neighbourhood." 
 
 " He must be a remarkable man to have found a neighbourhood 
 so trustful." 
 
 " Oh, I suppose he pays a little on account from time to time, or 
 he would not be able to go on anyhow ; but really, now, Jack, you 
 can't expect me to be on intimate terms with a household of that 
 kind. 1 am very glad to have those poor girls at my garden-parties, 
 for they are pretty and tolerably well-behaved, though their frocks 
 and hats are too dreadful. What did I tell you Lady Corisande 
 Hawberk called those poor girls when she saw them here last 
 summer, Claudia ? " 
 
 " Lady Hartley's burlesque troupe." 
 
 "Yes, that was it — Lady Hartley's burlesque troupe! They 
 were all three dressed differently— and so tine — especially the two 
 younger. The eldest is a shade more enlightened. One wore 
 cheap black lace over apricot silk— you are a man, so you don't
 
 72 The Venetians. 
 
 know what cheap black lace means — and a Gainsborough hat. 
 Another was in peach-coloured cotton — that papery, shiny cotton, 
 which is meant to look like silk, with a straw sailor hat all over 
 nodding peach-coloured poppies — and her parasol ! — heavens, her 
 parasol 1 bright scarlet cotton, and six feet high ! Lady Corisande 
 was immensely amused." 
 
 " Is poverty so good a joke ? " asked Vansittart, black as thunder. 
 
 " Oh, it wasn't their poverty one laughed at. It was their child- 
 like ignorance of our world and its ways. If they had all three worn 
 clean white frocks and neat straw hats they would have looked 
 charming. It was the effort to be in the height of fashion " 
 
 " With colours and materials three years old," put in Claudia. 
 
 " I tell you it is poverty you laugh at — poverty alone that is 
 ridiculous. We have arrived at a state of things in which there is 
 nothing respected or respectable except money. We pretend to 
 honour rank and ancient lineage, but in our secret hearts we set no 
 value on either unless sustained by wealth." 
 
 "What a tirade!" cried Lady Hartley, "and all because of a 
 little good-natured laughter at those girls' frocks. To think that 
 a pretty face, which you have seen only twice, should exercise such 
 dominion over you 1 " 
 
 The ladies left the dining-room in a cluster to put on their hats 
 for a walk to the ice. Skating was the rage at Red wold Towers, 
 and even Mrs. Vansittart went to look on. She liked to see her son 
 and daughter disporting themselves, each an adept in the art ; and 
 then there was the off-chance of meeting the German nurse with 
 the year-old baby somewhere in the grounds before sunset. The 
 baby had already taken a strong grip upon the grandmother's heart, 
 
 John Vansittart did not go with the skaters, as it had been his 
 wont to go. Nor did he offer to keep his mother company in her 
 afternoon walk. He was in a sullen and resentful mood, resentful 
 of he knew not what; so he started on a solitary ramble in the 
 Redwold copses, where he would have only robins and jays and 
 chaffinches, and the infinite variety of living things whose names he 
 knew not, for his companions. 
 
 He was angry with all those talking women, his sister first and 
 foremost ; but most of all was he angry with himself. 
 
 Yes, it was her beauty that had caught him, that picture of 
 Titania delicately fair against the darkly purple night, her pale gold 
 hair, her sapphire eyes shining in the starlight. Yes, his sister's 
 flippant tongue had hit upon the humiliating truth. It was only 
 because this girl appealed to his fancy that he was so eager and so 
 angry, this girl whom he had seen the other night for the first time, 
 of whose heart, character, antecedents, kindred, he knew absolutely 
 nothing. It was only because she was so lovely in his eyes that he
 
 Why should he refrain ? jt, 
 
 was prepared to champion her, ready to marry her if she would 
 have him. 
 
 "lama fool," he told himself, " an arrant fool, a fool so foolish 
 that even shallow-brained Maud can see my folly. I know nothing 
 of this girl, absolutely nothing except that surface frankness which 
 passes for innocence — and which might be assumed by Becky Sharp 
 herself. Indeed, we are told that it was Becky's guilelessness which 
 always impressed people in her favour. May not this girl, daughter 
 of a shady father, be every bit as clever and far-seeing as Becky 
 Sharp V I dare say she is laughing at my infatuation already, and 
 wondering how far it will lead me. Sefton, too ! Miss Green said 
 there was an understanding between them. His manner was 
 certainly a thought too easy. No doubt she is trying to hook 
 Sefton, a landowner, one of the best matches in the neighbourhood. 
 And she puts on that stand-offish manner of malice aforethought, to 
 lead him on by keeping him off. I should be an idiot if I were to 
 commit myself, without knowing a great deal more about the young 
 lady. I have been getting absolutely maudlin about the girl. This 
 is how half the unhappy marriages are made. 1 ' 
 
 He stopped in his swinging walk, after tramping along the narrow 
 muddy track at five miles an hour. The ring of the skates, the shouts 
 of boys playing hockey, sounded clear upon the frosty air. He 
 was not more than a mile from the pond as the crow liies. 
 
 " Sophy said their gowns would be finished this morning," he 
 mused. " I wonder whether they will be on the ice this afternoon. 1 ' 
 
 He tramped the narrow track between the thick growth of oak 
 and fir, emerged from the copse, and struck out a path across some 
 low-lying pastures to the lake, which lay in the lowest part of 
 Bedwold Park, and only five minutes' walk from one of the lodges, 
 where some of the skaters kept their skates. There were a good 
 many skaters this fine bright afternoon — an afternoon in which 
 there was no consciousness of cold, though the atmosphere was 
 twelve degrees below freezing point, just such a calm, clear atmo- 
 sphere as Vansittart had often enjoyed in the Upper Engadine. There 
 were a good many people on the ice — the villagers at one end of 
 the long irregular-shaped piece of water, the gentry at the other — 
 a rustic bridge dividing the classes from the masses. About twenty 
 girls were playing hockey, the three Champernownes conspicuous 
 among the rest by their tine carriage and sober attire. Those girls 
 had certainly mastered the art of dress, Vansittart admitted to him- 
 self. They wore black serge gowns, cut to perfection by a fashion- 
 able tailor, black cloth jackets, tight-fitting, severe, with narrow 
 collar and cuffs of Astrakhan, at a time when Astrakhan was not 
 everybody's wear. Their hats were the neatest on the ice — black 
 felt hats, with the least touch of scarlet in the loose knot of corded
 
 74 The Venetians. 
 
 ribbon which was their only trimming. No wings, claws, or beaks ; 
 no anchors, arrows, crescents, or buckles of jet, gilt or steel ; none of 
 those tawdry accessories which sometimes convert a young lady's 
 headgear into a museum of curiosities. Long tan gloves, fresh and 
 perfectly fitting, completed the toilet of the three sisters, who had 
 early realized the effect that is made in any public assembly by 
 three handsome girls dressed alike. 
 
 Jack Vansittart paced the bank, stopping now and then to watch 
 the skating, but with no inclination to join the revellers. The walk 
 along the side of the lake was a pleasant walk, in some parts open 
 to the water, in other places screened by hazel and aider. Here 
 and there in a bend of the lake there was a hillock, on which the 
 skaters sat to take off or adjust tbeir skates, and on which the spec- 
 tators sometimes stood to watch the sport. 
 
 From this point of vantage Vansittart surveyed the scene, and as 
 he did so became conscious of a man standing on the opposite side 
 of the lake, also surveying the scene. A second glance assured 
 him that the man was Sefton. He had only seen Sefton at the 
 ball, but he could not be mistaken in that sharp, hooked nose, 
 sallow complexion, and black beard. It was Sefton, lightly clad, as 
 if prepared for skating, but holding himself aloof from the throng. 
 
 There was a fascination for Vansittart in this solitary spectator, 
 and it was while watching him that he became aware of a new 
 arrival. Sefton, whose hawk-like eyes had been looking up and 
 down the lake, suddenly concentrated his attention on one spot at 
 the end near the lodge, and as suddenly walked off in that direction. 
 Vansittart imitated him on his side of the lake, and was speedily 
 enlightened as to the cause of Sefton's movements. As he neared 
 the lodge gate he saw three young women approaching — three 
 young women in blue gowns, widely different in shade. 
 
 Now, the Champernownes and his sister — who talked of 
 chiffons for an hour at a stretch — had dinned into his brain the fact 
 that blue was not worn that winter. The colour might be a beauti- 
 ful colour in the abstract, the colour of sky and sea, of sapphires and 
 forget-me-nots, of children's eyes and running brooks, but it was a 
 colour which no woman who respected herself would wear. It 
 was "out," and that monosyllable meant that it was anathema 
 maranatha. 
 
 And behold here came the three girls in their new winter frocks, 
 a blaze of blue; Sophy splendid in peacock cloth, trimmed with 
 plush that almost matched ; Jenny in uncompromising azure, the 
 blue of Eeckitt's and the British laundress ; Eve less startling in a 
 dark Oxford cloth, very plainly made, with a little home-made 
 toque of the same stuff. 
 
 The fact was that the fashionable drapers were almost giving
 
 Why should he refrain? J 5 
 
 away their blue stuffs that January, and the prudent Merchants had 
 been able to get the best materials at a third of their value. 
 
 " And after all it isn't the colour, but the style of a gown that 
 makes it fashionable or otherwise," Sophy had said philosophically, 
 as she pored over a fashion plate, trying to realize a creation which 
 nobody ever saw out of that fashion plate. 
 
 The girls seemed quite happy in their blue raiment, or at least 
 the two younger girls, who greeted Vansittart with frank cordiality. 
 Eve had a somewhat absent air as she shook hands, he thought, 
 though her sudden blush thrilled him with the fancy that he might 
 not be quite indifferent to her. He saw her glance away from him 
 while they were talking, and look right and left, as if expecting to 
 see some one. Could it be Sefton ? Mr. Sefton came across the ice 
 while Vansittart was asking himself that question, shook hands with 
 the three girls, and then walked away with Eve along the path, 
 where the hazels and alders soon hid them from the jealous eyes 
 that followed their steps. " Miss Green was right," thought Vansit- 
 tart ; " there is an understanding between them." 
 
 The two younger girls skipped off to an adjacent bank to put 
 on their skates, and were soon provided with a pair of youthful 
 admirers, both clerical, to assist them in the operation. Vansittart 
 stood looking idly at the hockey-playing for some minutes, quite 
 long enough to allow Eve and her companion to get a good way 
 towards the further end of the pond, and then he turned and strolled 
 in the same direction. As he sauntered on, disgusted with life and 
 the world, which seemed just now made up of disillusions, he heard 
 slow footsteps approaching him, just where the path made a sudden 
 bend, footsteps and voices. 
 
 They were coming back, those two. They had not prolonged 
 their tete-a-tete. The aspect of affairs was not quite so black as it 
 had seemed ten minutes ago. He did not purposely listen to what 
 they were saying. The sharp bend of the path, screened at this 
 point by a clump of hazels, divided him from them. Short of calling 
 out to them to warn them of his vicinity he could not have avoided 
 hearing what he did hear : only five short sentences. 
 
 "lam very sorry. It was a false scent," said Mr. Sefton. 
 
 "And we are no nearer knowing anything? " 
 
 " No nearer. I sincerely regret your disappointment." 
 
 There was a lingering tenderness in his tone that made Vansittart 
 feel a touch of the original savage that lives in all of us — a rush of 
 boiling blood to brain and heart which hints at the hereditary 
 taint transmitted by bloodthirsty ancestors. A few more steps and 
 he and Miss Marchant were face to face, as she and her companion 
 turned the corner of the hazel clump. She looked at him piteously 
 -through a veil of tears as they passed each other. Sefton had power
 
 76 
 
 The Venetian 
 
 A. 
 
 to make her cry. Surely that implied something more than common 
 acquaintance, nay, even more than friendship. All the tragedy of 
 an unhappy love affair might he in those tears. 
 
 He looked back. She and Sefton had parted company. He was 
 talking to some men on the bank. She had joined her sisters on 
 the ice, and was standing with her skates in her hand, as if debating 
 whether to put them on or not. 
 
 Should he go and entreat to be allowed to kneel at her feet, and 
 do her knightly service by budding stiff buckles and battling with 
 difficult straps ? No, he would not be such a slave. Let Sefton 
 wait upon her ; Sefton, who had all her confidence ; Sefton, who 
 could bring tears to those lovely eyes. 
 
 Vansittart rambled off across the frozen pasture, turning his back 
 resolutely upon the noise of many voices, the ringing of many skates. 
 
 " It was a false scent." What could that possibly mean ? How 
 in the language of lovers could that phrase come in? A false scent. 
 "I deeply regret your disappointment." What disappointment? 
 Why should she be disappointed, and Sefton regretful ? In any love 
 affair between those two there could seem no reason for disappoint- 
 ment. The man was free to marry whom he pleased. Did he mean 
 honourably by this girl ; or was he only fooling her with attentions 
 which were to 'end in unworthy trifling ? Was he taking a base 
 advantage of her dubious position to essay the seducer's part ? From 
 all that he had heard of Sefton's character Vansittart doubted much 
 that he was capable of a generous love, or that he was the kind of 
 man to marry a girl whose father was under a cloud. 
 
 And she ? — was she weak and foolish, innocently yielding her 
 heart to a man who meant evil ? or was she her father's daughter, 
 a schemer by instinct and inclination, like Becky Sharp ? Vansittart 
 tried to put himself in Joe Sedley's place, tried to realize how a 
 man may see honesty and sweet simplicity where there are only 
 craft and finished acting. To poor vain Josh Becky had seemed 
 all truth and girlish innocence. Only one man of all Becky's ad- 
 mirers had ever thoroughly understood her, and that man was Lord 
 Steyne. 
 
 Vansittart walked a long way, engrossed by such speculations as 
 these — at one time inclined to believe that this girl whom he so 
 ardently admired was all that girlhood should be — inclined to trust 
 her even in the face of all strange seeming, to trust her and to follow 
 her footsteps with his reverent love, and if he found her responsive 
 to that love to take her for his wife, in the teeth of all opposition. 
 
 " Why should my mother be made unhappy by such a marriage? " 
 he asked himself. " If I can prove that Eve Marchant is in no wise 
 injured by her surroundings, what more do we want ? What are 
 the surroundings to my mother or to me ? Even if I had to pension
 
 Why should he refrain ? yy 
 
 the Colonel for the rest of his life I should think little of the cost — 
 if it brought me the girl I love." 
 
 After all, he told himself time was the only test — time must decide 
 everything. His duty to himself was to possess his soul with 
 patience, to see as much as he could of the Marchant family without 
 committing himself to a matrimonial engagement, and without being 
 guilty of anything that could be deemed flirtation. No, he would 
 trifle with no woman's feelings ; he would not love and ride away. 
 He would put a bridle upon his tongue ; but he would make it his 
 business to pluck out the heart of the Marchant mystery. Surely 
 among five girls he could manage to be kind and friendly without 
 entangling himself with any one of the five. 
 
 Having made out for himself a line of conduct, be walked back 
 to the lake. The shadows of twilight were creeping over the grass. 
 There were very few people on the ice. The Marchants had taken 
 off their skates, and were saying good-bye to the two curates who 
 had been their attendant swains. 
 
 " We have such an awful way to walk it we go by the high-road, 
 and we must go that way, for the footpath will be snowed up," said 
 Sophy. " It will be dark long before we are home." 
 
 The curates had, one an evening school, the other a penny read- 
 ing, coming on at half-past seven, so they were fain to say good- 
 night. Vansittart came up as they parted. 
 
 " Let me walk home with you," he said ; " I haven't had nearly 
 enough walking." 
 
 " Then what a tremendous walker you must be ! " said Jenny ; 
 " I saw you marching over the grass just now as if you were walking 
 for a wager." 
 
 His attendance was accepted tacitly, and presently he and Eve 
 were walking side by side, in the rear, while the two younger girls 
 walked on in front, turning round every now and then to join in the 
 conversation, so that the four made one party. 
 
 Eve's eyes were bright enough now, but she was more silent than 
 she had been at their tea-drinking, and she was evidently out of 
 spirits. * 
 
 " I'm afraid you didn't enjoy the skating this afternoon." 
 
 " Not much. The mornings are pleasanter. We came too late." 
 
 " Shall you come to-morrow morning ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I have promised my young sisters to bring them for a long 
 morning. They won't let me off." 
 
 " Do they skate ? " 
 
 " Hetty skates. The little one only slides. She is a most deter- 
 mined slider." 
 
 " Does Colonel Marchant never come with you ? " 
 
 " Never. He does not care about walking with girls."
 
 73 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 " Perhaps it is presumptuous in a bachelor to speculate on 
 domestic feelings, but I think if I were a widower with five nice 
 daughters my chief delight would be in going about with them." 
 
 " If you look round among your friends I fancy you will find that 
 kind of father the exception rather than the rule," Eve answered, 
 with a touch of bitterness. 
 
 They walked on in silence for a little while after this, she looking 
 straight before her into the cool grey evening, he stealing an occa- 
 sional glance at her profile. 
 
 How pretty she was ! The pearly complexion was so delicate, 
 and yet so fresh and glowing in its youthful health. Hygeia herself 
 might have had just such a complexion. The features, too, so 
 neatly cut, the nose as clear in its chiselling as if it were pure 
 Grecian, but with just that little tilt at the tip which gave piquancy 
 to the face. The mouth was more thoughtful than he cared to see 
 the lips of girlhood, for those pensive lines suggested domestic 
 anxieties ; but when she smiled or laughed the thoughtfiilness 
 vanished, lost in a radiant gaiety that shone like sunlight over all 
 her countenance. He could not doubt that a happy disposition, a 
 power of rising superior to small sordid cares, was a leading 
 characteristic of her nature. 
 
 She had natural cheerfulness, the richest dowry a wife can bring 
 to husband and home. Presently, as he swung his stick against 
 the light tracery of hawthorn and blackberry, a happy thought 
 occurred to him. His sister had pledged herself to be kind to these 
 motherless girls. Her kindness could not begin too soon. 
 
 " You are to bring your sisters to the ice to-morrow morning, 
 Miss Marchant," he said presently. " What do you call morning? " 
 
 " I hope we shall be there before eleven. The mornings are so 
 lovely in this frosty weather." 
 
 " The mornings are delicious. Come as early as you possibly can. 
 After two hours' skating you will be tolerably tired, I should think 
 ■ — though you walk with the ah - of a person who does not know 
 what it is to be tired — so you must all come to lunch with my sister." 
 
 " You are very kind," said Eve, blushing, and suddenly radiant 
 with her happiest smile, " but we could not think of such a thing." 
 
 " I understand. You would not come at my invitation. You 
 think I have no rights in the case. Yet it would be hard if a 
 brother couldn't ask his friends to his sister's house." 
 
 " Friends, perhaps, yes ; but we are mere acquaintance." 
 
 " Please don't say anything so unkind. I felt that we were friends 
 from the first, you and your sisters and I, from the hour we found 
 you on the top of the hill, when I mistook you for fairies. However, 
 all the exigencies of the situation shall be complied with. My sister 
 shall write to you this evening."
 
 Why should he refrain ? 79 
 
 " Pray, pray don't suggest such a thing," entreated Eve, very 
 much in earnest. " Lady Hartley will think us vulgar, pushing 
 girls." 
 
 " Lady Hartley will think nothing of the kind. She was saying, 
 only a few hours ago, that she would like to see more of you all. 
 You must all come, remember — all five. The Champernownes leave 
 by an early train to-morrow morning," he added cheerfully ; " there 
 will be plenty of room for you." , 
 
 " Are the Miss Champernownes going away ? " 
 
 " Yes, they go on to a much smarter house, where baccarat is 
 played of an evening, instead of our modest billiards and whist. 
 My brother-in-law is a very sober personage. He is not in the 
 movement. It is my private opinion that those three handsome 
 young ladies have been unspeakably bored at Redwold Towers." 
 
 " I am very glad they are going," answered Eve, frankly. " We 
 don't know them, so their going or coming ought not to make any 
 difference to us. But there is something oppressive about them. 
 They are so handsome, they dress so well, and they seem so 
 thoroughly pleased with themselves." 
 
 " Yes, there's where the offence comes in. Isn't it odd that from 
 the moment a man or woman lets other people see that he or she 
 is thoroughly delighted with his or her individuality, talents, beauty, 
 or worldly position, everybody else begins to detest that person ? A 
 Shakespeare or a Scott must go through life with a seeming uncon- 
 sciousness of his own powers, if he would have his fellow-men love 
 him." 
 
 "I think both Shakespeare and Scott contrived to do so, and that 
 is one of the reasons why all the world worships them," said Eve, 
 and on this slight ground they founded a long conversation upon 
 their favourite books and authors. He did not find her "cultured." 
 Of the learning which pervades modern drawing-rooms — the learn- 
 ing of the Fortnightly, and the Contemporary, the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury and Macmillan — he found her sorely deficient. She had read 
 no new books, she knew nothing of recent theories in art, science, 
 or religion. She knew her Shakespeare and Scott, her Dickens, 
 Thackeray, and Bulwer-Lytton, and had read the poets whom every- 
 body reads. She had never heard of Marlow, and Beaumont and 
 Fletcher were to her only names. She revelled in fiction, the old, 
 familiar fiction of the great masters ; but history was a blank. She 
 had not read Froude ; she had never heard of Green, Gardiner, 
 Freeman, or Maine. 
 
 " You will find us woefully ignorant," she explained, when she 
 had answered in the negative about several books, which to him 
 were of the best. " We have only had a nursery governess. She 
 was a dear old thing, but I don't think you could imagine a more
 
 So The Venetians. 
 
 ignorant person. She came to us when I was six, and she only left 
 us when Peggy was nine, and she would have stayed on as a kind 
 of Duenna, only she had a poor, old, infirm mother, and she was 
 the only spinster daughter left, and so had to go home and nurse 
 the mother. She was very strong upon the multiplication table, 
 and she was pretty good at French. She knew La Grammaire des 
 Grammaires by heart, I believe. But as to history or literature ! 
 Even the little we contrived to pick up for ourselves was enough to 
 enable us to make fun of her. We used to ask her why Charles 
 the Second didn't make Erasmus a bishop, or whether Eleanor of 
 Aquitaine was the daughter or only the niece of Charlemagne. She 
 always tumbled into any trap we set for her." 
 
 " A lax idea of chronology, that was all," said Vansittart. 
 
 He walked very nearly to the Homestead, and was dead beat by 
 the time he got back to Redwold Towers. He had been tramping 
 about ever since luncheon. He and Eve Marchant had done a 
 good deal of talking in that four-mile walk, but not once had he 
 mentioned Sefton's name, nor had he made the faintest attempt to 
 discover the drift of that confidential conversation of which a few 
 brief sentences had reached his ear. Yet those sentences haunted 
 his memory, and the thought of them came between him and all 
 happier thoughts of Eve Marchant. 
 
 His sister was considerably his junior, and he had been accustomed 
 to order her to do this or that from her babyhood upward, she 
 deeming herself honoured in obeying his caprices. It was a small 
 thing, then, for him to request her to invite Miss Marchant and all 
 her sisters to luncheon next day. 
 
 " Do you really mean me to ask all three ? " questioned Maud, 
 arching her delicate eyebrows in mild wonder. 
 
 " I mean you to ask all five. The little girls are coming to skate 
 on your pond. Give them a good lunch, Maud. Let there be game 
 and kickshaws, such as girls like — and plenty of puddings." 
 
 " All five ! How absurd ! " 
 
 " You said you would be kind to them." 
 
 " But five ! Well, I don't suppose the number need make any 
 difference. What alarms me is the idea of getting too friendly with 
 them — a dropping in to lunch or tea acquaintance, don't you know. 
 The girls are as good as gold, I have no doubt ; but they lead such 
 an impossible life with that impossible father — he almost always 
 away, no chaperon, no nice aunts to look after them — only an old 
 Yorkshire servant and a bit of a girl to open the door. It is all too 
 dreadful." 
 
 " From your point of view, no doubt ; but lives as dreadful are 
 being led by a good many families all over England, and out of lives 
 as dreadful has come a good deal of the intellectual power of the
 
 Why should he refrain f 8 1 
 
 Country. Come, Maud, don't prattle, but write your letter — jnst a 
 friendly little letter to say that I have told you they are coming to 
 skate, and that you must insist upon their stopping to lunch." 
 
 He had found her in her boudoir just before dressing for dinner, 
 and in the very act of sealing the last of a batch of letters. She 
 took up her pen at his bidding, and dashed off an invitation, 
 almost in his own words, with a thick stroke of the J pen under 
 " insist." 
 
 " Will that do ? " she asked. 
 
 "Admirably," said Vansittart, with his hand on the bell. "All 
 you have to do is to order a groom to ride to the Homestead 
 with it." 
 
 "Hadn't I better invite Mr. Sefton to meet them?" inquired 
 Maud, with a malicious little laugh. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because he is said to be running after Miss Marchant. I only 
 hope pour le bon motif" 
 
 " However shady a customer Colonel Marchant may be, I shouldn't 
 think any man would dare to approach his daughter with a bad 
 motive," said Vansittart, sternly. 
 
 "The Colonel encourages him, I am told; so I suppose it is all 
 right." 
 
 "You are told," cried Vansittart, scornfully. "What is this 
 cloud of unseen witnesses which compasses about village life m> 
 that what a man owes, what a man eats,, what a man thinks and 
 purposes are common topics of conversation for people who never 
 enter his house ? It is petty to childishness, all this twaddle about 
 Colonel Marchant and his daughters." 
 
 " Jack, Jack ! " cried Maud, shaking her head. " I can only say 
 I am sorry for you. And now run away, for goodness' sake. We 
 shall both be late for dinner. I shall only have time to throw on a 
 tea-gown." 
 
 A footman brought Lady Hartley a letter at half-past nine that 
 evening. Vansittart crossed the draAving-room to hear the result ot 
 the invitation. 
 
 " Dear Lady Hartley, 
 
 "It is too good of you to ask us to luncheon after 
 skating, and I know it will be a treat for my young sisters to see 
 your beautiful house, so I am pleased to accept your kind invitation 
 for the two youngest and myself. Sophy and Jenny beg to thank 
 you for including them, but they cannot think of inflicting so large 
 a party as five upon you. 
 
 " Very sincerely yours, 
 
 "Eve Marchaxt." 
 
 Q
 
 82 The Venetians. 
 
 " She has more discretion than you have, at any rate, Jack," said 
 Maud, as he read the letter over her shoulder. 
 
 " She writes a fine bold hand," said he, longing to ask for the 
 letter, the first letter of hers that his eyes had looked upon. 
 
 " I'm very sorry the five are not coming," he went on. " Those 
 two poor girls will have a scurvy luncheon at home, I dare say — 
 dismal martyrs to conventionality. You must ask them another day." 
 
 " We'll see how to-morrow's selection behave," answered Maud, 
 with her light laugh. 
 
 Vansittart was on the pathway by the lake before eleven o'clock, 
 and he had a bad half-hour of waiting before Eve and her two young 
 sisters appeared at the lodge. He met them near the gates, and 
 they set oft* for the ice together. 
 
 " I hear you only slide," he said to the little one, who was red as 
 a rose after the long walk throagh the nipping air. " That won't 
 do. You must turn over a new leaf to-day, and learn to skate. I'm 
 going to teach you." 
 
 "That would be lovelv," answered Peggv ; "but I've got no 
 skates." 
 
 " Oh, but we must borrow a pair or steal a pair. Skates shall be 
 found somehow." 
 
 " Won't that be jolly ? " cried Peggy. 
 
 The skates were found at the lodge, where Vansittart coolly ap- 
 propriated a pair belonging to one of the little girls at the nearest 
 parsonage, and the lesson was given. A lesson was also given to 
 Eve, who skated fairly well, but not so well as Vansittart after one 
 winter's experience in Norway and another in Vienna. Sefton 
 came strolling on to the ice while they were skating, and tried to 
 monopolize Miss Marchant ; but the young lady treated him in 
 rather an oft-hand manner, greatly to Vansittart's delight. He 
 hung about the lake for some time talking to one or another of his 
 neighbours, most of the young people of the neighbourhood and a 
 good many of the middle-aged being assembled this fine morning. 
 Towards one o'clock he came up to Eve, who was playing hockey 
 with a number of girls. " Is the Colonel at home? " he asked. 
 
 "Yes, father came home last night." 
 
 " Then I'll walk over and see him. It's a splendid day for a good 
 long tramp. Let me know when you and your sisters are leaving, 
 that I may walk with you. That road is uncommonly lonely for 
 girls." 
 
 "You are very kind ; but we are never afraid of the road. And 
 to-day we are not going home for ever so long," added Eve, joyously. 
 " We are going to lunch with Lady Hartley.'' 
 
 " That alters the case," said Sefton, prodigiously surprised.
 
 Why should he refrain t 8 
 
 " Then I'll look your father up another day, when I can be of some 
 use as an escort. I dare say Mr. Vansittart will see you home." 
 
 " Haven't I told you that we want no escort ? " exclaimed Eve, 
 impatiently. " One would think there were lions between here and 
 Fernhurst." 
 
 "There are frozen-out gardeners and such-like, I dare say. 
 Quite as bad as lions," he answered, as he turned on his heel, 
 jealous and angry. 
 
 This fellow was evidently pursuing her with some kind of suit, 
 Vansittart thought. Could he mean to many her? Could any 
 man with an established position in the county mean to ally himself 
 with Colonel Marchant? 
 
 Vansittart had seen the two talking, but had not been near 
 enough to hear what they said. He rejoiced at seeing Sefton walk 
 away discomfited. There was anger in the carriage of his head as 
 he turned away from her. He had been snubbed evidently. But 
 if she snubbed him to-day, must she not have sometimes encouraged 
 his attentions ? He had all the manner of a man to whom certain 
 rights have been given. 
 
 They walked up to the house merrily, over the grey, frosty grass, 
 Hetty and Peggy running on in front and racing and wheeling like 
 fox-terriers, so" elated by the day's delights. Peggy had distinguished 
 herself on her borrowed skates. Her teacher declared she was a 
 born skater. 
 
 Lady Hartley was sunning herself in the broad portico, waiting 
 to receive her guests. Miss Green had gone out shooting with Sir 
 Hubert and his party. There were only Mrs. Vansittart, Mrs. 
 Baddington, and Mr. Tivett at home. 
 
 " Only us two men among all you ladies," said Tivett, cheerily, 
 as they assembled before the huge wood fire in the drawing-room. 
 
 " Hadn't you better say us one and a half, Gussie ? " asked Mrs. 
 Baddington, laughing. " It seems rather absurd to talk of yourself 
 and Mr. Vansittart as if you were of the same weight and substance." 
 
 Mr. Tivett, who was half hidden between Hetty and Peggy, 
 received this attack with his usual amiability. " Never mind weight 
 and substance," he said ; " in moral influence I feel myself a giant." 
 
 " Not without justification," said Vansittart. " If you were to 
 compare Tivett 's reception at a West End tea-party with mine you 
 would see what a poor thing mere brute force is in an intellectual 
 environment." 
 
 " Oh, they like me," replied Tivett, modestly, " because I can 
 talk chiffons. I can tell them of the newest ladies' tador — some 
 little man who lives in an alley, but has found out the way to cut 
 a habit or a coat, and is going to take the town by storm next season, 
 I can put them up to the newest shade of bronze or auburn hair— *
 
 84 The Venetians. 
 
 the Princess's shade. I can tell them lots of things, and the dear 
 bouIs know that I am interested in all that interests them." 
 
 " I never talk to Gussie Tivett without thinking how much nicer 
 a womanly man is than a manly woman," said Mrs. Baddington, 
 meditatively. 
 
 " Ah, that is hecause the former imitates the superior sex, the 
 latter the inferior," answered Lady Hartley. 
 
 Eve sat in the snug armchair where Vansittart had placed her, 
 silent, but happy, looking about the room and admiring the wonder- 
 ful mixture of old and new things; furniture that was really old, 
 furniture that cleverly reproduced the antique ; trifles and modern 
 inventions of all kinds which make a rich woman's drawing-room a 
 wonderland for the dwellers in shabby houses; the tall standard 
 lamps of copper or brass or wrought iron, with their fantastical 
 shades ; the abundance of flowers and flowering plants and palms, 
 in a season when for the commonalty flowers are not ; all those 
 things made an atmosphere of luxury which Colonel Marchant's 
 daughter needs must feel in sharpest contrast with her own sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 She admired without a pang of envy. She had taken her 
 surroundings for granted a long time ago ; and so long as her father 
 was able to pacify his creditors by occasional payments, and so 
 long as rates and taxes got themselves settled without desperate 
 measures, Eve Marchant was at peace with destiny. 
 
 While her senses of sight and scent were absorbing the beauty 
 and perfume of the room, Mrs. Vansittart came in from a walk with 
 the nurse and baby, and her son made haste to introduce his sister's 
 guest. 
 
 " Mother, this is Miss Marchant," he said briefly, and Eve rose 
 blushing to acknowledge the elder woman's greeting. 
 
 He would not commit himself, forsooth. Why, in the look he 
 gave her as she rose shyly to take his mother's hand, in the tender- 
 ness of his tone as he spoke her name, he was commiting himself 
 almost as deeply as if he had said outright, " Mother, this is the 
 woman I love, and I want you to love her." 
 
 Mrs. Vansittart, prejudiced b} 7, much that she had heard of the 
 Marchant household, could but acknowledge to herself that the 
 Colonel's eldest daughter was passing fair, and that this sensitive 
 countenance in which the bloom came and went at a breath, had as 
 candid and innocent an outlook as even a mother's searching eye 
 could desire in the countenance of her son's beloved. But then, 
 unhappily, Mrs. Vansittart had seen enough of the world and its 
 ways to know that appearances are deceitful, and that many a 
 blushing bride whose drooping head and gentle bashfulness suggested 
 the innocenco that might ride on lions and not be afraid, has after- 
 wards made a shameful figure in the Divorce Court.
 
 ( 3 5 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME. 
 
 The luncheon at Redwold Towers was a very sociable meal. Lady 
 Hartley was at all times a gracious hostess, and she was perhaps a 
 little more attentive to Colonel Marchant's daughters than she would 
 have been to guests of more assured position. 
 
 The meal was abundant, and served with the quiet undemonstra- 
 tive luxury which steals over the senses like the atmosphere of the 
 Lotos Island, with its suggestion of a world in which there is neither 
 labour nor care, no half-empty mustard-pots, or stale bread, or flat 
 beer, or unreplenished pickle-jars. 
 
 There was plenty of game, and there were those appetising 
 kickshaws, Russian salads, and such-like, which Vansittart had 
 bargained for, and cold and hot sweets in profusion. Hetty and 
 Peggy eat enormously, urged thereto by Mr. Tivett, who sat 
 between them ; but Eve had no more appetite than might have 
 been expected in a sensitive girl who finds herself suddenly in a 
 new atmosphere — an atmosphere of unspoken love, which wraps 
 her round like a perfume. Vansittart remonstrated with her for 
 eating so little after a long walk and a morning on the ice ; but she 
 could but see that he eat very little himself, and that all his time 
 and thoughts were given to her. 
 
 The cup of coffee after lunch was the most fragrant she had ever 
 tasted. 
 
 " If I could only make such coffee as that father wouldn't grumble 
 as he does at his after-dinner cup," she said. 
 
 " The still-room maid always uses freshly roasted coffee," said 
 Lady Hartley. " I believe that is the only secret of success." 
 
 She felt in the next moment how foolish it was to talk of still-room 
 maids to this girl, whose household consisted of two faithful drudges, 
 and who no doubt had to do a good deal of housework herself. 
 
 Miss Marchant had enough savoir faire to depart very soon after 
 luncheon. She only lingered long enough to look at the flowers 
 which Mrs. Vansittart showed her, during which brief inspection 
 the elder lady spoke to her very kindly. 
 
 "You are the head of the family, I am told," she said. "Isn't 
 that rather an onerous position for one so young ? " 
 
 "I was twenty-one last November, and I begin to feel quite 
 old," answered Eve ; " and then our family is not a difficult one 
 to manage. My sisters are very good, and accommodate them- 
 selves to circumstances. We live very simply. We have none 
 of those difficulties with servants which I hear rich people talk 
 about."
 
 86 The Venetians. 
 
 " You and your sisters look wonderfully well and happy," said 
 Mrs. Vansittart, interested in spite of herself. 
 
 "Yes, I think we are as happy as people can be in a world where 
 everybody must have a certain amount of trouble," Eve answered, 
 with the faintest sigh. " We are very fond of each other, and we 
 have great fun out of trifles. We contrive to be merry at very 
 little cost. Peggy and Hetty are very amusing. Oh, how they 
 have eaten to-day! It will be a long time before they forget 
 Lady Hartley's banquet." 
 
 " It does children good to go out now and then. They must 
 come again very soon. I know my daughter will like to have 
 them ; but my son and T are going home almost immediately." 
 
 " Home." Eve looked a little crestfallen as she echoed the word. 
 " You don't live very far off, I think, Mrs. Vansittart? " 
 
 "No. Only an hour's journey. We live in a region of pine and 
 heather; and I have a garden and an arboretum, which are my 
 delight. But our country is not any prettier than yours, so I 
 mustn't boast of it." 
 
 " This is not my country," said Eve. " I feel like a foreigner 
 here, though we have lived at the Homestead a good many years. 
 Yorkshire is my country." 
 
 " But surely you must prefer Sussex. Yorkshire is so far away 
 from everything." 
 
 The two girls came to Eve and hung about her. They had put 
 on their gloves and little fur tippets — spoil of rabbit or cat— and 
 were ready for the start. Mrs. Vansittart noticed their coarse 
 serge frocks, their homely woollen stockings and village-made boots. 
 They were tidily clad, and that was all that could be said of them. 
 A village tradesman's children would have been smarter ; and yet 
 they looked like young ladies. 
 
 " These are your two youngest sisters, and you have two older — 
 five daughters in all," said Mrs. Vansittart. " Colonel Marchant 
 ought to be very proud of such a family. And have you no 
 brothers ? " 
 
 " None in England," Eve answered, with a touch of sadness, and 
 then without another moment's delay she began to make heradieux. 
 
 " I am going to see you home, if you will let me," said Vansittart, 
 in the hall ; "I heard you say that Colonel Marchant is at home, 
 and I should like to seize the opportunity of making his acquaintance." 
 
 A faint cloud spread itself over Eve's happy face, and she was 
 somewhat slow in replying. " I am sure father will be very pleased 
 to see you." 
 
 " And I'm sure you won't like father when you see him," cried 
 Peggy, the irrepressible. 
 
 " Peggy, how dare you ? " exclaimed Elvg,
 
 He would take his Time. 87 
 
 " Well, but people don't like him," urged the resolute damsel. 
 " He ain't civil to people, and then we have to suffer for it ; for, of 
 course, people think we're just as bad, lie keeps all his good 
 manners for London." 
 
 "Peggy, Peggy!" 
 
 " Don't Peggy me. It's the truth," protested this dreadful child ; 
 and then she challenged Vansittart boldly, " You like us, Mr. 
 Vansittart, I know you do; but you'll never be kind to us any 
 more after you've seen father." 
 
 This gush of childish candour was discouraging, and Vansittait's 
 heart sank as he asked himself what manner of man this might be 
 whom he was thinking of as a father-in-law. Other people had 
 spoken ill of Colonel Marchant, and he had made light of their 
 disparagement ; but this denunciation from the lips of the eleven- 
 year-old daughter was far more serious. 
 
 " Perhaps the Colonel and I may get on bettor than you expect, 
 Madam Peggy," he said, with a forced laugh ; " and allow me at 
 the same time to suggest that you have forgotten a certain com- 
 mandment which tells us to honour our fathers and mothers." 
 
 "Are we to honour any kind of father?" asked Peggy; but 
 Vansittart was not called upon to answer, for Hetty at that 
 moment descrying a squirrel, both little girls rushed off' to watch 
 his ascent of a tall beech that grew on the grassy waste by which 
 tiiey were walking. 
 
 The walk was a long one, but though there was time for Van- 
 sittart and Eve to talk about many things, time for the two younger 
 girls to afford many distractions, an undercurrent of thought about 
 the man he was going to see ran beneath all that light surface talk, 
 and made Vansittart's spirit heavy. 
 
 " You must not think anything of what Peggy says," Eve apolo- 
 ized, directly after that little outbreak of the youngest born. 
 " Father is irritable sometimes. He can't endure noise, and Hetty 
 and Peggy are dreadfully noisy. And our house is so small — I 
 mean from his point of view. And then he snubs them, poor 
 young things, and they think him unkind." 
 
 "It is a way we have when we are young," answered Vansittart 
 gently, " to take snubs too seriously. If our parents and guardians 
 could only put themselves inside those small skins of ours they 
 would know what pain their preachings and snubbings inflict." 
 
 " Father is much to be pitied," pursued Eve, in a low voice. 
 " His life has been full of disappointments." 
 
 " Ah, that is a saddening experience," answered Vansittart, 
 tenderly sympathetic. 
 
 His heart thrilled at the thought that she was beginning to con- 
 |i'l<' in him, to treat him as a friend, 
 
 &
 
 88 The Venetians. 
 
 " His property in Yorkshire was so disappointing. I suppose land 
 has gone down in value everywhere," said Eve, rather vaguely; " but 
 in father's case it was dreadful. He was forced to sell the estate just 
 when land in our part of the country was a drug in the market." 
 
 Vansittart had never heard of this cheapness of land in the East 
 Riding, but he felt that if this account of things were not actual 
 truth, Eve Marchant fully believed what she was telling him. 
 " And then his horses, they all turned out so badly." 
 " Ungrateful beasts." 
 
 " You can understand that the life we lead at Fernhurst is not a 
 very happy life for such a man as my father — a sportsman — a man 
 whose youth was spent in the best society. It is hard for him to be 
 mewed up with a family of girls. Everything we say and do must 
 jar upon him." 
 
 " Surely not everything. There must be times in which he can 
 take delight in your society." 
 
 " Oh, I'm afraid not. There are so many of us ; and we seem so 
 shallow and silly to a man of the world." 
 
 " A man of the world. Ah, there's the difficulty," said Vansittart, 
 slightly cynical. " That kind of man is apt to be miserable without 
 the world." 
 
 After this they talked of other tilings ; lightly, joyously ; of the 
 country through which they were walking ; its beasts, and birds, 
 and flowers, and humble cottage folk ; of the places he had seen 
 and the books she had read, those fictions of the great masters 
 which create a populace and a world for the dwellers in lonely 
 homes, and provide companions for the livers of solitary lives. 
 They were at no loss for subjects, though that well-spring of polite 
 conversation, a common circle of smart acquaintance, was denied 
 to them. Their talk was as vivacious as if they had had all London 
 society to dissect. 
 
 It was teatime again by the time they arrived at the Homestead. 
 The lamp was lighted in the family parlour ; the round table was 
 spread ; the kettle was hissing on the hob ; Sophy and Jenny were 
 sitting on one side of the fire ; and on the other side, in that arm- 
 chair which Vansittart had occupied on a previous occasion, sat a 
 man of about fifty, a man with clear-cut features, silver-grey hair 
 and moustache, and a querulous expression of countenance. 
 
 "What in the name of all that's reasonable made you stay so 
 late, Eve ? " he grumbled, as his daughters entered. " Both those 
 children will be laid up with influenza, I dare say, in consequence 
 of your folly." 
 
 Only at this moment did he observe the masculine figure in the 
 rear. He rose hastily to receive a visitor. 
 "Mr. Vansittart, father," explained Eve,
 
 He would take his Time. 89 
 
 The two men shook hands. 
 
 " Girls are so foolish," said the Colonel, by way of apology for 
 his lecture. " It was very kind of you to take care of my daughters 
 on the dark road ; hut Eve ought not to have stayed so long." 
 
 "We left very soon after luncheon, father; but the days are so 
 short." 
 
 " Not any shorter than they were last week. You have had time 
 to become familiar with their shortness, and to make your calcula- 
 tions accordingly." 
 
 "I am sure you didn't want us, father," said the sturdy Peggy; 
 " so you needn't make a fuss." 
 
 Colonel Marchant gave his youngest born a withering scowl, but 
 took no further notice of her contumacy. 
 
 " Pray sit down, Mr. Vansittart, and take a cup of tea before you 
 tramp home again. You must be a good walker to make so light 
 of that long road — for I suppose you came by the road." 
 
 " I am country bred, Colonel Marchant, and am pretty well used 
 to tramping about, on foot or on horseback." 
 
 " Ah, you live near Liss, Eve told me. Have you good hunting 
 thereabouts ? " 
 
 Vansittart mentioned three or four packs of hounds accessible 
 from his part of the country. 
 
 "Ah," sighed the Colonel, "you young men think nothing of pro- 
 digious rides to cover, and long railway journeys. You hunt with 
 the Vine from Basingstoke— with the Hambledon from Bishop's 
 Waltham ! You are tearing about the country all November and 
 December, I have no doubt ? " 
 
 " Indeed, Colonel, I am not so keen a sportsman as you appear to 
 think. A couple of days a week content me, while there are any 
 birds to shoot in my covers." 
 
 " Ah, two days' hunting and four days' shooting. I understand. 
 That is what an Englishman's life should be, if he lives on his 
 estate. Sir Hubert tells me you have travelled a good deal ? " 
 
 "I have wandered about the Continent, on the beaten paths. 
 I cannot call myself a traveller, in the modern acceptation of the 
 word. I have never shot lions in Africa, nor have I ever bivouacked 
 among the hill-tribes in Upper India, nor risked my life, like Burton, 
 in a pilgrimage to Mecca." 
 
 " Ah, the men who do that kind of thing are fools," grumbled the 
 Colonel. " Providence is too good to them when they are allowed 
 to come home with a whole skin. I have no sympathy with any 
 explorer since Columbus and Raleigh. After the discovery of 
 America, tobacco, and potatoes, the rest is leather and prunella." 
 
 " The Australian and Californian gold-fields were surely a good 
 find,"' suggested Vansittart,
 
 go The Venetians. 
 
 " Has all the gold ever found there made you or me a shilling 
 the richer, Mr. Vansittart ? It has reduced the purchasing value of 
 a sovereign by more than a third, and for men of fixed incomes all 
 the world over those gold-fields have been a source of calamity. 
 When I was a lad, a family man who was hard up could take his 
 wife and children to France or Belgium, and five comfortably on 
 the income he had been starving on in London. Now, life is dear 
 everywhere — even in an out-of-the-way hole like this," concluded 
 the Colonel, savagely. 
 
 Vansittart observed him closely as he talked, and was all the 
 better able to do so, as the Colonel was not given to looking at the 
 person he addressed. He had a way of looking at the fire or at his 
 boots while he talked. His enemies called it a hang-dog air. 
 
 He had not a pleasant face. It was a face wasted by dissolute 
 habits, a face in which the lines were premature and deep, lines 
 that told of discontent and sullen thought. Vansittai't could but 
 agree with Hubert Hartley's estimate of Colonel Marchant. He 
 was not a nice man. He was not a man to whom open-hearted 
 men could take kindly. 
 
 But he w y as Eve's father. 
 
 Vansittart had been sorry for her yesterday ; sorry for her because 
 of those narrow means which cut her off from the pleasures and 
 privileges of youth and beauty. He was sorrier for her to-day, noAV 
 that he had seen her father. 
 
 He took his tea by the family hearth, which had lost its air of 
 rollicking happiness and Bohemian liberty. The five girls were all 
 seated primly at the round table, silent for the most part, while the 
 Colonel rambled on with his egotistical complaining, in the tones of 
 a man maltreated alike by his Creator and by society. 
 
 " Sir Hubert Hartley has a fine place at Bedwold," he said, " and 
 he got it dog-cheap. He is a very lucky man." 
 
 " He's an uncommonly good fellow," said Vansittart, " and he 
 ought to be an acquisition to the neighbourhood." 
 
 "Oh, the neighbours take to him kindly," retorted the Colonel. 
 "He's rich — gives good dinners and good wine. That is the kind 
 of thing country people want. They don't ask too many questions 
 about a man's pedigree when his cellar and his cook are good." 
 
 " My brother-iu-law's pedigree is not one to be ashamed of, 
 Colonel Marchant." 
 
 " Of course not, my dear fellow. Honest labour, talent, patience, 
 invention, the virtues of which Englishmen are supposed to be proud. 
 But you don't mean to tell me that, the Hartleys date from the 
 Heptarchy, or even came over with the Conqueror. There was a 
 day— when I was a lad, unless my memory of social matters plays 
 me false — when county people clung to the traditions of caste.
 
 He ivould take his Time. 91 
 
 and didn't bow down to the golden calf quite so readily as they do 
 now." 
 
 Vansittart could but agree with Peggy as to her father's demerits. 
 He stole a glance at the child on the opposite side of the table, but 
 she was too much absorbed in bread and jam to notice her father's 
 speech, or the impression he was making. Eve had a pained look. 
 He felt very sorry for her as he watched her restless ringers smooth- 
 ing out the gloves which lay on the table before her, with a move- 
 ment that told of irritated nerves. 
 
 He finished his cup of tea, and rose to go; yet lingered weakly, 
 intent on resolving certain jealous doubts of his, if it were possible. 
 
 " I see you are a stickler for blue blood, Colonel Marchant," he 
 said. " I conclude that is one of the reasons you like Mr. Sefton, who, 
 as I hear in the neighbourhood, is by no means a general favourite." 
 
 " Did you ever hear of a man worth anything who was a general 
 favourite? " grumbled the Colonel. "Yes, I like Sefton. Sefton is 
 a gentleman to the marrow of his bones— the son and grandson and 
 great-grandson of gentlemen. His ancestors were gentlemen before 
 Magna Charta. If you want to know what good blood is, you have 
 a fine example in Sefton — a staunch friend, a bitter enemy, stand- 
 offish to strangers, frank and free with the people he likes. lie's 
 the only man in this part of the country that I can get on with ; 
 and I am not ashamed to confess my liking for him." 
 
 Vansittart watched Eve's face while her father was praising his 
 friend. It was a very grave face, almost to pain ; but there was no 
 confusion or embarrassment in countenance or manner. She stood 
 silent, serious, waiting for her father to say his say, and for the 
 guest to leave. And then, without a word, she shook hands with 
 Vansittart, who made the round of the sisters before he was solemnly 
 escorted to the porch by Colonel Marchant. i 
 
 He walked home through the fine, clear night, by hedgerows 
 powdered with snow, through a landscape which was somewhat 
 monotonous in its black and white, past woods and hills, above which 
 the frosty stars shone out in almost southern brillianc}'. 
 
 No, he did not believe that Eve Marchant cared for Wilfred 
 Sefton. There had been no emotional changes from white to red 
 in the fair face he studied, only a serious and somewhat anxious 
 expression, as if the subject were painful to her. No, he had no 
 rival to fear in Sefton; and yet — and yet — there was some lurking 
 mysteriousness in their relations, some secret understanding, or why 
 those tears? Why that confidential conversation, and those stray 
 sentences, which seemed to mean a great deal ? "I sincerely regret 
 your disappointment." " It was a false scent." There must 1 »e 
 some meaning deeper than the trivialities of everyday life in such 
 words a>s thesg,
 
 q 2 The Venetians. 
 
 He thought, and gloomily, of Colouel Marchaut as a possible 
 father-in-law. A most unpleasant person to contemplate in that 
 connection — a soured, disappointed man, at war with society, and 
 quick to sneer at men whom he disliked only because they were 
 more fortunate than himself. That he should sneer at Hubert 
 Hartley, a universal favourite, who from boyhood to manhood had 
 been known to all his friends and neighbours as " Bertie," a familiar 
 style which testified to his popularity ! Would Bertie take the 
 hounds on an emergency ? Would Bertie do this or that for the 
 common weal? — Bertie being always relied on for liberality and 
 good-fellowship. It was intolerable that this out-at-elbows Colonel 
 .should presume to sneer at Bertie Hartley because the wealth which 
 he dispensed so nobly had been earned in trade. 
 
 That second visit to the Homestead had a dispiriting effect, and 
 again A r ansittart told himself that he would take his time ; that 
 having breathed no word of love in Eve Marchant's ear, he was free 
 to carry her image away in his heart, and brood over it, and find 
 out in the course of much sober meditation whether he really loved 
 her well enough to sacrifice all worldly advantages, and to disappoint 
 his mother and sister in the great act of marriage, that act upon 
 which hangs the happiness or misery of all the after life. 
 
 A man who has few belongings, and who has been to those belong- 
 ings as a hero, has need to give some consideration to his people's 
 prejudices before he lead his bride home to the family hearth, where 
 she is to take her place for ever in the family history, either as an 
 ornament or a blot upon a fair record. 
 
 No, he would go no further. He would not be the slave of a 
 foolish passion for a lovely face. He was free to come to Redwold 
 Towers whenever he pleased. He might see Eve Marchant as often 
 as he pleased in the year that was so young. He would take his time. 
 
 And if, while he hesitated and meditated, some bolder wooer were 
 to appear and snatch the prize — what then? Well, that was a risk 
 which he must run ; but he told himself that the chances were 
 against any suitor for the daughter's hand while the father was to 
 the fore. Colonel Marchant's children were heavily handicapped 
 in the race of life. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A FACE IN THE CKOWD. 
 
 Vansittaut spent five weeks at Merewood, hunting a good deal, 
 dining with some of his neighbours once a week or so, and occasion- 
 ally entertaining them at dinner or luncheon ; tiring himself pro- 
 digiously with long rides to cover, or railway journeys before and
 
 A Face in the Crowd. 93 
 
 after the chase, and fulling asleep of an evening by the drawing- 
 room fire, lulled by the monotonous click of his mother's knitting 
 needles, or the flutter of the turning leaves as she read. 
 
 Those fireside evenings after the chase in January and February 
 were delightful to Mrs. Vansittart. She rejoiced with an exceeding 
 joy at having brought her son safe and sound out of the cave of tin' 
 syren, having no suspicion of those serious thoughts of the syren 
 which occupied his mind. There were half a dozen girls in the 
 neighbourhood, two of them heiresses, any one of whom would be 
 welcome to her as a daughter-in-law, for an}' one of whom she would 
 have resigned her place in that household without a murmur, almost 
 without a regret. But she shuddered at the idea of a girl brought 
 up in a Bohemian fashion; a girl who had suffered all the dis- 
 advantages which poverty carries with it; the skimped education ; 
 the vulgarizing influence of petty household cares ; a girl whose 
 father never went to church. Such a girl would be unspeakably 
 distasteful to her. If Eve Marchant were to reign at Merewood, 
 Mrs. Vansittart's grey hairs must go down in sorrow to the grave. 
 
 She rejoiced in her son's company, and was even reconciled to 
 the perils of the hunting field, since hunting occupied his days, and 
 prevented his running after Eve Marchant. If he was unusually 
 silent and thoughtful by the fireside, she ascribed silence and thought- 
 fulness to physical exhaustion. He was there, safe within her ken ; 
 and that was enough. She took infinite pains to bring the girls .she 
 liked about her, and in her son's way, which was not easy, since 
 Vansittart was far afield nearly every day. She would invite one of 
 her favourites to a friendly dinner, escorted by a young brother, 
 perhaps — a proceeding which bored her son infinitely, since instead 
 of sleeping or brooding by the fire he must needs play billiards with 
 the cub, or put himself out of the way to amuse the young lady. 
 
 He was very fond of music of a broad dramatic style — loved grand 
 opera, from Gluck to Meyerbeer and Verdi ; but he had no passion 
 for Grieg or Rubinstein, as expounded, neatly, elegantly, with lady- 
 like inexpressiveness, by his mother's protegees ; and it seemed to 
 his ignorant ear that all his mother's protegees played exactly the 
 same pieces in precisely the same manner. 
 
 If perchance he spent an afternoon at home, he invariably found 
 one of those selected vestals in morning-room or drawing-room when 
 he went to five o'clock tea, that meal being one which his mother 
 loved to share with him, and at which dutiful affection constrained 
 his presence whenever he was on the premises. All the charm of 
 that unconstrained half-hour of chat between mother and son was 
 scared away by the presence of a young lady, albeit the most 
 admirable of her sex. His mother's favourites were very nice girls,
 
 94 The Venetians. 
 
 every one of them, and only two out of the six were painfully 
 religious. He liked them all well enough, in the beaten way of 
 friendship ; b.ut the handsomest and most attractive of them left 
 him cold as marble. He had gone beyond the season of easily 
 kindled fires. He had passed the age at which a man falls in love 
 once in sis weeks. His heart was no longer touch-paper. A few 
 months ago he had believed that he would spend his days as a 
 bachelor, had calculated the manifold advantages of remaining 
 single, with an estate which for a single man meant wealth, but 
 which for a man with wife and family would only mean a modest 
 competence. 
 
 ( He grew so weary at last of those social tea-drinkings and those 
 eminently domestic evenings, that before the hunting season was 
 over he suddenly announced his intention of going to London. It 
 was an understood thing between his mother and himself that the 
 house in Charles Street was always ready for him. The house- 
 keeper left in charge had been his nurse, and administered to his 
 comfort with unwearying devotion. She was an excellent cook, by 
 force of native talent rather than by training and experience, and, 
 with a housemaid under her, kept the house in exquisite order. 
 These two women, with Vansittart's valet, an Italian, able to turn 
 his hand to anything, made up an efficient bachelor establishment. 
 i To Charles Street, therefore, Vansittart repaired, in the Lenten 
 month of March. He had been at some trouble to resist the incli- 
 nation which would have taken him to Redwold Towers, rather than 
 to London. It would have been so easy to offer himself to his sister 
 for a week ; and at Redwold it would have been so easy to see Eve 
 Marchant ; so difficult, perhaps, to avoid seeing her, since Lady 
 Hartley, who was, above all things, cordial and impulsive, had told 
 him in one of her letters that she had taken a fancy to Miss Marchant, 
 and had invited her and one of the sisters to Redwold very often. 
 I "As a wife for you, she is impossible," wrote Maud Hartley. 
 " Pray remember that, Jack. Mother and I are ambitious about 
 your future. We want you to look high, to improve your position 
 from that of a small country gentleman, to make your mark in the 
 world. But, although quite impossible as your wife, as a human 
 being Miss Marchant is charming, and I mean to do all I can in a 
 neighbourly way to make things pleasanter for her. The father is 
 shockingly neglectful, spends the greater part of his life in London ; 
 but that is perhaps an advantage for his daughters, for when he is 
 at home Eve is a slave to him, has to worry about his dinners, and 
 fetch and carry for him, and try to amuse the unamusable, as 
 Madame de Maintenon said. I gather this not from any murmur- 
 ings of Eve's, but from the young sisters, who are appallingly 
 outspoken."
 
 A Pace in the Crowd. §5 
 
 Vansittart had pledged himself to spend the Easter holidays at 
 Redwold ; so he resisted the promptings of inclination, and swore 
 to himself that he would not try to see Eve Marchant before Easter. 
 The interval would then have been long enough to test his feelings, 
 to give him time for thought, before he took any fateful step, and 
 perhaps to throw him in the way of hearing some more specific 
 account of Colonel Marchant's character and antecedents. There 
 is no place, perhaps, in which it is more difficult to get a faithful 
 description of a man than in the vilage where he lives. There, 
 everything is exaggerated — his income, if he is rich ; his debts, if he 
 is poor ; his vices, eccentricities, and shortcomings, in any case. 
 
 Although it was the Lenten season, and although the churches of 
 London were filled with Lenten worshippers, the town looked bright 
 and animated, and there were plenty of votaries in the temples of 
 pleasure — theatres, picture galleries, concert halls — and plenty of 
 snug little dinner-parties to which a man in Vansittart's position 
 was likely to be bidden. He had a wide circle of acquaintance, and 
 was popular with men and women, accounted a clubbable man by 
 the former, and an eligible parti by the latter. Even the women 
 who had no matrimonial views for daughters, or sisters, or bosom 
 friends, still affected Jack Vansittart's society. He had plenty to 
 say to them, was always cheery and cordial, and never seemed to 
 think himself too good for the particular circle in which he found 
 himself. 
 
 He was dining one evening en petit comite with an old college 
 clvum and his young wife ; the husband a rising barrister ; the wife 
 an accomplished woman, and a marvellous manager, able to maintain 
 a pretty little house in Mayfair on an income which a stupid woman 
 would have found hardly enough for Notting Hill or Putney, and to 
 give an appetizing dinner, daintily served, and unhackneyed as to 
 menu, for the cost of the average housekeeper's leg of mutton and 
 trimmings. 
 
 While the cheery little meal was being discussed, a servant brought 
 in a coroneted envelope for the hostess, which being opened, con- 
 tained a box for Covent Garden, where there was an early season of 
 Italian Opera. 
 
 • " For to-night," said Mrs. Pembroke. And then she read aloud 
 from the letter, " ' I find at the last moment that I can't use my box. 
 Do go if you are free. The opera is Faust, with a new " Margherita." ' 
 That's rather a pity," sighed the lady, folding up the letter. 
 
 "Why a pity?" asked Vansittart. "Why shouldn't you go? 
 I dare say your box will hold me as well as Tom, so you need have 
 no conscientious scruples on the ground of inhospitality." 
 
 "Oh, there will be plenty of room. It is Lady Davenant's box, 
 on the grand tier. But Tom asked you for a quiet evening, a long
 
 go The Venetians. 
 
 talk and smoke, and perhaps an adjournment to the Turf for a 
 rubber. I'm afraid you'll be dreadfully bored if I take you to tlic 
 opera instead." 
 
 " Pray don't think so badly of me. If it were "Wagner perhaps I 
 might be less sure of myself. There are bits I enjoy in his operas, 
 but I confess myself a tyro in that advanced school. Gounod's Faust 
 I adore. We shall be in time for the Kermess scene, and the new 
 Gretchen. Pray let us be off." 
 
 A cab was sent for, and the trio packed themselves into it, Mrs. 
 Pembroke sparkling with pleasure. She was passionately fond of 
 music, and she had been looking forward to a solitary evening by 
 the drawing-room fire, while her husband and his friend sat smoking 
 and prosing together in the barrister's ground-floor den. 
 
 The house was thin, this premature opera season not having been 
 a marked success. Lady Davenant's box was near the proscenium, 
 a spacious bos, which would have accommodated six people as 
 easily as three. Vansittart sat in the middle, between his host and 
 hostess. Tom Pembroke, who was no music lover, dozed in the 
 shadow of the curtain, agreeably lulled by melodies which were 
 pleasant from their familiarity. 
 
 The cast was not strong, but the Margherita was very young, 
 rather pretty, and sang well. Vansittart and Mrs. Pembroke were 
 both interested. 
 
 It was near the close of the Kermess scene that the lady asked 
 her companion, "Do you ever look at the chorus? Such poor old 
 things, some of them ! I can't help thinking how weary they must 
 be of singing the same music season after season, and tramping in 
 and out of the same scenes — banquets where there is nothing to eat, 
 too, and then going home to bread and cheese." 
 
 " Yes, it must be a hard life," assented Vansittart ; " all the trouble 
 of the show, and none of the glory." 
 
 And then he took a sweeping survey of the gay crowd, peasants, 
 soldiers, citizens, feasting and rejoicing in friendly German fashion 
 under the open sky. Yes, Mrs. Pembroke was right ; most of the 
 chorus were middle-aged, some were elderly — withered old faces, 
 dark skins which even bismuth could not transform to fairness. 
 Italian eyes, dark and glowing, shone out of worn faces where all 
 other beauty was lacking. 
 
 Suddenly among all those homely countenances he saw a young 
 face, young and beautiful, a face that flashed upon him first with a 
 rapid thrill of recognition, and then with an aspect that struck into 
 his heart like a dagger, and when that sharp pang was over left a 
 heaviness as of lead. 
 
 It was Fiordelisa's face. He could not be mistaken. Nay, the
 
 A Face in the Crowd. 97 
 
 fact was made certainty as he looked, for lie saw that the girl 
 recognized him. She was gazing upward to the spot where he sat ; 
 she was talking about him to the woman who stood next her, 
 indicating him with too expressive gesticulation. 
 
 Was she telling that stolid listener that the man yonder had slain 
 his fellow-creature in a tavern row ; that he was a murderer? She 
 would put it so, no doubt — she whose lover he had killed. 
 
 If she were saying this the stolid woman received the statement 
 very placidly. She only nodded, and shrugged her shoulders, and 
 then nodded again, while Fiordelisa talked to her more and more 
 excitedly, with dramatic emphasis. Surely no woman would stand 
 and shrug and nod as this woman shrugged and nodded, at a tale 
 of murder. 
 
 Then Lisa looked up again at him, beaming with smiles, her dark 
 eyes sparkling in the gaslight; and then her turn came to swell the 
 chorus ; and then the curtain fell, and he saw her no more. 
 
 It was as much as he could do to get through the interval before 
 that curtain rose again. Tom Pembroke wanted him to go out for 
 a stroll in the foyer, for a drink of some kind. "I would rather 
 stay with Mrs. Pembroke," he said, full of wild surmises, prepared 
 for a mysterious knock at the box door, and the appearance of 
 a policeman from over the way to take him in custody at Lisa's 
 instigation ; prepared for anything tragic that might happen to him. 
 What might not happen when the hot-blooded Southern nature 
 was in question ? What bounds would there be for the revengeful 
 passion of such a girl as Fiordelisa, who had been robbed by his act 
 of her lover and protector, her possible husband ? She had talked 
 of her Englishman's promise of marriage with an air of innocent 
 security, the remembrance of which smote him sharply, recalling 
 her light-hearted gaiety at the restaurant and at the opera, her grief 
 as she flung herself upon her lover's corpse. And he, who had 
 thought never to see her again, never even to know her fate, found 
 himself face to face with her, recognized by her, having to answer 
 to her and to society for the deed which he had done. 
 
 With these thoughts in his mind, with his ear strained for the 
 knocking at the door, he had to talk small talk to Mrs. Pembroke, 
 to counterfeit amusement at her criticism of the people in the stalls 
 — the man with two strips of hair combed in streaks over a bald 
 head, the woman with corpulent arms bared to the shoulder, the 
 country cousins. He had to laugh at her little jokes, and even to 
 attempt one or two smart sayings on his own account. 
 
 The knocking came, and he almost started out of his seat. 
 
 " It can't be Tom," said Mrs. Pembroke. " He never comes back 
 until after the curtain is up, and sometimes not till the act is nearly 
 over." 
 
 li
 
 9 8 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 Vansittart opened the box door, and a treble voice questioned, 
 "Ices, sir?" 
 
 He made way for the young woman with the tray of ices, and 
 insisted upon Mrs. Pembroke taking one of those parti-coloured 
 slabs which have superseded the old-fashioned rose-pink strawberry 
 ice. He sat down again, ashamed of his overstrained nerves, and 
 looked at the great curtain, wondering whether in all that wide 
 expanse there were any gimlet holes through which Fiordelisa's 
 ardent eyes might be watching him. The curtain rose, and the act 
 began ; but Vansittart had no longer any ear for the music he loved. 
 His whole attention was concentrated upon the chorus singers. He 
 watched and waited for their coming and going, searched out Lisa's 
 familiar figure amidst the throng that watched Valentine's death- 
 throes and Margherita's despair. He singled her out again and 
 again as the troupe moved about the spacious stage — now on one 
 side, now on the other, in the foreground or the background, 
 according to the exigencies of the scene. He watched the stage till 
 the green curtain fell ; and then he woke as from a dream, and 
 began to wonder what he must do next. Something he must do 
 assuredly, he told himself, as he helped Mrs. Pembroke with her 
 wraps, and heard her chatter about the performance, which she 
 denounced as second-rate, declaring further that she had been taken 
 in by Lady Davenant's gift of the box. Something he must do ; 
 first to ascertain what Fiordelisa's intentions might be — whether she 
 would denounce him to the police ; next to make whatever atonement 
 he could make to her for the loss of her lover. He was not going 
 to run away this time, as he had done at Venice. He had been seen 
 and recognized. He would be watched, no doubt as he left the 
 theatre. This girl would make it her business to find out his name 
 and residence. Even if he wanted to elude her, the thing would 
 be impossible. He had been sitting there all the evening in a 
 conspicuous box on the grand tier, and he had to get away from 
 a sparsely filled theatre. 
 
 Again there was a knock at the box door. It came while he was 
 putting on his overcoat, and before Mrs. Pembroke had begun to 
 move off. 
 
 It was a boxkeeper this time, with a letter. 
 
 "For you, sir," he said, handing it to Vansittart, after looking 
 at the two men. 
 
 " An unaddressed envelope," chirruped Mrs. Pembroke ; " this 
 savours of mystery." 
 
 Vansittart put the letter into his pocket without a word. His 
 most ardent desire at that moment was to get rid of the Pem- 
 brokes. 
 
 " Can I be of any use in fetching a cab ? " he said in the hall.
 
 Waifs and Strays. 99 
 
 "You can stop with my wife while I get one, if you don't mind," 
 said Pembroke. 
 
 Happily there were plenty of cabs tbat night, and it was only the 
 carriage people who bad to wait. Mr. Pembroke came back for bis 
 wife in two or three minutes. 
 
 "I've got a four-wheeler," be said. "You'll come home with 
 us for a smoke and a drink, won't you, Van? " 
 
 " Not to-night, thanks ; it's late — and — and — I've some letters to 
 write." 
 
 " Good night, then. I'm afraid you've been bored." 
 
 " On the contrary. I was never more interested in my life." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "though love, and life, and death should come and go." 
 
 Vansittart tore open the blank envelope under one of the lamps 
 at the back of the vestibule, while the crowd about the doors was 
 gradually melting away, and the question " Cab or carriage ? " was 
 being asked, often with a sad want of discrimination on the part of 
 the questioners. The letter was from Lisa. 
 
 It was in English, mixed with little phrases in Italian, badly spelt 
 and badly written, but quite plain enough for him to read. 
 
 " I knew you directly," she wrote, " and your face brought back 
 the past — that dreadful night, and all I suffered after the of him 
 death. Come to see me, I pray you. It must that we talk together. 
 Come soon, soon. I live with la Zia, in Stone Court, Bow Street, 
 No. 24B, quite near the Opera House. Come to-night if she can. — 
 Her humble servant, 
 
 " FlOBDELISA." 
 
 He stood with the letter in his hand, pondering. 
 
 Should he do what the letter asked him? Yes, assuredly; 
 although to obey that summons was to place himself unreservedly 
 in Lisa's power. He was in her power already, perhaps. She 
 might have made her arrangements promptly, so that he should be 
 watched and followed when he left the theatre, and his name and 
 address discovered. 
 
 In any case, whatever risk there might be in going to Fiordelisa's 
 lodging, he did not for a moment hesitate. In his remorseful thoughts 
 of the man he had killed, the bitterest pang of all had been the 
 thought of Fiordelisa and her shattered life, her dream of happiness 
 darkened for ever, her prosperity changed to desolation and bitter 
 want. Again and again he had told himself that the memory of his
 
 ioo The Venetians. 
 
 sin would sit more easily upon him could lie but secure Lisa's com- 
 fort, dry her tears for the lover who was to have been her husband, 
 shelter her from the chances of the downward road which the feet 
 that have once turned astray are but too ready to tread. 
 
 He had found her, which was more than he had hoped, and had 
 found her earning her bread in a legitimate manner, and living with 
 the aunt who was in some wise a protector, although, remembering 
 that lady's easy manner of regarding her niece's former position, 
 there was perhaps not overmuch security in such a duenna. 
 
 He walked across Bow Street, and speedily found Stone Court, 
 which seemed a quiet haven from the roar and roll of carriages in 
 the street outside ; a highly respectable retreat, consisting for the 
 most part of private houses, one of which — wedged into an obscure 
 corner, where a narrow alley, like the neck of a bottle, cut through 
 into another street — proved to be 24B. 
 
 La Zia herself opened the door in answer to Vansittart's knock, 
 and welcomed him with a cordiality which took his breath away. 
 
 "Welcome, Signor. She said you would come, but I was doubt- 
 ful that you would trouble about her or me," she said, in Italian, 
 and then, in very tolerable English : " Do me the favour to walk 
 upstairs ; it is rather high — il secondo piano. She knew you again 
 in an instant. She has such eyes." 
 
 They ascended the narrow staircase, lighted only by the Zia's 
 candle. The door of the front room on the second floor was open, 
 and Fiordelisa stood on the threshold, in the light of a paraffin lamp, 
 dressed in a shabby black gown, and with her splendid hair rolled 
 up on the top of her head in a roughened mass. 
 
 She held out both her hands to Vansittart, and welcomed him as 
 if he had been her dearest friend. The aunt had fairly astonished 
 him, but the niece was even more astounding. 
 
 " I knew you would come," she exclaimed. " I knew you would 
 not turn your back upon the poor girl whose life you made desolate." 
 
 And then she burst into a tempest of sobs. She flung herself on 
 to the little horsehair sofa, and sobbed as if her heart would break ; 
 whereupon la Zia tumbled into an armchair, and sobbed in concert. 
 
 What could Vansittart do between two fountains of tears? He 
 could only patiently abide till this passionate grief should abate, so 
 that he might speak with the hope of being heard. 
 
 " I am deeply distressed," he said at last, when these lamentations 
 had subsided. " I have never ceased to repent the act that bereaved 
 you — both — of a friend and protector. I dared not go back to Venice 
 — lest — lest the law should weigh heavily upon me. I had no means 
 of communicating with you. I knew neither your names nor your 
 address, remember. I had no means of helping you. I could do 
 nothing to lighten the load upon my conscience— nothing. You
 
 Waifs and Strays. 101 
 
 must have thought me an arrant coward for running away and leaving 
 you to sutler for my sin ? " 
 
 "If you had stopped you would have been put in prison — perhaps 
 for ever so many years," said la Zia, with a philosophical air. 
 
 Fiordelisa had dried her tears, and was looking at him graciously, 
 with almost a smile in the soft Italian eyes. 
 
 " Your going to prison would not have brought him back to life," 
 she said. " I am glad you got away. Poor fellow! he was so fund 
 of me — and so jealous ! Ah, how jealous he was ! It was foolish. 
 I had done no harm. A little pleasure at Carnival time, while he 
 was away ! What a pity that he should come back to Venice that 
 night, and find me at the Florian with you ! We ought not to have 
 gone to that caffe. He always went there — it was just the likeliest 
 place for him to find us. But then I did not know he was coming 
 back to Venice so soon." 
 
 The lightness of her tone, thus easily accepting the tragic past, 
 surprised him, so strangely did her speech contrast with her pas- 
 sionate sobs of a few minutes ago. That she should threaten him 
 with no vengeance, that she should welcome him as a friend, was 
 stranger still ; and he had to remember that this lightness was cha- 
 racteristic of the Italian nature ; he had to remember that in Rome 
 a noble lady and her daughter will go out to dine at a restaurant 
 because it is so dull at home where the husband and father lies dead, 
 or a mother will take her daughters to the opera to revive their 
 spirits after a brother's untimely death. 
 
 It was a relief to him, naturally, to find a philosophical submission 
 to Fate where he had expected to h'nd a thirst for his blood, a stern 
 resolve that the law should claim from him the uttermost atonement 
 it could exact. It was a tremendous relief to find himself sitting 
 between aunt and niece — while they eat their frugal supper from a 
 tin box of mortadello, a bundle of radishes, and a half quartern loat 
 — listening to their account of their lives after his victim's death. 
 
 " He was buried next day," said la Zia ; " a very pretty funeral. 
 It was a lovely day, and the gondola was full of flowers, though 
 flowers are dear in Venice. Lisa and I, and the Padrona from the 
 house where we lived, went with him to the cemetery, where it was 
 all so still and happy-looking in the sunlight. Lisa tried to throw 
 herself into his grave, but we would not let her. Poor child, she 
 was so miserable, and we thought of the day before when we we 
 returning from the Lido in your gondola " 
 
 "And when the lagoons looked enchanted in the sunset," said 
 Lisa; "and our dinner at the Cappello Nero, and the champagne, 
 and the pastiti, and the opera afterwards, and the beads you gave 
 me. I have the beads still. 1 wore the blue necklace to-night. 
 Lid you notice it ? "
 
 io2 The Venetians. 
 
 " Indeed, no, Poverina. I was too full of thoughts of you to 
 notice your necklace." 
 
 " Ah, you were surprised to see me, weren't you — after so long ? 
 And was not I surprised to see you ? I was looking at all the faces, 
 the pretty dresses, the jewels, like faces in a dream, for they are 
 there every night, and they never come any nearer, or seem any 
 more real ; and then in an instant, out of the unreality, your face 
 flashed upon me — your face and the memory of that happy day and 
 evening, that dreadful midnight. Are you sorry to see us again?" 
 she asked, naively, in conclusion. 
 
 " Sorry, Lisa ? no. I am glad, very glad ; for now I hope I may 
 be able to make some atonement to you and your aunt." 
 
 "Atonement! but how? You cannot bring him back to life. 
 While we sit here, he is lying m San Michele, where the gondolas 
 with the black flags are his only visitors, where nothing but sorrow 
 and death ever enters. You cannot bring him back to life." 
 
 " Alas, no, Fiordelisa ; but I may do much to make your life 
 easier. I can make sure that you and your aunt shall know no 
 more poverty and deprivation." 
 
 " Ah," sighed la Zia : " we knew both after that good Signor 
 Smitz was carried to San Michele. He had never been rich, mark 
 you ; but while he lived there was always enough for the coffee and 
 macaroni, and for a stufato on Sundays, and a flask of Chiante that 
 lasted all the week. We did not waste his money, and he used to 
 praise his little Lisa as the cleverest manager and best wife a man 
 ever had. And she would have been his wife, mark you, had he 
 lived. Oh, he had promised her again and again, and he meant to 
 keep his word. She would have been an English gentleman's wife 
 — all in good time." 
 
 " All in good time," echoed Lisa ; "and my son would not have 
 been fatherless." 
 
 " Your son ! " exclaimed Vansittart. 
 
 " Ah, you do not know," said la Zia ; " her baby was born half 
 a year after his father's death. It was the late autumn when the 
 bambino came. The leaves were all dying off the vines, the strangers 
 were all leaving Venice, the boats were bringing in the winter fuel, 
 and the cold winds were creeping up from the Adriatic and blowing 
 round all the corners of the Calle. We were very poor. There was 
 a little money in the house when he died — and there was more than 
 enough in his purse when he fell to pay for his funeral— but when 
 the last lira was gone there was nothing but to go back to the lace- 
 making, both of us, and work for the dish of polenta and the garret 
 that lodged us. We did not want to go back to Burano, to see the 
 old faces and hear the old comrades talk about us, after we had 
 lived like ladies and worn velvet gowns, so we went to work at the
 
 Waifs and Strays. to 
 
 *> 
 
 factory ia Venice, and we lived in one little room in the Rialto, right 
 up in the roof of an old, old house, where we could see nothing but 
 the sky ; and there Lisa's baby was born, a beautiful boy. Ah, how 
 proud Signor Smitz would have been had he lived to see that lovely 
 infant!" 
 
 " Is the boy living ? " asked Vansittart, gently. > 
 
 "Living! Yes, he is in the next room; he is the joy of our 
 lives," answered the aunt. 
 
 Lisa started up from the supper table, with her finger on her lips, 
 and went across the room, beckoning to Vansittart to follow. She 
 opened a door, cautiously, noiselessly, and led him into a bedroom, 
 where, by the faint glimmer of a night-light, he saw a boy lying in 
 a little cot beside the ancient four-post bed, a boy who was the 
 image of one of Guido's child-angels — full round cheeks, with a 
 crimson glow upon their olive clearness, lips like Cupid's bow, long 
 daik lashes fringing blue-veined eyelids, and dark brown hair waving 
 in loose curls about the broad forehead. Truly a beautiful boy! 
 Vansittart could not withhold his praises of that childish sleeper. 
 
 " You are very fond of him," he said gently, as Lisa stooped to 
 rearrange the blanket over the child's round and dimpled arm, 
 pressing a kiss upon the fat little hand before she covered it. 
 
 " Oh, I adore him. He is all in the world I have to love, except 
 la Zia." 
 
 "And you have had a hard time of it, through my fault," said 
 Vansittart, gravely, as they went back to the sitting-room. 
 
 It was one o'clock by the little American clock on the chimney- 
 piece — ne by the clock of the church in Covent Garden, which 
 pealed its single stroke with solemn sound as they resumed their 
 seats by the shabby round table, in the light of the paraffin lamp ; 
 but, late as it was, neither Lisa nor her aunt seemed in any hurry 
 to get rid of their visitor, nor did he mean to go until he had made 
 a compact with them — a compact which should set his mind at rest 
 as to the future. 
 
 " How did you come from the lace factory at Venice to the stage 
 of Covent Garden? " he asked. " This is a long way for you to 
 have travelled, without a friend to help you along." 
 
 "We had a friend," answered Lisa. "My good old music- 
 master. We lost sight of him when our troubles began; but lie 
 met me one day as I was leaving the factory — it was when my baby 
 was three months old— and he stopped to talk to me. He was 
 shocked to see me so thin and pale, and when I told him how poor 
 we were — la Zia and I — he asked me why I did not turn my voice 
 to account. He always used to praise my voice when Signor Smitz 
 asked him how I got on with my education. I had a voice that was 
 worth money, he said. And now in our poverty he was very good
 
 104 The Venetians. 
 
 to us. He gave me more lessons, without a sous, to be paid for 
 only when 1 should be earning plenty of money ; and after he had 
 taught me a good many choruses in Verdi's operas, he gave me a 
 letter to the Impresario at Milan, and he lent us the money for the 
 journey to Milan, and once there all went well with us. I was 
 engaged to sing in the chorus, and I sang there for two seasons, and 
 la Zia and I were able to live comfortably and to save money, 
 until one day, when the Scala was closed, an English Impresario 
 came to Milan, to engage singers for the London season, and I, who 
 had always wanted to go to London, went to him, and asked him 
 to engage me, and it was all settled in a few minutes. We have 
 been a year and a half in England, la Zia and I, sometimes travel- 
 ling with the opera company, but mostly in London." 
 
 " And you have made wonderful progress in our language, 
 Signora. 1 ' 
 
 " Don't call me Signora," she said softly. " Call me Fiordelisa, 
 as you did that day at Venice." 
 
 " Tell me how you both like our England." 
 
 The elder woman shrugged her shoulders, elevated her eyebrows, 
 and rlung up her hands in boundless admiration. 
 
 " Wonderfullissimo 1 " she exclaimed. "The streets, the long, 
 broad streets, and splendid, splendid shops ; the carriages, the fine- 
 dressed people, the smoke, the roar of wheels, the everlasting noise. 
 When I look back, and think of Burano, it is like a dream of quiet ; 
 a tranquil world set in the bosom of the waters ; a cradle for sleep ; 
 life that is half slumber. Here every one is awake." 
 
 " But your London is not beautiful," said Lisa. " This court is 
 not like Venice. It is liker than your big, noisy streets ; but when 
 one looks up the sky is murky and grey — not like the strip of blue 
 above the Calle. If I could live where I could see water from 
 my window — even your dull, dark river — I should be happier; but 
 to be away from the sound and the sight of waters ! That was hard 
 even at Milan, which was still Italy." 
 
 " There are places in London where you might live in sight and 
 sound of the river," said Vansittart. " We cannot offer you anything 
 like your lagoons ; we have no mountains like the Friuli range for 
 our sunsets to glorify ; but we have a river by which people can live 
 if they like." 
 
 " Not if they like, but if they are rich enough," argued Lisa. " We 
 asked if we could have a lodging near the river ; but the people at the 
 theatre told us such lodgings are dear — they are not for such as us." 
 
 " We will see about that," said Vansittart ; and then he went on 
 more seriously, " I want to make a compact with you and your 
 aunt. I want to come to a clear understanding of what we are to 
 be to each other in the future. Are we to be friends, Lisa ? "
 
 Waifs and Strays. 105 
 
 " Yes, yes, friends, true friends," she answered eagerly. 
 
 " And you forgive me for — what was done that night ? " 
 
 " Yes, I forgive you. The fault was not all yours. He insulted 
 y 0U — he struck you — and you were maddened— and the dagger was 
 there. It was a fatality. Let us think of it no more. We cannot 
 bring him back. It is best to forget." 
 
 " You know, Lisa, that you have it in your power to blight my 
 ];f e — to tell the world what I did that night — to give me up to the 
 strong arm of the law to answer for the life I destroyed. You could 
 do that if you liked. Do you mean to do it ? " 
 
 " No," she said resolutely. 
 
 " And you, Signora," to the aunt, " are you of the same mind as 
 your niece?" 
 
 "In all things. Lisa is much cleverer than her poor old aunt. 
 I do as she does." 
 
 "But some day, Fiordelisa, you might change your mind," urged 
 Vansittart. " Women are capricious. You might take it into your 
 head to betray me— to tell people of that tragedy in Venice, and 
 that I was the chief actor in it." 
 
 " Not for the world would I tell anything that would injure you," 
 she said. 
 
 " Do you mean that, Lisa ? " 
 
 " A thousand times yes." 
 
 " Promise then, thus, with your hand in mine," taking her hand 
 as he spoke , "promise by the Mother of God and by His Saints 
 that, come what may, you will never tell how I stabbed an unarmed 
 man in the Caffe Florian. Promise that as I am frank and true with 
 you, so you will deal frankly and fairly by me, and will do no act 
 and will say no word to my injury." 
 
 " I promise," she said, '• by the Mother of God and by His Saints. 
 I promise to be loyal and true to you all the days of my life." 
 
 " And you, Signora? " to the aunt. 
 
 " What she promises I promise." 
 
 " Why, then, thank God for the chance that brought us three 
 together again," said Vansittart, earnestly, " for now I can make my 
 atonement to you both with an easy mind. There is nothing I will 
 not do, Lisa, to prove that my remorse is a reality, and not a pre- 
 tence. You would like to live by the river, child ? Well, it shall 
 be my business to find you a home from which you shall look upon 
 running water, and hear the splash of the tide. Your voice is your 
 fortune. Well, it shall be my business to find you a master who 
 can train you for something better than singing in a chorus. As 
 you are loyal to me, Lisa, so, by the heaven above us, will I be 
 loyal to you. All that a brother could do for a sister will I do for 
 you, and deem it nothing more than my duty when it is done."
 
 io6 The Venetians. 
 
 " Ah, what a noble gentleman," cried la Zia, wiping her tearful 
 eyes, " and how gracious of the blessed Mary to give us so generous 
 a friend ! Little did I expect such fortune when I rose from my 
 bed this morning." 
 
 " And now, ladies, I must bid you good night," said Vansittart. 
 " I hope to call on you to-morrow afternoon with some news of your 
 future home. You will not mind living two or three miles from your 
 theatre. There are trams and omnibuses, and a railway to carry 
 you backwards and forwards," he added. 
 
 " We should not mind even if we had to walk to and fro. We 
 are good walkers," answered Lisa. " We lived a long way from la 
 Scala. Ever so far off, on the other side of Milan." 
 
 " To-morrow, then. A rivederci." 
 
 Two o'clock struck while he was walking to Charles Street, 
 happier than he had felt for a long time. It seemed to him that 
 his burden was lightened almost to a feather-weight now that he 
 knew the fate of these women. They were not destitute, as he had 
 often pictured them. They had suffered a little poverty, but no more 
 than was the common lot of the class from which they had sprung. 
 And it was in his power to make ample reparation to them. He 
 would do more for Lisa than that dead man would ever have done. 
 He would put her in the way of an honourable career. Whatever 
 talents she had should be cultivated at his cost. He would not 
 degrade her by foolish gifts — but he would spend money freely to 
 further her interests, and he would keep her feet from straying any 
 further upon that broad road she had entered so recklessly. 
 
 He could but wonder at the lightness with which she accepted 
 her lover's fate, and forewent every idea of retribution. Not so, he 
 told himself, would an Englishwoman bow to the stroke of destiny, 
 if her best-beloved were slain. And then he wondered whether, in 
 all this world, near or far, there was any one, besides Fiordelisa, who 
 had loved John Smith, and who was now mourning for him. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "as things that ake not shall these things be." 
 
 Before two o'clock next day Vansittart had been up and down 
 more stairs than he ever remembered to have mounted and descended 
 in a single day. He had inspected flats in the neighbourhood of the 
 Strand, and flats at Millbank, and flats at Chelsea ; and finally, after 
 much driving to and fro in a hansom, and interviews with several 
 house-agents, he had discovered a third floor in a newly erected 
 house near Cheyne Walk which seemed to him the ideal home for 
 Fiordelisa and her aunt. The house stood at a corner, and the
 
 Making Atonement. 10; 
 
 windows and balcony of this upper story commanded a fine view of 
 the river and Battersea Park ; while to the eastward appeared the 
 Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and southward rose the 
 Kentish hills and the Crystal Palace. The flat contained three 
 good rooms, with a tiny kitchen at the back. The balcony was 
 architectural, and looked solid and secure. There was a fascinating 
 oriel window at the corner of the principal room, which projected 
 so as to command the west. Nothing could have been brighter or 
 more airy, and the agent who took Vansittart over the rooms assured 
 him that the house was substantially built, and altogether satis- 
 factory. No doubt most agents would say as much about most 
 houses, but the appearance of this house, the thickness of the walls, 
 and the solidity of the woodwork went far to justify the agent's 
 praises. 
 
 The rent was eighty-five pounds a year, all told ; and this was a 
 rent which came well within the amount that Vansittart was pre- 
 pared to pay. He was thoroughly in earnest in his desire to be of 
 substantial service to Lisa and her aunt. He was not a rich man ; 
 but he told himself that he could spare two hundred a year for the 
 solace of his conscience ; and he was prepared to impoverish him- 
 self to that amount for the rest of his life. Yes, even in that dim 
 future when he should have sons at the University and daughters 
 to marry, and when hundreds would be of much more consequence 
 to him than they were now. Two hundred a year would he forfeit 
 for his sin ; and he contemplated the sacrifice with so much the 
 more satisfaction because of his cordial liking for the impulsive 
 peasant girl whose fate had become interwoven with his own. 
 
 He found aunt and niece at home, and expectant of his arrival. 
 He had exchanged his hansom for a brougham from a livery stable, 
 which would accommodate three people. 
 
 " I am going to take you to see the home I have chosen for you, 
 Lisa," he said ; " that is to say, if you would rather make your 
 home in London than in Italy." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; ever so much rather," she answered eagerly. 
 " London is a grand city. You live in London, don't you ? " 
 
 " Not always. I am seldom here more than a month or two at a 
 time. I am not a lover of cities." 
 
 She looked disappointed at this reply. 
 
 " You will come and see us sometimes, when you are in London ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 " Certainly. I shall look in upon you now and then to see how 
 you and la Zia are getting on in your new surroundings. And now 
 let us go and look at the apartments I have chosen. Perhaps you 
 will not like my choice." 
 
 La Zia protested that this was out of the question. His choice
 
 ro8 The Venetians. 
 
 must be perfection. It was not possible for so noble a gentleman to 
 err in taste or j udgment. 
 
 Fiordelisa was dressed for going out. Sbe was poorly clad in 
 ber well-worn black gown and a little cbeap black net bonnet, with 
 pale pink roses in it, but her dress was neater than usual. La Zia 
 had also dressed herself tidily, and looked more reputable than he 
 would have thought possible, remembering the flaunting ruby plush 
 and coppery gold chain in Venice. The little boy had been com- 
 mitted to the care of the landlad}', who was prodigiously fond of 
 him, Lisa told Vansittart. 
 
 The drive by St. James's Park, Buckingham Palace, and Eton 
 Square was a delight to the Venetians. They exclaimed at every 
 new feature of the way. The houses, the soldiers, the trees, the 
 palace, and even the long, solemn, unbeautiful square impressed 
 them. The magnitude of everything was so astounding after 
 Venice. The wide expanses and seemingly illimitable distances 
 filled them with wonder. They had been surprised at the extent of 
 Milan ; but this London looked as if it could swallow twenty Milans. 
 
 The brougham drove along the King's Road, turned into Oakley 
 Street, and brought them suddenly face to face with the Thames in 
 one of its pleasantest aspects. The sun was shining on the river, 
 the trees were purple with swelling leaf-buds, the old houses of 
 Cheyne Walk looked bright and gay in the sunlight. 
 
 " Oh, how pretty ! " cried Lisa, and Lisa's aunt was quite as 
 enthusiastic. 
 
 " There is one thing I must ask you," said Vansittart, " before we 
 come to business with the house-agent. I don't know the surname 
 of either of you ladies." 
 
 " My name is A 7 ivanti," said the aunt, " and Lisa's is the same. 
 She is my brother's daughter." 
 
 " Then Lisa shall be Madame Vivanti, and you — shall we say 
 Mademoiselle ? " 
 
 "As you will. I have never been married. The man I loved 
 and was to have married was a fisherman, and his boat was 
 wrecked one stormy night between Venice and Chioggia. I never 
 cared for any one else ; so I lived with my brother and his wife, 
 and worked for them and with them. He has a swarm of children, 
 of whom Lisa is the eldest." 
 
 " Then you have a number of brothers and sisters, Lisa," said 
 Vansittart. " Can you reconcile your mind to living in England 
 and seeing them no more ? " 
 
 Lisa shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "There are too many of us," she said; "each of us felt what it 
 was to be one mouth too many. The mother died six years ago, 
 worn out like an old shoe that has tramped over the stones through
 
 Making Atonement. 109 
 
 all weathers. My father would beat us for a word or a look. It 
 was a hard life at Burano. I don't want to go back there — ever. 
 And your name, Signor ; you have not told us that." 
 
 " My name ! Ah, true ! " 
 
 He hesitated for an instant or so. Could he trust them with the 
 knowledge of his name and surroundings ? fie thought not. They 
 were women, impulsive, uneducated, therefore uninstructed in the 
 higher law of honour. 
 
 " My name is Smith," he said. 
 
 " How strange ! The same as his," exclaimed Lisa. 
 
 " It is a common English name." 
 
 The carriage stopped at a street corner, and Vansittart led the 
 way up the brand-new staircase to the brand-new third story. 
 Lisa and her aunt were in raptures. Everything was so pretty, the 
 paint, the paper, the ceilings, the windows and balconies, the fire- 
 places, with their tasteful wooden mantelpieces, and shining flowery 
 tiles, and artistic little grates, warranted to consume a minimum of 
 coals and give a maximum of heat. 
 
 There was a somewhat spacious sitting-room, with five windows, 
 including the oriel in the western corner. Opening out of this were 
 two small bedrooms ; and on the other side of the landing there was 
 the doll's-house kitchen, furnished with many shelves and conveni- 
 ences for cooking and washing up, a kitchen as ingenious in its 
 arrangements, and almost as small as the steward's cabin on a 
 Jersey steamer. 
 
 " Now, Madame Vivanti," said Vansittart, when the inspection 
 had been made, addressing Lisa with some ceremony, " if you and 
 your aunt are pleased with these rooms, and if you would like to 
 make your permanent home in London, turning your musical gifts 
 to as much account as you can, I shall be happy to furnish them for 
 you, and to pay the rent always, or at any rate as long as you 
 remain unmarried — and " — in a graver tone, " lead a virtuous and 
 reputable life, making no hasty acquaintances, and keeping yourself 
 to yourself until you know this country well enough to make a wise 
 choice of friends. AVould you like me to do this ? " 
 
 " How can you ask such a question ? Ah, you are too good and 
 generous to me. I shall t be as happy as a queen — to live in rooms 
 like these, with that lovely view over the river. It will be like 
 living in a palace. But pray don't call me Madame Vivanti. I feel 
 as if you were angry with me." 
 
 " Foolish child ! you know better than that," he said, smiling at 
 her. " I am full of friendliest feelings towards you and your aunt. 
 But I must not call you by your Christian name. Men and women 
 do not do that in England, unless they are blood relations or 
 affianced lovers. You must be Madame Vivanti in future."
 
 1 1 o The Venetians. 
 
 Lisa pouted and looked distressed, but said nothing. La Zia 
 expressed her heartfelt gratitude, for her niece chiefly, for herself in 
 a lesser degree. The kitchen seemed to impress her most of all 
 There was a hot plate, on which she could cook a risotto or a 
 stufato, or a dish of macaroni, and all those messes which are 
 savoury to the Italian palate. 
 
 " You will keep house for your niece, and take care of her boy " — 
 Vansittart approached this subject with a certain hesitation totally 
 unshared by the boy's mother — "until he is old enough to go to 
 school. Lisa — Madame Vivanti — will have to work hard at her 
 musical education if she means to rise from the ranks of the chorus. 
 I will look about for a respectable singing-master, who is not too 
 famous to teach on moderate terms, and I will pay him for a course 
 of lessons — to last, say, six months. By that time we shall know 
 what Madame's voice is made of." 
 
 " Call me Si'ora, if you won't call me Lisa," said the young 
 woman, impetuously. " I won't be called by that formal Frenchified 
 Madame." 
 
 "It shall be Si'ora, then, if that will content you. And now, 
 Si'ora, and la Zia, tell me that you are satisfied with me, and that 
 what I am glad to do for you will be in some sense an atonement 
 for — what I did that night." 
 
 Lisa burst into a flood of tears. 
 
 " You are too generous ; you do too much," she cried. " He 
 would never have done so much, not even if he had been rich. He 
 thought anything good enough for us — after, after he began to get 
 tired of us. You are a hundred times better than he was- " 
 
 " Lisa, Lisa," remonstrated the elder woman, " that is a hard 
 thing to say." 
 
 " Oh, I know ; I loved him once — passionately, passionately. I 
 prayed the Holy Mother every night and morning to make him keep 
 his word and marry me. He gave me my velvet gown. Yes, I 
 loved him passionately. He gave me lessons on the mandoline, and 
 promised he would have me trained to be a lady. Yes, I loved him. 
 I shall never forget the day he first came into the factory at Burano, 
 and looked at us all as we sat at our work, and began to talk to me 
 in Italian. There are so few Englishmen who can speak a single 
 sentence of Italian, and his voice was so soft and kind, and he asked 
 me questions about my work. But afterwards, when we were in 
 Venice, he was not always kind; not as kind or as gentle as 
 you are." 
 
 She cried a little more after these simple utterances ; and then 
 she dried her tears, and la Zia comforted her, and they all three 
 went downstairs and drove to the house-agent's office, where Van- 
 sittart introduced Signora Vivanti, of the Koyal Italian Opera,
 
 Making- Atonement. 
 
 <5 
 
 I I I 
 
 Covent Garden, as a tenant for the third floor of Salfcero's Mansion, 
 he himself. Mr. John Smith, vouching for the respectability of the 
 ladies, and paying a year's rent in advance with some bank-notes he 
 had ready for the transaction. This handsome payment, and the 
 fact that the flat was unfurnished, reconciled the agent to the 
 vagueness of a referee who only described himself as John Smith, of 
 London. 
 
 This done, and the key of the third-floor flat having been handed 
 over to him by the agent, Vansittart put Lisa and her aunt into the 
 carriage and bade them good-bye. 
 
 "You will be driven back to Stone Court," he said, "in plenty of 
 time for your work at the theatre. I will see about furnishing the 
 new rooms to-morrow, and everything ought to be ready for you in 
 a week. You had better give your landlady a week's notice." 
 
 " She will be sorry to part with Paolo," said la Zia, " She is as 
 fond of him as if she were his grandmother." 
 
 "You will come to see us in a week? " said Lisa, earnestly, as lie 
 phut the carriage door. 
 
 " In a week your new home will be ready," he answered ; " I will 
 come or write. Good-bye." 
 
 He waved his hand to the driver, whom he had instructed to take 
 the ladies back to the entrance of Stone Court. The carriage moved 
 ill', Lisa looking at him earnestly, with something of a disappointed 
 air, to the last. 
 
 " Poor child ! Did she think I was going to give them a dinner 
 at a restaurant, as I did that day in Venice ? " he asked himself, as 
 he walked towards Piccadilly. " What a curious, impulsive, infan- 
 tine nature it is ; made up of laughter and of tears ; taking the 
 ghastliest things lightly, and yet with the capacity for passion and 
 grief. Well, it is a good thing, it is a happy thing for me to be able 
 to mend the broken life, and to give happiness where I had brought 
 misery." 
 
 He devoted the best part of the following day to the business of 
 furnishing. It was his first experience in that line since he had 
 taken over his predecessor's sticks at Balliol, adding such luxuries 
 and artistic embellishments as his youthful fancy prompted. He 
 had been interested then with the undergraduate's pleasure in his 
 emancipation from the Etonian's dependence. He was interested 
 now. He felt as if he bad been furnishing a doll's house for the 
 occupation of a talking doll, so childishly simple did Lisa's intellect 
 seem to him. He took a pleasure in the task, and exercised taste 
 and common sense in every detail. 
 
 The rooms were furnished in less than a week, for the furniture 
 was of the simplest, and all ready to his hand at a West End up- 
 holsterer's. He had but to make his selection from a variety of
 
 I 12 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 styles, all graceful, artistic, and inexpensive. At the end of the 
 week he sent the livery brougham to carry aunt and niece and 
 boy to their new home. He sent Fiordelisa a little note by the 
 coachman. 
 
 " Your house is ready. I shall call at four o'clock to-morrow 
 afternoon to take a cup of tea in your drawing-room, and to hear if 
 you approve of my furnishing." 
 
 He received one of Lisa's ill-written letters by the nest morning's 
 post: — 
 
 " The rooms are lovely ; everything is as pretty as a picture or a 
 dream ; but why did you not come this afternoon to let us thank 
 you ? To-morrow is so far off." 
 
 This little letter induced punctuality. He was at Lisa's door on 
 the stroke of the hour. The afternoon light was shining in at_ the 
 south windows. The sun shone golden over the western river. 
 There were daffodils in a glass vase on the little white-wood table 
 in the oriel, and the new cups and saucers that he had chosen were 
 set out upon a bamboo table with many shelves. Aunt and niece 
 were neatly dressed in their black merino gowns, and the little boy 
 was playing with a set of bricks in a corner of the room, silently 
 happy. Aunt and niece poured out their gratitude in a gush of 
 Italian and English, curiously intermixed. Never was anything so 
 pretty as this house of theirs ; never so noble a benefactor as Vau- 
 sittart. He could but feel happy in seeing their happiness. He had 
 never been so near forgetting that scene of blood in the Venetian 
 caffe. 
 
 He stayed for an hour or so, sipped half a cup of straw-coloured 
 tea which Lisa fondly believed was made in the English manner, 
 and then departed, promising to call again when he had found a 
 singing-master. 
 
 " I shall be very particular in my choice, Signora," he said gaily. 
 " First and foremost, the Maestro must be old and ugly, lest you 
 should fall in love with him ; next, he must be a genius, for he is 
 to teach you in a year what most people take three years to learn ; 
 and he must be a neglected genius, because we want to get him 
 cheap." 
 
 " I wish the good little man who taught me the mandoline were 
 in London," said Lisa. 
 
 Vansittart could not echo that wish, since the good little man 
 must needs know the story of that midnight in the caffe, and he 
 wanted no such Venetian in London. 
 
 " We shall ibid some one better than your professor," he 
 answered ; " and that reminds me I have never heard you play on 
 your mandoline." 
 
 "Would you like?" asked Lisa, sparkling with almost as happy
 
 Making Atonement. 1 1 3 
 
 a smile as lie remembered when she sat at the little table in the 
 crowded Black Hat, before the beginning of trouble. 
 
 The mandoline was hanging against the wall, decked with a 
 bunch of ribbons, red, white, and green. She took it down, and 
 seated herself by the window, in the sunlight, and began to tinkle 
 out " Batti, batti," in thin, wiry tones, while the boy left his bricks 
 on the floor and came and stood at her knee, open-mouthed, open- 
 eyed, intently listening. 
 
 " Sing, Lisa, sing," said la Zia. 
 
 Lisa laughed, blushed, looked shyly at Vansittart, as if she feared 
 his critical powers, and then began that tenderest melody in a fresh 
 young voice, whose every note was round and ripe and full of power. 
 Nor was the singer lacking in expression ; the tender legato pas- 
 sages were given with a pleading pathos that touched the listener 
 almost to tears. 
 
 " Brava, Signora mia ! " he cried, at the end of the song. " Your 
 voice is worlds too good to be drowned in a middle-aged chorus. 
 To my ear you sing 'Batti, batti,' as well as the most famous 
 Zerlina I ever heard. Two years hence, or sooner perhaps, we shall 
 have the new Venetian prima donna, Signora Vivanti, taking the 
 town by storm. But we must make haste, and find our Maestro, 
 able to coach you in all the great operas." 
 
 He had to explain that word coach to Lisa, whose knowledge of 
 English had made rapid progress during her residence in the country, 
 and who had a quick apprehension of every new word or phrase. 
 
 He left her, charmed at the discovery that she could sing so well, 
 and that her future was therefore so full of hope. He was pleased 
 with her gentleness, her simplicity, her frank acceptance of his 
 friendly services, pleased most of all by the thought that by his 
 protection of these two lonely women he was in some measure 
 atoning for his crime. Yet there were points upon which his con- 
 science remained unsatisfied— questions that he wanted to ask— 
 and to this end he dropped in upon the little family on the third 
 floor three or four times before the Easter holidays. 
 
 He was not long in finding the ideal singing-master. An applica- 
 tion to one of the chief music publishers and concert-givers brought 
 him in relation with a Milanese musician, who played the 'cello at 
 the Apollo, the new opera-house on the Embankment — the very 
 man Vansittart wanted, ugly enough to satisfy the most jealous 
 husband, elderly, but not old enough to fall asleep in the middle of 
 a lesson; a man of character and talent, but not one of Fortune's 
 favourites, and therefore willing to give lessons on moderate terms. 
 
 This gentleman's opinion of Signora Vivanti's voice was most 
 encouraging, and his manner of expressing that opinion seemed 
 60 modest and conscientious that Vansittart was fain to believe him. 
 
 1
 
 114 The Venetians. 
 
 " La Signora is absolutely ignorant of music," said the Professor, 
 " but if she is industrious and persevering she has a fortune in her 
 throat." 
 
 Lisa took very kindly to the Professor, and showed no lack of 
 industry. She was an obedient pupil, and worked very patiently 
 at her piano, which was a much harder ordeal for the untrained 
 fingers than the solfeggi were for the bird-like voice. All her hours 
 unclaimed by the theatre were free for study, since la Zia bore the 
 whole burden of household cares, the marketing and cooking, and 
 the looking after the little boy. 
 
 One afternoon, shortly before Easter, Vansittart, calling after a 
 week's interval, was admitted by Lisa instead of by her aunt, who 
 usually opened the door. 
 
 La Zia had gone into London in quest of certain Italian comes- 
 tibles, only procurable in the foreign settlements of Soho, and 
 Fiordelisa was alone with her boy. It was an opportunity that 
 Vansittart had been hoping for, the chance of questioning her about 
 the dead man, whose manes, though in some wise propitiated as he 
 thought, had a trick of haunting him now and again. 
 
 " Lisa," he began gently, forgetting that he had forbidden himself 
 that familiar address, " there is something that I want to talk about 
 — if — if I were sure it would not grieve you too much. I want you 
 to tell me — more — about the man you loved — the man I killed. I 
 know what sorrow his death brought upon yoii ; but, tell me, was 
 tbere no one else to grieve for him ? Had he no kindred in England 
 — father, mother, brothers, sisters ? " 
 
 " I think not," she answered gravely. " He never spoke of any 
 one in England, never at least as if he cared for any one. His 
 mother was dead. I know as much as that. For the rest, he told 
 me hardly anything about himself; except that he had been away 
 from England for a good many years, and that he was not fond of 
 England or English people." 
 
 "He was called John Smith. Do you think that was his real 
 name ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I never heard of any other." 
 
 " And in all the time you were associated with him did ho 
 Write no letters to English friends, nor receive letters from 
 England?" 
 
 " None that I ever saw." 
 
 " And after his lamentable death were there no inquiries made 
 about him ? Did no one come to Venice in search of a missing 
 friend or relative ? " 
 
 " No one. Except la Zia and me there was no one who cared — 
 no one who was any the worse for his death, He had only us in 
 all the world, I think."
 
 Making Atonement. 1 1 5 
 
 "But when he came first to Buranohc came with people — friends 
 —you told me." 
 
 "He came with a party of Americans who were staying at the 
 H&tel de Rome. They were nothing to him. They had left Venice 
 when he came to Burano the second time." 
 
 "Do you know where he had been living before he came to 
 Venice ? " 
 
 " Living nowhere — wandering about the earth, he told me, like 
 Satan. That is what he said of himself. He had been in Africa — 
 in America. He called himself a rolling stone. He told me that 
 it was only for my sake he was content to live six months in the 
 same place." , 
 
 " Had he no friends in Venice? " 
 
 " None, except the people with whom he used to play cards at 
 the caffes of an evening. Sometimes he would bring two or three 
 strangers to our salon, and they would sit playing cards half the 
 night, while la Zia and I used to fall asleep in a corner, and waive 
 to find the morning light creeping in through the shutters. Some- 
 times he won a heap of gold in a single night, and then he was so 
 kind, so kind, and he would give us presents, la Zia and me, and 
 we had champagne for dinner next day. Sometimes, but not often, 
 he had bad luck for a whole night, and that used to make him 
 angry." 
 
 "Did he never tell you where he was born and reared, or what 
 kind of life he led before he took to wandering over the face of the 
 earth?" 
 
 " Never. He did not like to talk about England or his early life." 
 
 Never ! There was no more to be heard. There was infinite 
 relief to Vansittart's mind in this blank history. The life he had 
 taken was an isolated life — a bubble on the stream of time, that 
 burst, and vanished. He had broken no mother's heart ; he had 
 desolated no home ; he had made no gap in a family circle. The 
 man had been a worthless nomad ; and his death had brought 
 sorrow upon no one but this peasant and her kinswoman. 
 
 Their wounds were healed ; their lives were made happy ; and so 
 there was an end of his crime and its consequences. Fate had been 
 very good to him. He walked back to Charles Street with his 
 burden so far lightened that he thought he might come eventually 
 to forget that he had ever taken a fellow-creature's life, that he had 
 ever carried about with him any guilty secret. 
 
 Easter was close at hand, and he was to spend Easter at Redwold 
 Towers, within walking distance of Eve Marchant's cottage. Easter 
 was to decide his fate, perhaps.
 
 i 1 6 The Venetians. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 "ONE THREAD IN LIFE WORTH STINKING." 
 
 A t ansittart's heart was lighter than it had heen for a long time, 
 the day he left Charles Street for Waterloo on his way to Haslemere. 
 He longed to see Eve Marchant, with all a lover's longing, and he 
 told himself that he had tested his own heart severely enough by 
 an absence of three months, and that he had now only to discover 
 whether the lady's heart was in any way responsive to his own. 
 He knew now that his love for Eve Marchant was no passing fancy, 
 no fever of the moment ; and he also told himself that if he could 
 be fairly assured of her worthiness to be his wife, he would lose no 
 time in offering himself as her husband. Of her father's character, 
 whatever it might be, of her present surroundings, however sordid 
 and shabby, he would take no heed. He would ask only if she 
 were pure and true and frank and honest enough for an honest 
 man's wife. Convinced on that point, he would ask no more. 
 
 An honest man's wife ? AVas he an honest man ? Was he 
 going to give her truth in exchange for truth ? AVas there nothing 
 that he must needs hold back ; no secret in his past life that he 
 must keep till his life's end ? Yes, there was one secret. He was not 
 going to tell her of his Venetian adventure. It would grieve her 
 woman's heart too much to know that the man she loved had to 
 bear the burden of another man's blood. Nay, more, with a 
 woman's want of logic she might deem that impulse of a moment 
 murder, and might refuse to give herself to a man who bore that 
 stain upon his past. 
 
 He meant to keep his secret. He could trust Lisa not to betray 
 him. She and her kinswoman had pledged themselves to silence ; 
 and over and above the obligation of that promise he had bound 
 them both to him by his services, had made their lives in some 
 wise dependent on his own welfare. No, he had no fear of treachery 
 from them. Nor had he any fear of what the chances of time and 
 change might bring upon him from any other belongings of the 
 dead man — so evidently had his been one of those isolated 
 existences which drop out of life unlamented and unremembered. 
 He was safe on all sides ; and the one lie in his life, the lie which 
 he began when he told his mother that he had not been to A 7 enice, 
 must be maintained steadily, whatever conscience might urge 
 against it. 
 
 Easter came late this year, and April, the sunny, the showery, 
 the capricious, was flinging her restless lights and shadows over the 
 meadows and copses as he drove from the station. He had to 
 pass Fernhurst on his way to liedwold Towers, and it was yet early
 
 " One Thread in Life worth spinning." 1 17 
 
 in (lie afternoon as lie drove past the quaint little cottage p is1 office 
 in the dip of the hill, the tiny graveyard on the higher ground, the 
 church and parsonage. It was early enough for afternoon-tea, and 
 he had no need to hurry to Redwold. His sister had sent a groom 
 with a dog-cart instead of coming to meet him in her capacious 
 landau, a lack of attention for which he was grateful, since it left 
 him his own master. He would have been less than human if he 
 had not stopped at the Homestead, and being in his present frame 
 of mind very human, he pulled up the eager homeward-going horse 
 at the little wooden gate, and flung the reins to the groom. 
 
 "I am going to make a call here; wait five minutes, and if I 
 am not out by that time take the horse to the inn and put him up 
 for an hour." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 How lightly his feet mounted the steep garden path between the 
 trim box borders ! There were plenty of flowers in the garden 
 now — sweet-smelling hyacinths, vivid scarlet tulips with wide open 
 chalices, half full of rain ; a snowy mesphilus flinging about its frail 
 white blooms in the soft west wind ; a crimson rhododendron 
 making a blaze of colour. 
 
 O ... 
 
 The long, low cottage, with its massive porch, was covered with 
 flowering creepers, yellow jasmine, pale pink japonica, scented 
 white honeysuckle. The cottage looked like a bower, and seemed 
 to smile at him as he went up the path. He had a childish fancy 
 that he would rather live in that cottage with Eve for his wife than 
 at Merewood, which was one of the prettiest and most convenient 
 houses of moderate size in all Hampshire. What dwelling could 
 ever be so dear as this quaint old cottage, bent under the burden 
 of its disproportionate thatch, with lattice windows peeping out at 
 odd levels, and with dormers like gigantic eyes under penthouse 
 lids ? 
 
 She was at home, everybody was at home, even that undomestic 
 bird, the Colonel. They were all at tea in their one spacious 
 parlour — windows open, and all the perfume of flowers and growing 
 hedgerows and budding trees blowing into the rdbm. 
 
 Colonel Marchant welcomed him with marked cordiality. The 
 girls were evidently pleased at his coming. 
 
 " How good of you to call on us on your way from the station ! " 
 said Sophy. " Lady Hartley told us you were to be met by the 
 afternoon train." 
 
 Lo, a miracle ! The five Miss Marchants were all dressed alike 
 — severely, in darkest blue serge. The red Garibaldis, the yellow 
 and brown stripes, the scarlet, the magenta, the Iteckitt's blue, 
 which had made their sitting-room a battle-field of crude colours, 
 had all vanished, Jn darkest serge, with neat white linen collars.
 
 1 1 8 The Venetians. 
 
 the Miss Marchants stood before him, a family to whose attire the 
 severest taste could not object. 
 
 Eve was the most silent of the sisters, but she had blushed 
 vividly at his advent, and she was blushing still. She blushed at 
 every word he addressed to her, and seemed to find a painful 
 difficulty in handling the teapot and cups and saucers when she 
 resumed her post at the tea-tray. 
 
 Vansittart asked them for the news of the neighbourhood. How 
 had they managed to amuse themselves after the frost, when there 
 was no more skating ? 
 
 " We were awfully sorry," said Sophy, " but the hunting men 
 were awfully glad." 
 
 " And had you any more balls ? " 
 
 " No public ball — but there were a good many dances," with half 
 a sigh. " Lady Hartley gave one just before Lent, the only one to 
 which we were invited, and lam happy to say it was out and away 
 the best." 
 
 " Lady Hartley has been more than kind to us," said Eve, finding 
 speech at last. " She is the most charming woman I ever met. 
 You must be very proud of such a sister." 
 
 " I am proud to know that you like her," answered Vansittart, in 
 a low voice. 
 
 He was sitting at her elbow, helping her by handing the cups and 
 saucers, and very conscious that her hand trembled when it 
 touched his. 
 
 " My daughter is right," said the Colonel, with a majestic air ; 
 " Lady Hartley is the one lady in this neighbourhood — the one 
 womanly woman. She saw my girls ignored, and she has made it 
 her business to convince her neighbours that they are a little too 
 good for such treatment. Other people have been prompt to follow 
 her lead." 
 
 " Oh, but it's not for that we care. It is Lady Hartley's friend- 
 Bhip we value, not her influence on other people," protested 
 Eve eagerly. 
 
 " We are going to Iiedwold to-morrow afternoon," said Jenny ; 
 " but I don't suppose we shall see you, Mr. Vansittart. You will be 
 shooting, or fishing, or something." 
 
 " Shooting there is none, Miss Vansittart. The pheasants are 
 a free and unfettered company in the copses, among the primroses 
 and dog-violets. Man is no longer their enemy. And I never 
 felt the angler's passion since I fished for sticklebacks in the 
 shrubbery at home." 
 
 The Colonel chimed in at this point, as if thinking the conversa- 
 tion too childish. 
 
 He began to discuss the political situation — the chances of a
 
 11 One Thread in Life worth spinning? 1 19 
 
 by-election which was to come on directly after Easter. He 
 expressed himself with the ferocity of an old-fashioned Tory. He 
 would give no quarter to the enemy. He had just returned from 
 Paris, he told Vansittart, and had seen what it was to live under 
 a mobocracy. 
 
 " They have been obliged to shut up one of their theatres — cut 
 short the run of the finest play that has been produced in the last 
 decade, simply because their sans culottes object to any disparage- 
 ment of Robespierre. There are a dozen incipient Robespierres 
 in Paris at this day, I believe, only waiting for opportunity to burst 
 into full bloom." 
 
 He had been to Paris, then, thought Vansittart. He could afford 
 to take his pleasure in that holiday capital, while his daughters were 
 on short commons at Fernhurst. 
 
 " Was Paris very full ? " asked Vansittart. 
 
 " I hardly know. I met a good many people I know. One 
 meets more Englishmen than Parisians on the boulevards at this 
 season. April is the Englishman's month. Your neighbour, Mr. 
 Sefton, was at the Continental — in point of fact, he and I went to 
 Paris together." 
 
 This explained matters to Vansittart. No doubt Sefton paid the 
 bills for both travellers. 
 
 " Mr. Sefton is not a neighbour of mine, but of my sister's," he 
 said. " My father and his father were good friends before I was 
 born, but 1 know nothing of this gentleman." 
 
 " A mutual loss," replied the Colonel. " Sefton is a very fine 
 fellow, as I told you the last time you were here. You can hardly 
 fail to get on with him when you do make his acquaintance." 
 
 " I saw him at the hunt ball, and I must confess that I was not 
 favourably impressed by his manner." 
 
 " Sefton's manner is the worst part of him," conceded Colonel 
 Marchant. " He has been spoilt by Dame Fortune, and is inclined 
 to be arrogant. An only child, brought up in the expectation of 
 wealth, and taught by a foolish mother to believe that a landed 
 estate and a fine income constitute a kind of royalty. Sefton might 
 easily be a worse fellow than he is. For my own part, I cannot 
 speak too warmly of him. He has been a capital neighbour, the 
 best neighbour we had, until Lady Hartley was good enough to 
 take a fancy to my girls." 
 
 "I hope you don't compare Lady Hartley with Mr. Sefton, 
 father," cried the impulsive Hetty. " There is more kindness in a 
 cup of tea from Lady Hartley than in all the game, and fruit, and 
 trout, and things with which Mr. Sefton loads us." 
 
 " They are enthusiasts, these girls of mine," said the Colonel, 
 blandly. " Lady Hartley has made them her creatures,"
 
 120 The Venetians. 
 
 " Her name reminds me that I must be moving on," said 
 Vansittart. "I hope you will all forgive this invasion. I was 
 anxious to learn how you all were. It seems a long time since I 
 was in this part of the world." 
 
 " It is a long time," said Eve, almost involuntarily. 
 
 Those few words rejoiced his heart. They sounded like a con- 
 fession that she had missed him and regretted him, since those long 
 friendly walks and talks in the clear cold January afternoons. lie 
 had never in all their conversation spoken to her in the words of a 
 lover, but he had shown her that he liked her society, and it might 
 be that she had thought him cold and cowardly when he left her 
 without any token of warmer feeling than this casual friendship of 
 the roads, lanes, and family tea-table. To go away, and stay away 
 for three months, and make no sign ! A cruel treatment, if, if, in 
 those few familiar hours, he had touched her girlish heart by the 
 magnetic power of unspoken love. 
 
 He left the Homestead happy in the thought that she was not 
 indifferent to the fact of his existence ; that he was something more 
 to her than a casual acquaintance. 
 
 He was to see her next day ; and it would be his own fault if 
 he did not see her the day after that ; and the next, and the next ; 
 until the solemn question had been asked, and the low-breathed 
 answer had been given, and she was his for ever. All was in his 
 own hand now. He had but to satisfy himself upon one point — her 
 acquaintance with Sefton, what it meant, and how far it had gone 
 — and then the rest was peace, the perfect peace of happy and 
 confiding love. 
 
 He was unfilial enough to be glad that his mother was not at 
 Kedwold. There would be no restraining influence, no maternal arm 
 stretched out to pluck him from his fate. He would be free to fulfil 
 his destiny ; and when the fair young bride was won, it would be 
 easy for her to win her own way into that motherly heart. Mrs. 
 Vansittart was not a woman to withhold her affection from her son's 
 wife. 
 
 Lady Hartley appeared in the portico as the cart drove up to the 
 door. 
 
 " What a fright you have given me ! " she said. " Did anything 
 happen to the train ? " 
 
 " Nothing but what usually happens to trains." 
 
 " But you are an hour late." 
 
 " I called on Colonel Marchant. It never occurred to me that you 
 could be uneasy on my account, or I should not have stopped on the 
 way. I am very sorry, my dear Maud," he concluded, as he kissed 
 her in the hall. 
 
 " You are not cured of your infatuation, Jack."
 
 " One Thread in Life worth spinning? i 2 1 
 
 "Not cured, or likely to be cured, in your way. I have heard 
 nothing but your praises, Maud. You seem to have been a fairy 
 godmother to those motherless girls." 
 
 "Havel not? How did you like their appearance? Did you 
 see any improvement ? " 
 
 " A monstrous improvement. They were all neatly dressed, and 
 in one colour." 
 
 " That was my doing, Jack." 
 
 " Really ! But how did you manage it, without wounding their 
 feelings? " 
 
 " My tact, Jack, my exquisite tact," cried Maud, gaily. 
 
 They were in her rnorning-room by this time, and Vansittart sank 
 into a low armchair, prepared to hear all she had to tell. Maud 
 had generally a great deal to say to her brother after an interval of 
 severance. 
 
 "I'll tell you all about it," she began. " It grieved me to see 
 those poor girls in their coats of many colours, or rather in their 
 assemblage of colours among the five sisters, so I felt I must do some- 
 thing. I was always looking at them, and thinking how much better 
 I could dress them than they dressed themselves, and quite as 
 economically, mark you. So one day I said casually that I thought 
 sisters — youthful sisters understood — looked to particular advantage 
 wdien they were all dressed exactly alike, whereupon Eve, who is 
 candour itself" — Vansittart's heart thrilled at this praise — " declared 
 herself entirely of my opinion, but she explained that she and her 
 sisters had very little money to dress upon, and they were all great 
 bargain-hunters, and could get most wonderful bargains at the great 
 drapery sales, if they were not particular in their choice of colours. 
 ' And that is how we always look like a ragged regiment,' said Eve, 
 ' but we certainly get good value for our poor little scraps of money.' " 
 
 " A girl who ought to be dressed like a duchess," sighed Vansittart. 
 
 " Well, on this I read her one of my lay sermons. I told her 
 that so far from getting good value for her money, she got very bad 
 value for her money; that she and her sisters, in their thirst for stuff 
 at a shilling a yard, reduced from three and sixpence, made them- 
 selves in a manner queens of shreds and patches. She was very 
 ready to admit the force of my reasoning, poor child. And then she 
 pleaded that her sisters were so young — they had no control over 
 their feelings when they found themselves in a great drapery show. 
 It seemed a kind of fairyland, where things were being given away. 
 And then such a scramble, she tells me, women almost fighting with 
 each other for eligible bits of stuff and last season's finery. I told 
 her that I had hardly ever seen the inside of a big shop, and that I 
 hated shopping. ' What,' she cried, ' you who are rich ! I thought 
 you would enjoy it above all things.' 1 told her no ; that Lewis and
 
 122 The Venetians. 
 
 Allanby sent me one of their people, and I chose my gown from a 
 pattern-book, and the fitter came and tried it on, and I had no more 
 trouble about it ; or that I went to my dressmaker, and just looked 
 over her newest things in a quiet drawing-room, without any of the 
 distracting bustle of a great shop." 
 
 " My sweetest Maud, what a dear little snob she must have 
 thought you ! " 
 
 " I don't think she did. She seemed pleased to know my ways. 
 And then I told her that I should like to see her and her sisters all 
 dressed alike, in one of my favourite colours ; and then I told her 
 that I knew of a most meritorious family — invented that moment — 
 who were going to Australia, and whom I wanted to help. ' In a 
 colony, those bright colours your sisters wear would be most suitable,' 
 I said. ' Will you make an exchange with me — just in a friendly 
 Avay — give me as many of your bright gowns as you can spare, and 
 I will give you a piece of good serge and a piece of the very best 
 cloth in exchange ? ' " 
 
 " Did she stand that? " asked Vansittart. 
 
 " Not very well. She looked at me for a moment or two, blushed 
 furiously, and then got up and walked to the window, and stood there 
 with her back towards me. I knew that she was crying. I went 
 over to her and put my arm round her neck and kissed her as if she 
 had been my first cousin. I begged her to forgive me if I had 
 offended. ' I really want to help those poor girls who are going to 
 Melbourne,' I said ; ' and your bargains would be just the thing for 
 them. They could get nothing half as good for the same money.' I 
 felt ashamed of myself the next moment. I had lied so well that 
 she believed me." 
 
 " Never mind, Maud; the motive was virtuous." 
 
 " ' No, they couldn't,' she said ; ' not till next July. The sales are 
 all over.' And then, after a little more argument, she yielded, and 
 it was agreed that I should drive over to the Homestead next morn- 
 ing, and we would hold a review of the frocks and furbelows, and 
 whatever was suitable for my Australian emigrants I should take, 
 giving the sisters fair value in exchange. Eve stipulated that it 
 should be only fair value. Well, the review was capital fun. The 
 girls were charming — evidently proud of their finery, expatiating 
 upon the miraculous cheapness of this and that, and the genuineness 
 of the sales at the best houses. They had sales on the brain, I think. 
 Of course I left them all the gay frocks suitable for home evenings ; 
 but I swooped like a vulture on their outdoor finery. I had taken a 
 large portmanteau over with me, and we crammed it with frocks and 
 fichus and Zouave jackets for my Australians. I am sorry to say the 
 portmanteau is still upstairs in the box-room. And now. Jack, you 
 know the history of the serge frocks "
 
 " One Thread in Life worth spinning? 123 
 
 "You are a dear little diplomatist ; but I'm afraid you must have 
 made Miss Marchant suffer a good deal before your transmutation 
 was accomplished." 
 
 " My dear Jack, that girl is destined for suffering — of that kind ; 
 small social stings, the sense of the contrast between her surround- 
 ings and those of other girls no better born, only better off." 
 
 " She will marry and forget these evil days," said Vansittart. 
 
 " Let us hope so ; but let us hope that she will not marry you." 
 
 " Why should you — or any one — hope that? " 
 
 " Because it ain't good enough, Jack ; believe me, it ain't. She is 
 a sweet girl — but her father's character is the opposite of sweet. 
 Hubert has made inquiries, and has been told, by men on whose good 
 faith he can rely, that the Colonel is a black-leg ; that there is hardly 
 any dishonourable act that a man can do, short of felony, which 
 Colonel Marchant has not done. He is well known in London, 
 where he spends the greater part of his time. He is a hanger-on of 
 rich young men. He shows them life. He wins their money — and 
 like that other hanger-on, the leech, he drops away from them when 
 he is gorged and they are empty. Can you choose the daughter of 
 such a man for your wife? " 
 
 "I can, and do choose her, above all other women ; and if she is as 
 pure and true as I believe her to be, I shall ask her to be my wife. 
 The more disreputable her father, the gladder I shall be to take her 
 away from him " 
 
 " And when her father is your father-in-law how will you deal 
 with him ? " 
 
 "Leave that problem to me. I am not an idiot, or a youth fresh 
 from the University. I shall know how to meet the difficulty." 
 
 " You will not have that man at Merewood, Jack," cried Maud, 
 excitedly, " to loaf about my mother's garden — the garden that is 
 hers now — and to play cards in my mother's drawing-room ? " 
 
 " You are running on very fast, Maud. No ; if I marry Eve Mar- 
 chant be assured I shall not keep open house for her father. He lias 
 not been so good a parent as to make his claim indisputable." 
 
 " Such a marriage will break mother's heart," sighed Maud. 
 
 " You know better than that, Maud ! You know that only a dis- 
 reputable marriage would seriously distress my mother, and there 
 can be nothing disreputable in a marriage with a good and pure- 
 minded girl. I promise you that I will not offer myself to Eve Mar- 
 chant until I feel assured of her perfect truth. There is only one 
 point upon which I have the shadow of a doubt. It seemed to me, 
 from certain trifling indications, that there had been some kind of 
 flirtation between her and Sefton." 
 
 " I cannot quite make that out, Jack," answered Maud, thought- 
 fully. "I have seen them together several times since you left,
 
 124 The Venetians. 
 
 There is certainly something, on his side. He pursues har in a 
 manner — contrives to place himself near her at every opportunity, 
 and puts on a confidential air when he talks to her. I have watched 
 them closely in her interest, for I really like her. I don't think she 
 encourages him. Indeed I believe she detests him ; but she is not 
 as stand-offish as she might be ; and I have seen her occasionally 
 talking very confidentially with him— as if they h;1d a secret under- 
 standing." 
 
 ''That's it," cried Yansittart, inwardly raging. "There is a 
 secret, and I must be possessed of that secret before I confess my 
 love." 
 
 " And how do you propose to pluck out the heart of the mystery ? " 
 
 "In the simplest manner — by questioning Eve herself. If she 
 is the woman I think her she will answer me truthfully. If she is 
 false and shifty — why then — I whistle her down the wind, and you 
 will never hear more of this fond dream of mine." 
 
 " Well, Jack, you must go your own way. You were always my 
 master, and I can't pretend to master you now. You'll have an 
 opportunity of seeing Eve and Mr. Sefton to-morrow. He is coming 
 to my afternoon. I hope you'll be civil to him." 
 
 " As civil as I can. I'll break no bounds, Maud ; but I believe 
 the man to be a scoundrel. If he were pursuing Eve with any good 
 motive he would have spoken out before now." 
 
 " Precisely my view of the case. It is shameful to compromise 
 her by motiveless attentions. There goes the gong. I am glad we 
 have had this quiet talk. You will not act precipitately, will you, 
 Jack ? " concluded his sister, appealingly, as she moved towards 
 the door. 
 
 " I will act as I have said, Maud, not otherwise." 
 
 " Well," with a sigh, " I believe she will come through the 
 ordeal, and that I am destined to have her for my sister." 
 
 " You have made her love you already. That leaves less work 
 for you in the future." 
 
 i; Poor mother ! She will be wofully disappointed." 
 
 " True," said Vansittart; " but as I couldu't marry all her pro- 
 tegees, perhaps it is just as well I should marry none of them ; and 
 be assured I should not love Eve Marchant if I didn't believe that 
 she would be a good and loving daughter to my mother." 
 
 " Every lover believes as much. It is all nonsense," said Maud, 
 as she ran off to her dressing-room. 
 
 Mr. Sefton made an early appearance at Lady Hartley's after- 
 noon. He arrived before the Marchants, and when there were 
 only about a dozen people in the long drawing-room, and Yan- 
 sittart guessed by the way he loitered near a window overlooking 
 the drive that he was on the watch for the sisters.
 
 " One Thread in Life worth spinning? 125 
 
 Lady Hartley introduced her brother to Mr. Sefton, with the 
 respect due to the owner of one of the finest estates in the county, 
 a man of old family and aristocratic connections. Sefton was par- 
 ticularly cordial, and began to make conversation in the most 
 amiable way, a man not renowned for amiability to his equals. The 
 Miss Marchants were announced while he and Vansittart were talk- 
 ing, and Sefton's attention began to wander immediately, although 
 he continued the discussion of hopes and fears about that by-election 
 which was disturbing every politician's mind ; or which at any rate 
 served as a topic among people who had nothing to say to each other. 
 
 Only two out of the three grown-up sisters appeared, Eve and 
 Jenny. The more diplomatic Sophy thought she improved her 
 social status by occasional absence. 
 
 Sefton broke away from the conversation at the first opening, 
 and went straight to Eve, who was talking to little Mr. Tivett, 
 arrived that afternoon, no holidays being complete in a country 
 house without such a man as Tivett, with his little thin voice, good 
 nature, and willing to fetch and carry for the weaker sex. 
 
 Vansittart stood aloof for a little while, talking to a comfortable 
 matron, who was evidently attached to the landed interest, as her 
 conversation dwelt upon the weather in its relation to agriculture 
 and the lambing season. He could see that Eve received Sefton's 
 advances with coldest politeness. On her part there was no touch 
 of the earnest and confidential air which had so distressed him that 
 afternoon by the lake. She talked with Sefton for a few minutes, 
 and then turned away, and walked into the adjoining room, where 
 the wide French window stood open to the garden. Vansittart 
 seized his opportunity and followed her. He found her with her 
 sister, looking at a pile of new books on a large table in a corner, 
 and he speedily persuaded them that the flower-beds outside were 
 better worth looking at than magazines and books which were no 
 less ephemeral than the tulips and hyacinths. 
 
 He walked up and down the terrace with them for nearly half an 
 hour, but never a hint of anything more than lightest society talk 
 gave he in all that time. He had made up his mind to speak only 
 after gravest deliberation, only in the calmest hour, when they two 
 should be alone together under God's quiet sky ; but he so managed 
 matters that Mr. Sefton had no further opportunity of offering his 
 invidious attentions to Eve Marchant that afternoon. It was Van- 
 sittart who found seats for her and her sister in the drawing-room ; 
 it was Vansittart who carried their teacups, assisted only by Mr. 
 Tivett, who tripped about with plates of chocolate biscuits, and 
 buttered buns, with such activity as to appear ubiquitous. 
 
 The next day was Good Friday, a day of long church services 
 and no visitors. On Saturday Vansittart went to Liss to spend the
 
 126 The Venetians. 
 
 day with his mother, and to make a tour of grounds and home farm, 
 a round of grave inspection which the mother and son took together, 
 and during which they talked of many things, but not of Eve Mar- 
 chant. If Mrs. Vansittart wondered that her son should have chosen 
 to spend the recess at Redwold rather than at Merewood, she was 
 too discreet to express either wonder or dissatisfaction. She was 
 going to Charles Street directly after Easter, and Jack was to join 
 her there for the London season ; so she had no ground for doleful- 
 ness in being deprived of his society for just this one week. 
 
 She found him looking well, and, to her fancy, happier than he 
 had looked for a long time. There was a ring of gaiety in his voice 
 and laugh which she had missed of late years, and which she heard 
 again to-day. They lunched together, and she drove him to the 
 station in the late afternoon. 
 
 " It delights me to see you looking so well and so happy, Jack," 
 she said, as they walked up and down the platform. 
 
 "Does it, mother?" he asked earnestly. "Is my happiness 
 really enough to gladden you ? Are you content that I should be 
 happy in my own way ? " 
 
 There were some moments of silence, and then she said gravely, 
 " Yes, Jack, I am content, for I cannot believe that your way would 
 be a foolish way. You have seen enough of the world to judge 
 between gold and dross, and you are not the kind of man to plunge 
 ■wilfully into a morass, led by false lights." 
 
 " No, no, mother, you may be sure of that. My star shall be a 
 true star — no Jack o' Lantern." 
 
 The train steamed in opportunely, and cut short the conversation ; 
 but enough had been said, Vansittart thought, to break the ice ; and 
 it was evident to him that his mother had an inkling of the course 
 which events were taking. 
 
 The next day was Easter Sunday, a day when the morning sun is 
 said to dance upon the waters ; a day when the dawn seems more 
 glorious, when the flowers that deck the churches seem fairer than 
 mere earthly flowers, when the swelling chords of the organ and the 
 voices even of the village choir have a sweetness that suggests the 
 heavenly chorus. To John Vansittart, at least, among those who 
 worshipped in the village church that Easter Day, there seemed a 
 gladness in all things — a pure and thrilling gladness as of minds 
 attuned to holiness and ready to believe. He had read much of 
 that new and widening school of thought which is gradually sapping 
 the old foundations and pulling down the old bulwarks ; but there 
 was no remembrance of that modern school in his mind to-day as 
 he stood up in the village church to join in the Easter hymn. His 
 thoughts had resumed the simplicity of early years. He was able 
 to believe and to pray like a little child.
 
 " One Thread in Life worth spinning" 127 
 
 He prayed to be forgiven for that unpremeditated sin of which 
 the world knew not. He prostrated himself in heart and mind at 
 the feet of the Christ who died for sinners. But he did not go 
 to the Altar. The Easter Communion was not for him whose hands 
 were stained with blood. 
 
 The Marchants were at the morning service, all five of them, 
 fresh and blooming after their long walk, a bunch of English roses, 
 redder or paler as Nature had painted each. Eve, tallest, fairest, 
 loveliest, was conspicuous among the sisters. 
 
 " By Jove 1 how handsome that girl is ! " whispered little Tivett, 
 as he ducked to put away his hat. 
 
 He and Vansittart were sitting apart from the rest, the Bedwold 
 pew being full without them. 
 
 " I want to walk home with them after church," whispered Van- 
 sittart, also intent upon the disposal of the Sunday cylinder. " Will 
 you come too ? " 
 
 " With pleasure." 
 
 This was before the service began, before the priest and choir 
 had come into the chancel. 
 
 The service was brief, a service of jubilant hymns and anthem 
 and short flowery sermon, flowery as the chancel and altar, and pulpit 
 and font, in all their glory of arums, azaleas, spireas, and lilies of the 
 valley. The church clock was striking twelve as the major part of 
 the congregation poured out. There was a row of carriages in the 
 road, two of them from Bedwold Towers ; but Vansittart and Tivett 
 declined the accommodation of landau or waggonette. 
 
 " We are going for a long walk," said Mr. Tivett. " It's such a 
 perfect day." 
 
 " But you will lose your lunch, if you go too far." 
 
 " We must risk that, and make amends at afternoon-tea." 
 
 " Tivett," said Vansittart, when the carriages had driven off, " I 
 am going to make a martyr of you. It will be three o'clock at the 
 earliest when we get back to Bedwold, and I know you enjoy your 
 luncheon. It's really too bad." 
 
 " Do you think I regret the sacrifice in the cause of friendship ? 
 There go the Marchant girls, steaming on ahead. We had better 
 overhaul them at once. Don't mind me, Vansittart. I have been 
 doing gooseberry ever since I wore Eton jackets. Only one word- 
 Is it serious ? " 
 
 " Very serious — sink or swim — Heaven or Hades." 
 
 " And all in honour ? " 
 
 " All in honour." 
 
 " Then I am with you to the death. You want a long walk and 
 a long talk with Miss Marchant ; and you want me to take the 
 whole bunch of sisters off your hands."
 
 i 28 The Venetians, 
 
 " Just so, my best of friends." 
 
 " Consider it done." 
 
 They overtook the young ladies in the dip of the road, whore a 
 lane branches off to Bexley Hill. Here they stopped to shake 
 hands all round, and to talk of the church, and the weather — quite 
 the most exquisite Easter Sunday that any of them could remember, 
 or could remember that they remembered, for no doubt memory 
 severely interrogated would have recalled Easter Days as fair. 
 
 " Mr. Tivett and I are pining for a long walk," said Vansittart, 
 " so we are going to see you home— if you will let us — or, if you 
 are not tied for time, will you join us in a ramble on Bexley Hill ? 
 It is just the day for the hill — the views will be splendid — and I 
 know that you young ladies are like Atalanta. Distance cannot 
 tire you ! " 
 
 " We could hardly help being good walkers," said Sophy, rather 
 discontentedly. " Walking is our only amusement." 
 
 Hetty and Pes;gy clapped their hands. "Bexley Hill, Bexley 
 Hill," they cried; " hands up for Bexley Hill." 
 
 There were no hands lifted, but they all turned into the lane. 
 
 " We can go a little way just to look at the view," assented Eve ; 
 and the younger girls went skipping off in their short petticoats, and 
 the two elder girls were speedily absorbed in Mr. Tivett's animated 
 conversation, and Eve and Vansittart were walking alone. 
 
 " A little way." Who could measure distance or count the 
 minutes in such an exhilarating atmosphere as breathed around 
 that wooded hillside in the balmy April morning? Every step 
 seemed to take them into a finer air, and to lift their hearts with an 
 increasing gladness. All around them rippled the sea of furze and 
 heather, broken by patches of woodland, and grassy glades that were 
 like bits stolen out of the New Forest, and flung down here upon 
 this swelling hillside. Here and there a squatter's cottage, with low 
 cob wall and steep tiled roof, stood snug and sheltered in its bit of 
 garden, under the shadow of a venerable beech or oak — here and 
 there a little knot of children sprawled and sunned themselves in 
 front of a cottage door. The rest was silence and solitude, save for 
 the voices of those rare birds which inhabit forest and common land. 
 
 ". Gussie," whispered Vansittart, when they bad passed one of these 
 humble homesteads, and were ascending the crest of the hill, " do 
 you think you could contrive to lose yourself— and the girls — for 
 half an hour ? " 
 
 " Of course I can. You will have to cooey for us when you 
 want to see our faces again." 
 
 This little conversation occurred in the rear of the five girls, who 
 had scattered themselves over the hillside, every one believing in 
 her own particular track as the briefest and best ascent.
 
 " One Thread in Life worth spinning" 129 
 
 Eve had climbed highest of all the sisters, by a path so narrow, 
 and so hemmed in by bramble and hawthorn, that only one, and 
 that one a dexterous climber, could mount at a time. 
 
 Vansittart followed her desperately, pushing aside the brambles 
 with his stick. He was breathless when he reached the top, where 
 she stood lightly poised, like Mercury. The ascent, since he stopped 
 to speak to Tivett, had taken only ten minutes or so, but when he 
 looked round him and downward over the billowy furze and rugged 
 hillside there was not one vestige of Augustus Tivett or the tour 
 Miss Marchants in view. 
 
 " What can have become of them all ? " questioned Eve, gazing 
 wonderingly around. "I thought they were only just behind me — 
 I heard them laughing a few minutes ago. Have they sunk into 
 the earth, or are they hiding behind the bushes ? " 
 
 " Neither. They are only going round the other side of the hill. 
 They will meet us on the top." 
 
 " It's very silly of them," said Eve, obviously distressed. " There 
 is always some folly or mischief when Hetty is one of our party. 
 Peggy is ever so much more sensible." 
 
 " Don't blame poor Hetty till you are assured she is in fault. I 
 shouldn't wonder if it were all Tivett's doing. You must scold good 
 little Tivett. I hope you don't mind being alone with me for a 
 quarter of an hour. I have been longing for the chance of a little 
 serious talk with you. Shall we sit down for a few minutes on this 
 fine old beech trunk? You are out of breath after mounting the hill." 
 
 She was out of breath, but the hill was not the cause. Her colour 
 came and went, her heart beat furiously. She was speechless with 
 conflicting emotions — fear, joy, wonder, self-abasement. 
 
 They were on the ridge of the hill. In front of them, far away 
 towards the south stretched the Sussex Downs, purple in the distance, 
 save for one pale shimmering streak of light which meant the sea. 
 Below them lay the Sussex Weald, rippling meadows, and the vivid 
 green of spacious fields where the young corn showed emerald bright 
 in the sun— pools and winding streamlets, copses and grey fallows, 
 cottage roofs and village spires, a world lovely enough for Satan to 
 use as a lure for the tempted. 
 
 But for Vansittart that world hardly existed. He had eyes, 
 thoughts, comprehension for nothing but this girl who sat mutely 
 at his side, the graceful throat bending a little, the shy violet eyes 
 looking at the ground. 
 
 So far there had been no word of love between them, not one 
 word, not one silent indication, such as the tender pressure of hands, 
 or even the looks that tell love's story. But love was in the air they 
 breathed, love held them and bound them each to each, and each 
 knew the other's secret.
 
 130 The Venetians. 
 
 "Miss Marchant," begun Vansittart with ceremonious gravity, 
 " will you forgive me if I ask you a few questions which may seem 
 somewhat impertinent on my part ? " 
 
 This was so different from what her trembling heart had expected 
 that she paled as at a sudden danger. He was watching her intently, 
 and was quick to perceive that pallor. 
 
 " I don't think you would ask me anything really impertinent," 
 she faltered. 
 
 "Not with an impertinent motive, be assured. Well, I must 
 even risk offending you. I want you to tell me frankly what you 
 think of Mr. Scfton." 
 
 At this the pale cheeks flushed, and she looked angry. 
 
 " I don't like him, though he is my father's friend, and though he 
 is always very kind — obtrusively kind. He has even offered Sophy 
 and me his horses to ride — to have the exclusive use of two of his 
 best hacks, if father would let us ride them ; but of course that was 
 out of the question. We could not have accepted such a favour 
 from any one." 
 
 " Not from any one but an affianced lover," said Vansittart. " Do 
 you know, Miss Marchant, when I first saw you and Mr. Sefton 
 together at the ball I thought you must be engaged." 
 
 " How very foolish of you ! " 
 
 "He had such an air of taking possession of you, as if he had a 
 superior claim to your attentions." 
 
 "Oil, that is only Mr. Sefton's masterful way. He cannot forget 
 the extent of his acres or the length of his pedigree." 
 
 "But he seems — always — on such confidential terms with 
 you." 
 
 " I have known him a long time." 
 
 "Yes, but his manner — to a looker-on — implies something more 
 than friendship. Oh, Miss Marchant, forgive me if I presume to 
 question you. My motive is no light one. Last January by the 
 lake I saw you and that man meet, with a look on both sides of a 
 preconcerted meeting. I heard, accidentally, some few words which 
 Mr. Sefton spoke to you, while you were walking with him by the 
 lake ; and those words implied a secret understanding between you 
 and him — something of deep interest of which the outer world knew 
 nothing. Be frank with me, for pity's sake. Speak openly to me 
 to-day, from heart to heart, if you never speak to me again. Is not 
 there something more between you and Wilfred Sefton than an 
 everyday friendship ? ". 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " there is something more. There is a secret 
 understanding — not much of a secret, but Mr. Sefton has taken 
 advantage of it to offer me meaningless attentions which I detest, 
 and which, I dare say, ill-natured people may talk about. They
 
 " One Thread in Life worth spinning? 131 
 
 would be sure to think that Mr. Sefton could have no serious inten- 
 tions about me, that he was only carrying on an idle flirtation." 
 
 " And if he were serious — if he asked you to be his wife ? " 
 
 "To live in that grand house; to rule over all those acres; to 
 have a wafer-space on that long pedigree ! Could Colonel Mar- 
 chant's daughter refuse such a chance? " 
 
 " Would Colonel Marchant's daughter accept it?" 
 
 " Not this daughter," answered Eve, gaily. " I might hand him 
 on to Sophy, perhaps. Poor Sophy hankers after the pomps and 
 vanities of this wicked world." 
 
 Her gaiety delighted her lover. It told of an unburdened con- 
 science — a heart at peace with itself. 
 
 "Tell me what it was you overheard, Mr. Eavesdropper, that 
 afternoon by the lake ? " she asked. 
 
 " I heard him say to you, very earnestly, ' It was a false scent, 
 you see ; ' and then he expressed his sorrow for your disappointment." 
 
 " You have a good memory. I, too, remember those words, ' It 
 was a false scent.' It was. .He had need to be sorry for my dis- 
 appointment, for he had cheated me with false hopes." 
 
 " About what ? About whom ? " 
 
 " About my brother." 
 
 " Your brother? I did not know you had a brother." 
 
 " We don't talk about him in a general way. He has been a 
 wanderer over the earth for many years. He was never with us 
 at Fernhurst. He and my father had a terrible quarrel before we 
 left Yorkshire — chiefly about his college debts, I believe. There 
 seemed to be dreadful difficulties at Cambridge. My father used 
 all his influence to get poor Harold out of the country, and suc- 
 ceeded in getting him a berth in the Cape Mounted Police. Parting 
 with him perhaps went nearer to break my mother's heart than our 
 loss of home and fortune." 
 
 " It must have been a hard parting." 
 
 " It was indeed hard. He went away in disgrace. My father 
 would not speak to him or look at him. He lived at the Vicarage 
 during those last weeks before the ship sailed away with him to 
 Africa. The Vicar and his wife were very good to him, but every- 
 body felt that he was under a cloud. I fear — I fear that he had 
 done something very wrong at Cambridge — something for which he 
 might have been arrested — for he seemed to be in hiding at the 
 Vicarage. And ho left one night, and was driven over to Hull, 
 where he went on board a boat bound for Hamburg, and he was to 
 sail from Hamburg for the Cape. My mother and I went to say 
 good-bye to him that last evening, after dark ; the others were too 
 young to be told anything; they hardly remember him. He kissed 
 us, and cried over us, and promised mother that for her sake he
 
 132 The Venetians. 
 
 would try to do well — that he would bear the hardest life in order 
 to redeem his character. He promised that he would write to her 
 by every mail. The dog- cart was at the door while he was saying 
 this. The Vicar came into the room to hurry him away. I have 
 never seen my brother since that night." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " OXE BORN TO LOVE YOU, SWEET." 
 
 " And Mr. Sefton," asked Vansittart, " what has he to do with this? " 
 
 " He was with my brother at Cambridge — in the same year, at the 
 same college, Trinity. It was not till the year before last that he 
 ever spoke to me about Harold, or that I knew they had been friends. 
 But one summer afternoon when he called and happened to find me 
 in the garden, alone — a thing that seldom happens in our family- 
 he began to talk to me, very kindly, with a great deal of good feeling, 
 about Harold. He said he had been slow to speak about him, as he 
 knew that he must be in some measure under a cloud. And then I 
 told him how unhappy I was about my poor brother ; and how it 
 was four or five years since anything had been heard of him directly 
 or indirectly. His last letter had told us that he was going to join a 
 party of young men who were just setting out upon an exploring 
 tour in the Mashona country. They were willing to take him with 
 them on very easy terms, as he was a fine shot, and strong and 
 active. He would be little better than a servant in the expedition, 
 he told me." 
 
 " It was to you he wrote, then ? " 
 
 " Yes, after my mother's death, only to me. He never wrote to 
 his father. I told Mr. Sefton how unhappy I was about Harold, and 
 my fear — a growing fear — that he must be dead. He argued me out 
 of this terror, and told me that when a man who was leading a wild 
 life far away from home once let a long time slip without writing to 
 his relations, the probabilities were that he w T ould leave off* writing- 
 altogether. His experience had shown him that this was almost a 
 certainty. And then, seeing how distressed I was, he promised that 
 he would try and find out Harold's whereabouts. He told me that 
 the newspaper press and the electric cable had made the world a 
 very small world, and that he certainly ought to be able to trace my 
 brother's wanderings, and bring me some information about him." 
 
 " And did he succeed ? " 
 
 " No ; he failed always in getting any certain knowledge of 
 Harold's wanderings, though he did bring me some scraps of infor- 
 mation about his adventures in Mashonaland ; but that was all news 
 of past years — ever so long ago. He could hear nothing about
 
 u One born to love you, Sweet" 133 
 
 Harold in the present — not within the last four years — so there was 
 very little comfort in his discoveries. Last November he told me 
 that he had heard of a man at the diamond fields whose description 
 seemed exactly to fit my brother, and he thought this time he was 
 on the right track. He wrote to an agent at Cape Town, and took 
 every means of putting himself in communication with this man — 
 both through the agent and by advertisements in the local papers — 
 and the result was disappointment. There was no Harold Marchant 
 among the diamond-seekers. That was what he had to tell me the 
 afternoon you overheard our conversation. He had received the 
 final letter which assured him he had been mistaken." 
 
 " And that was all — and verily all?" inquired Vansittart, taking 
 her hand in his. 
 
 " That was all, and verily all." 
 
 " And bevond that association, Mr. Sefton is nothing in the world 
 to you?" 
 
 " Nothing in the world." 
 
 " And if there were some one else, quite as willing as Mr. Sefton, 
 to hunt for this wandering brother of yours, some one else who loves 
 you fondly " — his arm was round her now, and he was drawing her 
 towards him. drawing the blushing cheek against his own. drawing 
 the slender form so near that he could hear the beating of her heart 
 — " some one else who longs to have you for his wife, would you 
 listen to him, Eve ? And if that some one else were I, would vou 
 say ' Yes ' ? " 
 
 She turned to answer him, but her lips trembled and were mute. 
 There was no need of speech between lovers whose very life breathed 
 love. His lips met hers, and took his answer there. 
 
 " Dearest, dearest, dearest," he sighed, when that long kiss had 
 sealed the bond; and then they sat in silence, hand clasped in hand, 
 in the face of the Sussex Weald, and the far-reaching Sussex Downs, 
 and the silvery shimmer of the distant sea. 
 
 Oh, Easter Day of deep content! Would either of these two 
 souls ever know such perfect bliss again — the bliss of loving and 
 being loved, while love was still a new thing ? " 
 
 A shrill long cooey broke the silent spell, and they both started 
 up as if awakened out of deepest slumber. 
 
 "They are looking for us," cried Eve, as she walked swiftly 
 towards the other side of the ridge. 
 
 Tivett and the four girls came toiling towards her. 
 
 " Mr. Tivett has taken us a most awful round," cried Hetty. " He 
 pretended to know the way, and he doesn't know it one little bit." 
 
 " My dear young lady," apologized the gentle Tivett, " the truth 
 of the matter is that I trusted to my natural genius for topography, 
 for I have never been on Bexley Hill before."
 
 134 Th& Venetians. 
 
 " And you pretended to pilot us, and have only led us astray." 
 
 " Alas ! sweet child, the world is full of such pilots." 
 
 " Shall I tell them?" whispered Vansittart, at Eve's ear. 
 
 " If you like. They will make a dreadful fuss. Can you ever put 
 up with so many sisters-in-law ? " 
 
 " I would put up with them if you had as many sisters as Hyperm- 
 nestra ; " and then, laughing happily, he told these four girls that they 
 were soon to have a sister less and a brother more. 
 
 Hetty and Peggy received the news with whooping and clapping 
 of hands, Sophy and Jenny with polite surprise. Was there ever 
 anything so wonderful ? Nothing could have been further from their 
 thoughts. Little Mr. Tivett skipped and frisked like a young lamb 
 in a meadow. Had Eve Marchant been his sister he could hardly 
 have shown more delight. 
 
 The descent of the hill for Eve and Vansittart was a progress 
 through pure ether. They knew not that their feet touched the 
 earth. They were like the greater gods and goddesses in the Homeric 
 Olympus. They started and tbey arrived. The labour of common 
 mortals was not for them. 
 
 "Do you remember the legend of the blue flower of happiness 
 which grows upon the mountain peak, and is said to fade and wither 
 in the lower air?" asked Vansittart, close at his fianceVs ear. 
 " We have found the blue flower on the hilltop, Eve. God grant 
 that for us the heaven-born blossom will keep its bloom even on the 
 dull level of daily life." 
 
 "Will our life be dull?" she questioned, in her shy sweet voice, 
 as if she scarcely dared speak of her love louder than in a whisper. 
 " I don't think I can ever find life dull so long as you really care 
 for me." 
 
 " No, Eve, life shall not bo dull. It shall be as bright and varied, 
 and as full of change and gladness, as devoted love can make it. 
 Your youth has not been free from care, dearest ; and you have 
 missed many of the pleasures which girls of your age demand as a 
 right. But the arrears shall be made up. There shall be full 
 measure of gladness in your married life, if I can make you glad. I 
 am not what the modern world calls a rich man ; but I am very far 
 from poverty. I have enough for all the real pleasures of life — for 
 travel, and books, and music, and the drama, and gracious surround- 
 ings, and kindly charities. The sting of narrow means can never 
 touch my wife." 
 
 "It can be a very sharp sting sometimes," said Eve; and then, 
 dropping again into that shy undertone, " But if you were ever so 
 poor, and if you were a working man, and we had to live in that 
 cottage under the beech tree, squatters, with only a key-holding, I 
 think I could be perfectly happy."
 
 "One born to love you, Sweet." 135 
 
 "Ah, that is what love always thinks, while the hlue flower 
 blooms ; but when that mystic flower begins to fade there is some 
 virtue in pleasant surroundings. Years hence, Avhen you begin to be 
 tired of me, and the blue flower takes a greyish shade, why, we can 
 change the scene of our lives, wander far away, and in a new world 
 I shall seem almost a new lover." 
 
 " Will you ever take me to Italy ? " she asked. " Italy has been 
 the dream of my life, but I never thought it would be realized." 
 
 " Ah, that is just a girl's fancy, fed by old-fashioned poets — Byron, 
 for instance. The Italy of to-day is very disappointing, and just like 
 everywhere else." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Vansittart ! " 
 
 " Mr. ! " he echoed. ".Henceforward I am John, or Jack ; very 
 soon, my husband. Never again Mr., except in your letters to 
 tradespeople or your orders to servants." 
 
 " Am I really to call you Jack ? " 
 
 " Really. It is the name by which I best know myself. But if 
 you think it is too vulgar " 
 
 "Vulgar; it is a lovely name. Jack! Jack!" 
 
 She repeated the monosyllabic as if it were a sound of exquisite 
 music, a sound on which to dwell lingeringly and lovingly for its 
 very sweetness. To Vansittart also the name was sweet, spoken by 
 those lips. 
 
 Colonel Marchant received Mr. Vansittart's offer for his eldest 
 daughter politely, but with no excess of cordiality. He had set his 
 hope upon a richer marriage, had encouraged Sefton's visit to the 
 Homestead, with the idea that he would eventually propose to Eve. 
 He might not mean matrimony in the first instance, perhaps, though 
 he obviously admired the young lady, but he would be led on and 
 caught before he was aware. Colonel Marchant had implicit faith 
 in his daughter's power to ward off any evil purpose of her admirer ; 
 and although he knew Sefton's character well enough to know that 
 he would not willingly marry a penniless girl, he trusted to the 
 power of Eve's beauty and personal charm to bring him to the right 
 frame of mind. 
 
 He was too shrewd a campaigner, however, to refuse the humble 
 sparrow in the hand for the goldfinch in the bush. Sefton had been 
 dangling about the family for nearly two years, and had scrupulously 
 abstained from any serious declaration ; and here was a young man 
 of good birth and breeding, with a very fair estate, who between 
 January and April had made up his mind in the manliest fashion, 
 and was willing to take Eve for his wife without a sixpence, and to 
 settle three hundred a year upon her for pin-money. Vansittart had 
 offered himself in a frank and business-like manner, had declared
 
 136 The Venetians, 
 
 the amount of his income, and his anxiety to many as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 " We have nothing in this world to wait for," he said. 
 
 " Except a young lady's caprice," answered the Colonel. " Eve 
 will be too happy in the pleasures of courtship to be anxious for the 
 final step. And then there will be her trousseau to prepare. That 
 will take time." 
 
 " My mother can help her in all those details," said Vansittart, 
 thinking that in all probability his mother would have to pay for 
 as well as to choose the wedding finery. " We can take all that 
 trouble off your hands, Colonel Marchant." 
 
 He wrote to his mother on Sunday night, when his sister's house- 
 hold and guests were hushed in their first sleep ; wrote at fullest 
 length, dwelling fondly upon the graces and perfections of her whom 
 he had chosen. 
 
 " She will love you dearly, if you will let her," he wrote ; " she 
 will be to you as a second daughter — nearer to you, perhaps, than 
 Maud can now be ; for, if you will have it so, our lives may be spent 
 mostly together, in a triple bond of love. I know not what your 
 inclination may be, but for my own part I see no reason why we 
 should not live as one household. Merewood is large enough for a 
 much larger family than ours could be for years to come. Eve has 
 been so long motherless that she would the more gladly welcome 
 motherly love and solicitude. Think of it all, mother, and act in 
 all things as may be most congenial to yourself. I would ask no 
 sacrifices, but I do ask you to love my wife." 
 
 This letter written, he could lay liimself down to rest with an 
 unburdened spirit, could fearlessly enter dreamland, knowing that 
 his love would be with him in the land of shadows. 
 
 Strange, cruel irony, that the scene of his dreams should be 
 Venice, where he and Eve were wandering confusedly, now on land, 
 now on sea, greatly troubled by petty disturbances, and continually 
 losing each other in labyrinthine streets and on slippery sea- washed 
 stairs. Stranger still that Venice should be unlike Venice, and 
 indeed unlike any place he had ever seen in his life. 
 
 The dream was but a natural sequence of Eve's talk about Italy. 
 It had hurt him that one of her first utterances after their betrothal 
 should express her desire to visit a land whose frontier he would 
 never willingly cross again. He had loved Italy with all his heart; 
 but now the image of Venice burnt and festered in his mind like a 
 plague-spot on the breast of a man in full health. All except that 
 one accursed memory was peace.
 
 ( 137 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 "the time of loveks is brief." 
 
 When a man is sole master of bis estate and thoroughly independent 
 of his kindred, his choice of a wife, if not altogether outrageous and 
 unpardonable, must needs be accepted by his belongings. Vansittart 
 lost not an hour in telling his sister and her husband that henceforth 
 they must look upon Eve Marchant as a very close connection. 
 
 " We shall be married at midsummer," he said, " so you may as 
 well begin to think of her as a sister-in-law." 
 
 Sir Hubert, who was the essence of good nature, received the 
 announcement with unalloyed cordiality. 
 
 " She is a bright, frank girl, very pretty, very winning, and very 
 intelligent," he said. "I congratulate you, Jack — though naturally 
 one would have wished " 
 
 "That she were the daughter of a duke, or that she had half a 
 million of money," interjected Vansittart. "I understand you. It 
 is a bad match from a worldly point of view. I, who have between 
 three and four thousand a year, should have stood out for other 
 three or four thousand with a wife, and thus solidified my income. 
 I ought at least to have tried America ; seen if the heiress market 
 I are would have supplied the proper article. Well, you see, 
 Hubert, I am of too impatient a temper for that kind of thing. I 
 have found the woman I can love with all my heart and mind, and 
 1 have lost no time in winning her." 
 
 " You are a paladin, Jack — a troubadour — all that there is of the 
 most romantic and chivalrous," laughed Sir Hubert. 
 
 " She is a dear, dear girl," sighed Maud, " and I could hardly be 
 fonder of her if she were my sister — but it certainly is the most 
 disappointing choice you could have made." 
 
 " Is it ? AVhy, I might have chosen a barmaid." 
 
 " Not you. You are not that kind of man. But except a barmaid 
 — or " — with the tips of her lips — " a chorus girl, you could scarcely 
 have done worse than this. Now, don't rage and fume, Jack. I 
 tell you I think the girl herself adorable — but four sisters and an 
 impossible father ! Quelle corvee ! " 
 
 " It is a corvee that need never trouble you," cried Vansittart, 
 indignantly. 
 
 "You are extremely ungrateful. Haven't I been forming her for 
 you?" 
 
 " She needed no forming. She has never been less than a lady 
 — simple and straightforward — never affecting to be rich when she 
 was poor — or to be smarter than her surroundings warranted." 
 
 " Yes, yes, she is perfect, that is understood. She is the betrothed
 
 138 The Venetians. 
 
 of yesterday, a stage of being -which touches the seraphic. But what 
 ■will you do with her father, and what will you do with her sisters? " 
 " Her sisters are very good girls, and I hope to treat them in 
 a not unbrotherly fashion. As for her father — there, though the 
 obligation is small, I grant the difficulty may be great. However, 
 I shall know how to cope with it. No miner ever thought to get 
 gold without some intermixture of quartz. The Colonel shall be to 
 me as the gold-digger's quartz. I shall get rid of him as speedily 
 as I can." 
 
 Through all that Easter week Vansittart lived in the blissful 
 dream which beginneth every man's betrothal. At such a time as 
 this the dumpiest damsel of the milkmaid type is as fair as she who 
 brought slaughter and burning upon Troy; but for Vansittart's 
 abject condition there was the excuse of undeniable beauty, and 
 a charm of manner which even village gossip had never disputed. 
 The young ladies who condemned the Miss Marchants en bloc as 
 " bad style " had been fain to confess that Eve had winning ways, 
 which made one almost forgive her cheap boots and mended gloves. 
 
 Vansittart was happy. He had promised to join his mother in 
 Charles Street on the Wednesday after Easter ; but he wrote to her 
 apologetically on Tuesday, deferring his arrival till the beginning of 
 the following week — and the beginning of a week is a term so lax 
 that it is sometimes made to mean Wednesday. 
 
 He was utterly happy. His mother's letter reeeived on Tuesday 
 morning was grave and kindly, and in no way damped his ardour. 
 
 " You have been so good a son to me, my dear Jack, that I should 
 be hard and ungrateful if I murmured at your choice, although that 
 choice has serious drawbacks in surrounding circumstances. You 
 are too honest and frank and true yourself not to be able to distinguish 
 the difference between realities and semblances. I do not doubt, 
 therefore, that your pretty Eve is all you think her. She certainly 
 is a graceful and gracious creature, with a delicate prettiness of the 
 wild rose type, which I prefer greatly to the azalea or the camellia 
 order of beauty. She cannot fail to love you — nor can she fail to 
 be deeply grateful to you for having rescued her from shabby sur- 
 roundings and a neglectful father. God grant that this step which 
 you have taken — the most solemn act in a man's life — may bring you 
 the happiness which the marriage of true minds must always bring." 
 
 There was much more, the outpouring of a mother's love, which 
 ran away with the mother's pen, and covered three sheets of paper ; 
 but even this long letter did not suffice without a postscript, 
 
 «p.S. — Miss Marchant spoke to me — incidentally— of a brother, 
 and from her evident embarrassment I fear that the brother is as 
 undesirable a connection as the father. It would be well that you
 
 " The Time of Lovers is Brief." 139 
 
 should know all that is to be known about him before he becomes 
 your brother-in-law ; so as to avoid unpleasant surprises in the future." 
 
 Happily the idea of this brother's existence was already familiar. 
 In their first ramble together as engaged lovers Eve had told 
 Vansittart a great deal about her brother. She dwelt with the 
 younger sister's fond admiration upon his youthful gifts, which 
 seemed to be chiefly of the athletic order ; his riding, his shooting, 
 his rowing, his running : in all which exercises he appeared to have 
 excelled. At Cambridge his chief sins, as Eve knew them, had been 
 tandem driving, riding in steeplechases, with frequent absences at 
 Newmarket. Whatever darker sins had distinguished his college 
 career were but dimly suspected by Eve. 
 
 1 " My father was very proud of him while he was a boy," Eve told 
 her lover, "but when he grew up, and began to spend money, they 
 were always quarrelling. Poor mother ! It was so sad to see her 
 between them — loving them both, and trying to be loyal to both ; 
 her poor heart torn asunder in the struggle." 
 
 " And he was fond of you, this brother of yours ? " questioned 
 Vansittart, to whom such fondness seemed a redeeming virtue. 
 
 " Yes, he was very fond of me ; he was always good to me. 
 When there was unhappiness in the dining-room and drawing-room 
 — when Harold was what father called sulky — he used to come to 
 the schoolroom, and sit over the fire roasting chestnuts all the 
 evening. He would go without his dinner rather than sit down with 
 father, and would have some supper brought to the schoolroom at 
 ten o'clock, and my good old governess and I used to share his 
 supper and wait upon him. What merry suppers they were ! I 
 was too thoughtless to consider that his being with us meant bad 
 blood between him and father, and unhappiness for my poor mother. 
 She used to look in at the schoolroom door sometimes, and shake 
 her head, and call us naughty children ; but I know it was a relief 
 to her to see him eating and drinking and laughing and talking with 
 clear little Miitterchen and me. But I am tiring you with these 
 childish reminiscences." 
 
 "No, love; there is no detail in your past life so trifling that I 
 would not care to know it. I want to feel as if I had known you 
 from your cradle. We will go to see the old place near Beverley 
 some day, if you like, and you shall show me the gardens where you 
 played, the rooms in which you lived. One can always get into 
 another man's house by a little management." 
 
 That Easter week was a time of loveliest weather. Even the sun 
 and the winds were gracious to these happy lovers, and for them 
 April put on the bloom of May. Vansittart spent almost all his 
 days at the Homestead, or rambling with the sisters, Eve and he
 
 140 The Venetians. 
 
 walking side by side, engrossed in each otber's company, as if the 
 world held no one else — the sisters ahead of them or in the rear, as 
 caprice dictated. 
 
 Every lane and thicket and hillside between Fernhurst and Black- 
 down was explored in those happy wanderings; every pathway in 
 Verdley Copse was trodden by those light footsteps ; and Henley 
 Hill and its old Roman village grew as familiar to Vansittart as Pall 
 Mall and the clubs. They revelled in the primroses which carpeted 
 ail those woodland ways ; they found the earliest bluebells, and 
 many a hollow whitened with the fairy cups of the wood-anemone. 
 
 One morning, as they were walking over the soft brown carpet 
 of fir needles and withered oak leaves in Verdley Copse, Vansittart 
 opened a little dark-blue velvet box, and showed Eve a ring — a half- 
 hoop of sapphires set with brilliants. 
 
 "I chose the colour in memory of the blue flower of happiness 
 that you and I found on the hilltop,'' he said, as he put the ring on 
 the third finger of his sweetheart's slender hand. " If ever you are 
 inclined to be angry with me, or to care for me a little less than you 
 do now, let the memory of the mystical blue flower plead for me, 
 Eve, and the thought of how dearly we loved each other that Easter 
 Sunday years and years ago." 
 
 She gave a faint, shuddering sigh at the image those words 
 evoked. 
 
 " Years and years ago ! Will this day when w r e are young and 
 happy ever be years and years ago ? It seems so strange ! " 
 
 "Age is strange and death is stranger; but they must come, Eve. 
 All we have to hope for is that we may go on loving each other to 
 the end." 
 
 After those ramblings in the coppices and over the hill, there wa ) 
 afternoon tea at the Homestead — a feast for the gods. Colonel 
 Marchant, well content with the progress of affairs, had gone to 
 Brighton for the volunteer review, and was not expected home 
 again till the end of the week ; so the sisters were sovereign rulers 
 of the house, and afternoon tea was the order of the day. It is 
 doubtful whether dinner had any part in the scheme of their exist- 
 ence at this time. The short-petticoated youngsters generally 
 carried some hunks of currant cake in a basket, and these hunks 
 were occasionally shared with the elder sisters, and even with Van- 
 sittart, who went without his luncheon day after day, scarcely 
 knowing that he had missed a meal. Then they all tramped home 
 in their muddy boots — for however blue the sky and however dry 
 the roads there was always plenty of mud in the copses — and then 
 they all sat round the big loo table to what Hetty called a stodgy 
 tea. Stodgy being interpreted meant a meal of cake and toast, and 
 eggs, and bread and jam, and a succession of teapots. Vansittart
 
 11 The Time of Lovers is Brief." 141 
 
 only left the Homestead in time to hurry back to Redwold and dress 
 for dinner. 
 
 On the Thursday evening the Miss Marchants who were " out " 
 were all hidden to "dinner at Redwold, and were to he driven thither 
 by that very fly which had broken down on the crest of the snowy 
 hill. It was a grand occasion, for an invitation to dinner rarely 
 found its way to the Homestead. Cards for garden-parties were the 
 highest form of courtesy to which the Miss Marchants had hitherto 
 been accustomed. And this dinner was to be a solemn affair, for 
 Eve was to appear at it in all the importance of her position as Van- 
 sittart's future wife. Mrs. Vansittart was coming from London for 
 a night or two in order to be present at the festivity, which would 
 be in a manner Eve's formal acceptance as a member of the family. 
 
 It was only on Thursday morning that Vansittart discovered with 
 some vexation that Sefton had been asked to this family dinner. 
 Sir Hubert had met him, and had invited him in a casual way, 
 having not the faintest idea that his society would be displeasing 
 either to Eve or her lover. The first person Eve's eyes lighted on 
 when she and her sisters entered the drawing-room was Mr. Sefton. 
 He was standing near the door, and she had to pass him on her way 
 to her hostess. He stood waiting until Lady Hartley turned to 
 greet the younger sisters, and then at once took possession of Eve. 
 
 " As an old friend I venture to congratulate you most warmly," 
 he said, holding her hand, after the inevitable shake-hands of old 
 acquaintances. " You have done wonderfully well for yourself. It 
 is really a brilliant match." 
 
 " For me, you mean," she said, looking at him with an angry 
 light in her eyes. " Why don't you finish your sentence, Mr. Sefton, 
 and say, ' for you, Miss Marchant, with your disadvantages ' ? " 
 
 " I am sorry I have offended you." 
 
 "I don't like to be told I have done well for myself. God has 
 given me the love of a good man. If he were not Mr. Vansittart, but 
 Mr. Smith with only a hundred a year, I should he just as happy." 
 
 Vansittart, that moment approaching, overheard the familiar 
 British patronymic. "What are you saying about Mr. Smith?" 
 he said, remembering how two men, one the slain and the other the 
 slayer, had hidden their identity under that name. 
 
 " I was only talking of an imaginary Smith," she answered, her face 
 lighting up as she turned to her lover. " There is no such person." 
 °''Come and look at the azaleas," said Vansittart; "they are 
 worth a visit; " and so, after the lover's fashion, he who had only 
 parted from her at six o'clock took her away to the conservatory at 
 the other end of the room, and absorbed her into a solitude of 
 azaleas and orange trees. 
 
 Mr. Sefton in the mean while was talking to Mrs. Vansittart, and
 
 142 The Venetians. 
 
 not having done over well with his congratulation of the future 
 bride, now occupied himself in congratulating the elder lady upon 
 the advantage of" having secured so charming a daughter-in-law. 
 
 " I quite agree with you," replied Mrs. Vansittart. " She is very 
 pretty, and altogether charming. The match is not of my making, 
 but I am pleased to see my son happy, and pleased to welcome so 
 fair a daughter. You talk as if you were an old friend of the family. 
 Have you known Colonel Marchant long ? " 
 
 " Ever since lie came to this neighbourhood, nine years ago. He 
 has been good enough to accept any little shooting I have had to 
 offer — and he and I have seen a good deal of each pther. I knew 
 his son before I knew him. Harold Marchant and I were at Trinity 
 together." 
 
 " Harold Marchant is dead, I conclude ? " 
 
 " That is more than I or any of his friends can tell you. He is 
 one of that numerous family— the lost tribe of society — the men 
 who have dropped through." 
 
 " I don't quite follow yon." 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Vansittart, the less said about Harold Marchant 
 the better. If he is dead the good old saying comes in — de mortuis. 
 If he is alive I think the less you, or your son, or your daughter-in- 
 law have to do with him the happier it will be for you." 
 
 " Mr. Sefton, it is not fair to talk to me in this way. I am per- 
 sonally interested in Eve's brother. What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Only what I might mean about a good many young men who 
 have lived within the walls that sheltered Bacon and Newton, 
 Whewell and Macaulay. Harold Marchant's career at Cambridge 
 was a foolish career. Instead of devoting himself to the higher 
 mathematics he gave himself up to hunting, horse-racing, and other 
 amusement of a more dangerous order. He had to leave the 
 University hurriedly — he had to leave the country still more hastily. 
 He has never within my knowledge come back to England. Eve 
 is, or was, passionately attached to him, and to gratify her I have 
 taken a good deal of trouble in trying to find out his present where- 
 abouts and mode of life ; but without avail. It is nearly ten years 
 since he left this country. He was then two and twenty years of 
 age. He was last heard of more than five years ago with an ex- 
 ploring party in Mashonaland. He is exactly the kind of young 
 man one would like to hear of in Central Africa, and intending to 
 stay there ! " 
 
 " Poor Eve ; how sad for her ! " 
 
 " But that is all over now. She has a new love, aiid will soon 
 forget her brother." 
 
 " I do not think she is so shallow as that." 
 " Not shallow, but intense."
 
 As a Spirit from Dream to Dream. 143 
 
 Dinner was announced at this moment, and Sir Hubert came to 
 offer Mrs. Vansittart his arm. He was to have his mother-in-law 
 on his right hand and Eve on his left, and Mr. Sefton was to sit by 
 his hostess on the other side of the table. This ended the conver- 
 sation about Harold Marchant, and it was not renewed after dinuer. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 AS A SriKIT FROM DREAM TO DREAM. 
 
 Lady Hartley, once being reconciled to the inevitable, was full of 
 kindness for her brother's future wife. Eve had seen nothing of 
 London and its gaieties, and as the Hartleys had taken a house in 
 Bruton Street for the season, it seemed only a natural thing to take 
 her up to town with them, and initiate her into some of the pleasures 
 to which her future position would entitle her. 
 
 " And when you are married I can present you," she told Eve. 
 " It isn't worth while going through that ordeal till next year. You 
 will have plenty to do between now and midsummer in getting your 
 trousseau ready." 
 
 Eve blushed, and was silent for a few minutes, and then, as she 
 was alone with Lady Hartley in the morning room at Redwold, she 
 took courage, and said — 
 
 " I'm afraid my trousseau will be a very small one. I asked my 
 father last night what he conld do for me, and he said fifty pounds 
 would be the utmost he could give me. It wouldn't be overmuch 
 if I were going to marry a curate, would it ? " 
 
 " My clearest Eve, fifty pounds will go a long way, as I shall 
 manage things. Remember I am going to be your sister, a real 
 sister, not a sham one, and while we are buying the trousseau your 
 purse and mine shall be one." 
 
 " Oh, I couldn't allow that. I couldn't let myself sponge upon 
 you. I would rather be married in white alpaca." 
 
 " My child, you shall not be married in alpaca. And as for 
 sponging upon me, well, if you are so mightily proud you can pay 
 me back every shilling I spend for you, a year or so hence, out of 
 your pin-money." 
 
 "My pin-money," repeated Eve. " Father told me how generously 
 Mr. Vansittart had offered to settle an income upon me — upon mo 
 who bring him nothing, not even a respectable trousseau." 
 
 "Now, Eve, I won't hear a word more about the trousseau, until 
 we are going about shopping together." 
 
 "You are too kind, yet I can't help feeling it hard to hegin by 
 taxing your generosity. Isn't it the custom for the bride to bring 
 the house linen in her trousseau ? "
 
 144 The Venetians. 
 
 " Oh, in bourgeois families no doubt, and with young people just 
 setting up in the world ; but Merewold is provided with linen. You 
 can't suppose mother and Jack have lived there without tablecloths 
 or dusters. There is nothing for you to think about, Eve, but your 
 own frocks, and we will think about them together. I adore 
 shopping, and all the frivolities of life." 
 
 Ten days later Eve was in London, a petted guest in one of the 
 prettiest houses in Bruton Street. Lady Hartley had the knack of 
 beautifying any house she lived in, even a furnished house, a tent 
 that was to be shifted at the end of the season. Huge boxes ot 
 flowers were sent up from Kedwold every other day to decorate 
 those London rooms, and not content with this floral decoration, 
 Maud Hartley was always buying things — china, lamps, baskets, 
 elegant frivolities of all kinds, to make the hired house homelike. 
 
 She would apologize to her husband in an airy way for each fresh 
 extravagance. " That pretty china plaque caught my eye at Howell 
 and James's while Eve and I were looking at their silks," she would 
 say. 
 
 Sir Hubert complained laughingly that if the Kohinoor were for 
 sale at a London jeweller's it would inevitably catch Maud's eye. 
 
 " And her eye once caught she is hypnotized," said Sir Hubert. 
 " She must buy." 
 
 Charles Street and Bruton Street are very near. Vansittart could 
 run over, as his sister called it, at any and every hour of the day ; 
 and the result of this vicinity was that he lived more in his sister's 
 house than in his mother's. But Mrs. Vansittart was kind, and 
 seemed really pleased with her future daughter-in-law; so when 
 Jack was not in Bruton Street Eve was in Charles Street, at luncheon 
 sometimes, but oftener at afternoon tea, and at cosy little dinners, 
 in the arrangement of which Mrs. Vansittart excelled. She knew 
 a great many people in London, military, clerical, legal, literary, and 
 artistic, and she knew how to blend her society and bring people 
 together who really liked to meet each other. 
 
 This world of London in the season was a new world to Eve Mar- 
 chant ; these homes in which the pinch of poverty, the burden of 
 debt, had never been felt, had a new atmosphere. Her spirits, gay 
 even in the midst of household care, rose in these happier circles, 
 and she charmed all who met her by her spontaneous graces of mind 
 and manner, her quickness to perceive, her ready appreciation of 
 wit and sense in others. 
 
 For Vansittart that month of May in the great city was a period 
 of consummate happiness. The freshness of Eve's feelings gave a 
 new flavour to the commonest things. Parks and gardens, picture- 
 galleries, concerts and theatres, were all new to her. Only on the
 
 As a Spirit from Dream to Dream. 145 
 
 rarest occasions had she been gratified by an evening in London and 
 the sight of a famous actor. Her father had always excused him- 
 self from taking his daughters to any public amusements on the plea 
 of poverty. 
 
 All the Marchant girls had known of London began and ended 
 in the drapers' shops and the after-season sales. To travel to town 
 by an early train, third class, to tramp about all day in mud or dust, 
 as the case might be, snatching a skimped luncheon at some homely 
 pastry-cook's, was the utmost they had known of metropolitan 
 pleasures ; and even days so unluxurious had been holidays for them. 
 To see the shop windows, to have the spending of a little money, 
 ever so little, meant happiness. It was only when they had emptied 
 their purses that the shadow of care descended upon them, and they 
 began to doubt whether they had invested their pittance wisely. 
 
 Now Eve moved about like a cpieen, among people who never had 
 to think of money. She was taken to see everything that was worth 
 seeing ; to hear everything that was worth hearing. She saw all 
 the picture-galleries, and learnt to discriminate between all the 
 schools of modern art. She heard Sarasate, and Hollman, and 
 Menter, and all the great instrumentalists of her epoch. She never 
 heard of cabs or omnibuses, or fares, or money given for tickets. 
 She was carried hither and thither in a luxurious barouche or a snug 
 brougham, and her place at concert and play was always ready for 
 her— one of the best places in the hall or the theatre. The dress- 
 makers, and bootmakers, and milliners to whom Lady Hartley took 
 her never talked of money ; indeed they seemed almost to shudder 
 at any allusion to that vulgar drudge 'twixt man and man. The 
 people at the tailor's were as interested in the gowns and coats they 
 were to make for her as if they had been works of art for which fame 
 would be the sole recompense. The Frenchwoman who was to make 
 her wedding-gown poohpoohed the question of cost. Expensive, 
 this frise velvet for the train — yes, that might be, but she would 
 rather make Mademoiselle a present of the fabric than that, with her 
 tall and graceful figure, she should wear anything commonplace or 
 insignificant. Art for art's sake was ostensibly the motto for all 
 Bond Street. 
 
 And Eve had so much to think of that she could not think very 
 seriously about her trousseau. She let Lady Hartley order what 
 she pleased. She, Eve, had her lover to think about ; and that was 
 an absorbing theme. She knew his footstep on the pavement below 
 the open window ; she knew the sound of the bell when he rang it. 
 If the weather were wet, and he came from Charles Street in a 
 hansom, she knew his way of throwing back the cab doors before 
 the wheels stopped. When he was absent, all her life was made up 
 of thinking about him and listening for his coming. In that morn- 
 
 L
 
 146 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 ing hour in the drawing-room before he arrived she might have sat 
 to Sir Frederick Leighton for " Waiting " or " Expectancy." 
 
 It was scarcely strange that while John Vansittart was so absorbed 
 in the new delight of his life, John Smith was just a little neglectful 
 of his protegees in Saltero's Mansion, Chelsea. John Smith had, 
 indeed, no consciousness of being neglectful. If the image of Lisa 
 flashed across his mind in any moment of his full and happy day, it 
 came and went together with the comfortable thought that he had 
 done his duty to that young woman. She had her aunt, her bright 
 and pretty home, her singing master, and all the delightful hopes 
 and ambitions of an artist who has discovered that she has fortune 
 within her reach. Had he thought of Lisa all day long, he could 
 never have pictured her otherwise than happy and contented. 
 
 He was at Covent Garden one evening with his sister and his 
 betrothed, and he saw the Venetian amidst her troops of companions. 
 The opera was William Tell, and Lisa was in short petticoats and 
 Swiss bodice, with gold chains about her neck and arms, and gold 
 daggers in her hair. She looked very pretty, amidst that hetero- 
 geneous crew of young, middle-aged, and elderly. He was in the 
 stalls, and at a considerable distance from the stage, and those dark 
 eyes did not find him out and fasten upon him as they had done that 
 other night when he was in Lady Davenant's box. The sight of her 
 reminded him that it was nearly a month since he had called upon 
 the aunt and niece, and that she ought to have made some progress 
 with her musical training in the interval, progress enough, at any 
 rate, to make the childish creature anxious to report herself to him. 
 
 Eve was to be engaged at her dressmaker's on the following after- 
 noon, in a solemn ordeal described as " trying on; " and Vansittart 
 had been warned by his sister that he must not expect to be favoured 
 with her society until the evening, when they were all to dine in 
 Charles Street. It seemed to him that he could hardly employ this 
 afternoon better than in visiting Fiordelisa and her aunt, whose warm 
 southern hearts would be wounded perhaps if he should seem to 
 have lost all interest in their welfare. 
 
 The day was delightful — one of those brilliant afternoons in May 
 which give to West End London the air of an earthly paradise ; a 
 paradise of smart shops and smart people, thorough-bred horses and 
 newly built carriages, liveries spick and span from the tailor's ; 
 flowers everywhere — in the carriages, in the shops, on the kerbstone 
 — flowers and fine clothes and spring sunshine. Vansittart walked 
 to Chelsea, glad of an excuse for a walk after the habitual carriage 
 or hansom. He had promised to look at some pictures in Tite Street 
 upon this very afternoon — pictures of that advanced Belgian school 
 whose work he would scarcely care to show to Miss Marchant without
 
 As a Spirit from Dream to Dream. 147 
 
 a previous inspection— so he availed himself of the opportunity, and 
 called at the painter's house on his way to Saltern's .Mansion. 
 
 He found a room full of people, looking at pictures set round on 
 easels draped with terra-cotta silk, criticizing freely and talking pro- 
 digiously. He found himself in the midst of an artistic tea-party. 
 There was a copper kettle singing over a spirit-lamp on a table 
 crowded with Spanish irises, and there was the painter's young 
 English wife, in an orange-coloured Liberty gown, pouring out tea, 
 and smiling at the praises of her husband. 
 
 The painter was no phlegmatic Fleming, but a fiery son of French 
 Flanders. He came from the red country between Namur and 
 Liege, and had been reared and educated in the latter city. 
 
 He was standing by the largest of his pictures — a scene from 
 " Manon Lescaut " — and listening to the criticisms of a little knot 
 of people, all ecstatic, and among these elite of the art-loving world 
 Yansittart was surprised to see Mr. Sefton. 
 
 Sefton turned at the sound of Vansittart's voice. They had met 
 a good many times since Easter, and in a good many houses, for it 
 was one of Sefton's attributes to be seen everywhere ; but Vansittart 
 had not expected to find him at a comparatively unknown painter's 
 tea-party. 
 
 " Delightful picture, ain't it ? " he asked carelessly. " Full of 
 truth and feeling. How is Miss Marchant to-day ? I thought she 
 looked a little pale and fagged at Lady Heavyside's last night, as if 
 her first season were taking it out of her." 
 
 " I don't think my sister would let her do too much." They had 
 drifted towards the tea-table, and the crowd had stranded them in 
 a corner, where they could talk at their ease. " I did not know you 
 were by way of being an art critic." 
 
 " I am by way of being everything. I give myself up to sport — 
 body and bones — all the winter. I let my poor little intellect hiber- 
 nate from the first of September till I have been at the killing of a 
 May fox ; and then I turn my back upon rusticity, put on my frock- 
 coat and cylinder hat, and see as much as I can of the world of art 
 and letters. To that end I have chosen this street for my summer 
 habitation." 
 
 " You live here— in Tite Street? " 
 
 " Is that so surprising ? Tite Street is not a despicable locality. 
 We consider ourselves rather smart." 
 
 "I should have looked for you nearer the clubs." 
 
 " I am by no means devoted to the clubs. I like my own nest 
 and my own newspapers. Is not this charming V " 
 
 He turned to admire a cabinet picture on a draped easel — 
 " Esmeralda and the Captain of the Guard ; " one of those pictures 
 which Vansittart would have preferred Eve Marchant not to see,
 
 148 The Venetians. 
 
 but over -which sesthetic maids and matrons were expatiating 
 rapturously. 
 
 Vansittart did not stop to take tea, meaning to gratify Lisa by 
 allowing her to 'entertain him with the mild infusion she called by 
 that name. He spoke to the two or three people he knew, praised 
 the pictures in very good French to the artist, who knew no 
 English, and slipped out of the sultry room, redolent of violets 
 and tea-cake, into the fresh air blowing up the river from the woods 
 and pastures of Bucks and Berks. 
 
 He had not walked above half a dozen yards upon the Embank- 
 ment when he heard the sound of hurrying footsteps behind him, 
 and an ungloved hand was thrust through his arm, and a joyous 
 voice exclaimed breathlessly, " At last ! You were going to seo 
 me ? I thought you had forgotten us altogether." 
 
 " That was very wrong of you, Signora," he answered, gently 
 disengaging himself from the olive-complexioned hand, plump and 
 tapering, albeit somewhat broad — such a hand as Titan painted by 
 the score, perhaps, before he began to paint Cardinal Princes and 
 great ladies. 
 
 He did not want to walk along the Chelsea Embankment, in the 
 broad glare of day, with the Venetian hanging affectionately upon 
 him. That kind of thing might pass on the Lido, or in the Royal 
 Garden by the canal, but here the local colour was wanting. 
 
 " It is ages since you have been near us," protested Fiordelisa, 
 poutingly. " I am sure you must have forgotten us." 
 
 " Not I, Signora. Englishmen don't forget their friends so easily. 
 I have been in the country till — till quite lately. And you — tell 
 me how you have been getting on with your singing master." 
 
 " He shall tell you," cried Fiordelisa, hashing one of her brightest 
 looks upon him. " He pretends to be monstrously pleased with me. 
 He declares that in a few months, perhaps even sooner, he will get 
 me an engagement at one of the small theatres, to sing in a comic 
 opera. They will give me ever so much more money than I am 
 earning at Coveny Gardeny." 
 
 The Venetian often put a superfluous vowel at the end of a 
 word, not yet having mastered our severe terminal consonants. 
 " The maestro is to have some of the money for his trouble, but 
 that is fair, is it not ? " 
 
 " Fan: that he should take a small percentage, perhaps, but not 
 more." 
 
 " A percentage ? "What is that ? " 
 
 Vansittart explained. 
 
 " But to sing in your English comic opera I must speak English 
 ever so much better than I do now," pursued Lisa, " and for that 
 I am working, oh, so hard. 1 learn grammar. I read story-books ;
 
 As a Spirit from Dream to Dream. 149 
 
 "Bootle's Baby;' the 'Vicar of Wakefield.' Oh, how I have 
 laughed and cried over that Vicar and his troubles — and Olivia- 
 Olivia who was so deceived — and so happy at last." 
 
 " Happy, with a scoundrel," exclaimed Vansittart. 
 
 " Ah, but she loved him. One does not mind how much scoun- 
 drel if one loves a man." 
 
 " A bad principle, Signorina. It is better to love a good man 
 ever so little than a scoundrel ever so much." 
 
 " No, no, no. It is the loving much that means happiness," 
 argued Lisa, and then she expatiated upon her English studies. 
 " La Zia and I go to the theatre when there is no performance at 
 Coveny Gardeny. We sit in the pit, where the people are kind, 
 and make room for us because we are foreigners. Signor Zinco says 
 there is no better way of learning English than in listening to the 
 actors in good plays. Oh, how I listen ! In three months from this 
 day people will take me for an Englishwoman," she said finally. 
 
 " Never, Lisa, never," he said, laughingly contemplative of the 
 sparkling olive face, the great dark eyes with golden lights in them, 
 the careless arrangement of the coarse black hair, the supple figure 
 in its plain black gown, and the essentially foreign air which years 
 of residence in England would hardly obliterate. " Never, Si'ora ! 
 Your every glance is eloquent of Venice and her sister isles. It 
 seems almost a crime to keep you captive in this sunless city of 
 ours." 
 
 " Oh, but I adore London," she exclaimed, " and your London is 
 not sunless. See how the sun is shining on the river this afternoon; 
 not as it shines on the lagunes in May, I grant you, but it is a very 
 pretty piccolo sole." 
 
 " And la Zia," asked Vansittart ; " she is well, I hope ? " 
 
 " She is more than well. She is getting fat. Oh, so fat. She is 
 as happy as the day is long. She loves your London, the King's 
 Eoad most of all. At night there are barrows, fish, vegetables, 
 everything. She can do her marketing by lamplight, and the 
 streets are almost as full and as gay as the Merceria. La Zia was 
 never so happy in all her life as she is in London. She never had 
 so much to eat." 
 
 They were near Saltcro's Mansion by this time. 
 
 " You will come in and let me make you some tea, won't you ? " 
 pleaded Lisa. 
 
 " Not this afternoon, Si'ora. I wanted to see you, to know that 
 all was going well with you. Having done that, I must go back to 
 the West End to — to keep an appointment." 
 
 He was thinking that possibly Eve's " trying on" would be finished 
 in time for him to snatch half an hour's tete-a-tete in one of the 
 Bruton Street drawing-rooms, before she dressed for dinner. There
 
 150 The Venetians. 
 
 were three drawing-rooms, in a diminishing perspective, dwindling 
 almost to a point, the third and inner room too small to serve any 
 purpose but flirtation, and here the lovers could usually find seclusion. 
 
 Lisa pouted and looked unhappy. 
 
 " You might stay and take tea with me," she said ; "la Zia will 
 be home soon." 
 
 " La Zia is out, then ? " 
 
 " Yes ; she has taken Paolo to Battersea Park for the afternoon. 
 The rehearsal for the new opera keeps me all day long, and la Zia 
 takes the boy for his daily walk ; but it is past five, and they will be 
 home as soon as I am, I dare say." 
 
 " I will come this way again in a week dr so, Si'ora." 
 
 " You are very unkind," protested Lisa, in her impulsive way ; 
 and then, with one of those sudden changes which so well became 
 her childish beauty, she exclaimed, " No, no ; forgive me ; you are 
 always kind — kind, kindest of men. Promise you will come again 
 soon." 
 
 " I promise," he said, stopping short and offering his hand. 
 
 " Then I'll walk back just a little piece of way with you — only 
 as far as the big house with the swans." 
 
 Lisa's company on Cheyne Walk was an honour which Vansittart 
 would have gladly escaped. She was too pretty and too peculiar- 
 looking not to attract notice ; and there was the tea-party in Tite 
 Street, with its little crowd of worldlings, any of whom woidd be 
 curious as to his companion, should he by chance be seen in this 
 society. He did not want to be rude, for the lace-girl from Burano 
 was a creature of strong feelings, and was easily wounded. 
 
 " I am in a desperate hurry, Si'ora." 
 
 " You were not in a hurry when I overtook you just now. You 
 were walking slowly. You cannot walk faster than I. At Burano 
 I never used to walk. I always ran." 
 
 u Poverina ! How quickly you must have used up your island." 
 
 " Yes ; it was like a prison. I used to watch the painted sails of 
 the fishing-boats, and long for them to carry me away to any place 
 different from that island, where I knew every face and every 
 paving-stone. That is why I love your London, in spite of fogs 
 and grey skies. It is so big, so big." 
 
 She stopped, with clasped hands and flashing eyes. A street boy 
 wheeled round to look at her, and gave a low whistle of admiring 
 surprise ; and at the same instant Sefton turned a street corner, 
 came across the road, and passed close to Vansittart and his 
 companion. 
 
 Of all men living, this man was the last whom Vansittart would 
 have cared to meet under such conditions.
 
 ( '5i ) 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 "love should be absolute love." 
 
 Sefton lifted his hat and passed quickly. Vansittart stood mutely 
 watching his retreating figure, till it was lost among other figures 
 moving to and fro along the Embankment. An empty hansom 
 came creeping by the curb while he stood watching. 
 
 " Here is a cab which will just do for me, Signorina," he said. 
 " Good-bye. I'll see you on one of your maestro's days, so that I 
 may hear his opinion of your chances." 
 
 " He comes on Tuesdays and Saturdays, from three to four. 
 Who is that gentleman who bowed to you ? A friend? " 
 
 "No ; only an acquaintance. Good-bye." 
 
 " How vexed you look ! Are you ashamed of being seen with me? " 
 
 " No, child, no ; only that man happens to be one of my particular 
 aversions. A rivederci. Stay ! I will take you to your door. The 
 cab can follow." 
 
 It had occurred to him in a moment that Sefton was capable of 
 turning and pursuing Lisa if he left her unprotected. He was just 
 the kind of man, Vansittart thought, who, out of sheer devilry, would 
 try to discover the name and antecedents of this lovely stranger. 
 He had a deep-rooted distrust of Wilfred Sefton, which led him to 
 anticipate evil. 
 
 He walked with Lisa to Saltero's Mansion, and saw her vanish 
 under the lofty Queen Anne portico, and then he turned and walked 
 slowly back as far as Tite Street, with the cab following him. So 
 far there was no sign of Sefton, who might, therefore, be supposed 
 to have continued his way Londonwards ; but the rencontre had been 
 a shock to Vansittart's nerves, and had set him thinking seriously 
 upon the danger of his relations with Fiordelisa and her aunt, and 
 more especially of the peril which must always attach to the use of 
 an alias. 
 
 Was it well, or wise, or safe that he, Eve Merchant's promised 
 husband, should be the guardian angel of this wild, impulsive peasant 
 girl — a guardian angel under the borrowed name of Smith, liable at 
 any hour to be confronted with people who knew his real name and 
 surroundings ? He considered his position very seriously during the 
 drive to Bruton Street, and he resolved to do all in his power to 
 narrow his relations with the Venetians, while fulfilling every 
 promise and every obligation to the uttermost. 
 
 Colonel Marchant was at the family dinner in Charles Street
 
 152 The Venetians. 
 
 It had been agreed between Mrs. Vansittart and her son that he 
 should be invited to this one gathering, so that he should not have 
 any ground for considering himself left out in the cold, albeit his 
 future son-in-law's intention was to hold as little communion with 
 him as possible. Eve's neglected girlhood had not fostered filial 
 affection. The parental name had been a name of fear in the 
 Marchant household, and the sisters had been happiest when their 
 father was amusing himself in London, careless of whether the angry 
 baker had stopped the daily supply, or the long-suffering butcher 
 had refused to deliver another joint. Such a man had but little 
 claim upon a daughter's love, and Eve had confessed to Vansittart 
 that her father was not beloved by his children, and that it would 
 not grieve her if in her future life she and that father met but rarely. 
 
 "You are going to be so generous to me," she said, " that I shall 
 be able to help my sisters — in ever so many ways — with their 
 clothes, and witli their housekeeping ; for I can never spend a third 
 part of the income you are settling upon me." 
 
 " My frugal Eve ! Why, there are women with half your charms 
 who would not be able to dress themselves upon such a pittance." 
 
 " I have no patience with such women. They should be con- 
 demned to three gowns a year of their own making, as my sisters 
 and I have been ever since we were old enough to handle needles 
 and scissors. I am horrified at the extravagance I have seen at the 
 dressmaker's — the reckless way some of your sister's friends spend 
 money." 
 
 " And my sister herself, no doubt. She has a rich husband, and 
 I dare say is one of the worst offenders in this line ? " 
 
 " Not she ! Lady Hartley dresses exquisitely, but she is not 
 extravagant like the others. She is too generous to other people 
 to be lavish upon herself. She is always thinking of doing a kind- 
 ness to somebody." 
 
 " Poor little Maud ! I remember when she was in the school- 
 room all her pocket-money used to be spent upon dolls for the 
 hospital children. She used to come and beg of me when she was 
 insolvent." 
 
 Vansittart met Wilfred Sefton at an evening party within a few 
 days of that rencontre at Chelsea ; and at the same party Vansittart 
 was disturbed by seeing Sefton and his mother in close confabulation 
 in one of those remote and luxurious corners where people are not 
 obliged to listen to the music that is being performed in the principal 
 room. 
 
 He questioned his mother about Sefton at breakfast next morning. 
 " You and he seemed uncommonly thick," he said. " What were 
 you talking about ? "
 
 "Love should be Absolute Love." 153 
 
 " About you, and your approaching marriage." 
 
 " I am sure you said nothing that was not kind, but I wish to 
 Heaven you would not discuss my affairs with a stranger," said 
 Yansittart, with some warmth. 
 
 " Mr. Sefton is not a stranger. Your father and his father were 
 very good friends. He is your sister's most influential neighbour, 
 and they are on the friendliest terms. Why should you call him a 
 stranger ? " 
 
 " Because I don't like him, mother ; and because I wish never 
 to feel myself on any other footing with him." 
 
 "And yet he likes you." 
 
 " Does he? I am a very bad judge of humanity if my dislike of 
 Sefton is not heartily reciprocated by Sefton's dislike of me. And 
 no doubt the more he dislikes me the more he will assure other 
 people — my kindred especially — that he likes me. You are too 
 straight yourself, mother, in every thought and purpose, to under- 
 stand the Seftonian mind. It is the kind of intellect which always 
 works crookedly. He admired Eve Marchant, allowed his admi- 
 ration to be patent to everybody, and yet was not man enough to 
 try to win her for his wife." 
 
 " He had not your courage, Jack, in facing unpleasant surroundings 
 and disagreeable antecedents." 
 
 " He had not manhood enough to marry for love. That is what 
 you mean, mother. He was quite willing to compromise an innocent 
 and pure-minded girl, by attentions which he would not have dared 
 to offer to a girl with a watchful father or mother." 
 
 " My dear Jack, you exaggerate Mr. Sefton's attentions. He 
 assured me that his chief interest in Eve arose from his old 
 companionship with her brother, with whom he was on very 
 intimate tei - ms until the unhappy young man turned out an 
 irretrievable scamp." 
 
 Vansittart winced at the phrase. It is not an agreeable thing for 
 a man to be told that his future brother-in-law, the brother whom 
 his future wife adores, is irretrievable. 
 
 " Mr. Sefton has taken a great deal of trouble to trace Harold 
 Marchant's career since he was last heard of," continued Mrs. 
 Vansittart, "and would hold out a friendly hand to him if there 
 were anything to be done." 
 
 " He has no need to hold out a friendly hand. If there is any- 
 thing to be done for my brother-in-law I can do it." 
 
 " How ready you are to take new burdens ! " 
 
 " I think nothing a burden which comes to me with the woman I 
 love." 
 
 Mrs. Vansittart sighed, and was silent. The idea of these 
 disreputable connections which her son was to take to himself
 
 154 The Venetians. 
 
 in marrying Eve was full of pain for the well-born matron, 
 whose people on every side were of unblemished respectability. 
 Never had there been any doubtful characters in her father's 
 family, or among that branch of the Vansittarts to which her 
 husband belonged. She had been born in just that upper middle 
 class which feels disgrace most keenly. There is no section of 
 society so self-conscious as your county gentry, so fixed in the 
 idea that the eyes of Europe are upon them. The duke or the 
 millionaire can live down anything — sons convicted of felony, 
 daughters divorced — but the country gentleman who has lived 
 all his life in one place, and knows every face within a radius 
 of twenty miles from the family seat, to him, or still more to his 
 wife or widow, the slightest smirch upon a relative's character 
 means agony. 
 
 Mrs. Vansittart liked and admired Eve Marchant ; but she did 
 not let her heart go out to her as it ought to have gone to the girl 
 who was so soon to be to her as a daughter. Colonel Marchant's 
 existence was a rock of offence which even maternal love could not 
 surmount. She had talked to her family lawyer, an old and trusted 
 ally, and from him she had heard all that was to be said for and 
 against Eve's father. He was not quite so black, perhaps, as his 
 neighbours in the country had painted him ; but his career had been 
 altogether disreputable, and his present associations were among the 
 most disreputable men, calling themselves gentlemen, about town, 
 lie was a familiar figure in the card-room at clubs where play was 
 high, and was looked upon with unmitigated terror by the parents 
 and guardians of young men of fortune or expectations. A youth 
 who affected Colonel Marchant's society was known to be in a bad 
 way. 
 
 And now the question was not only of Colonel Marchant, but of 
 his son, who was even a darker character than the father, and whose 
 darkness might at any time overshadow his sister's name. It was 
 easy enough to say that the sister was blameless, that it was no fault 
 of hers that her father was a Bohemian, and her brother a swindler 
 and a forger. Society does not easily forgive sisters or daughters 
 for such relationships, and now that the pseudo-scientific craze of 
 heredity has taken hold of the English mind, society is less inclined 
 even than of yore to ignore the black sheep in the fold. Every one 
 who heard of Eve Marchant's antecedents would anticipate evil for 
 her husband. The bad strain would show itself somehow before 
 long. The duskiness in the parental wool would crop up in the 
 fleece of the lamb. 
 
 It was hard for the mother who doated on her only son to feel 
 ashamed of his wife's relations and up-bringing ; and Mrs. Vansittart 
 feared that to the end of her life she must needs feel this shame.
 
 "Love should be Absolute Love'' 155 
 
 Already her neighbours at Merewood had tortured her by their keen 
 interest in her son's betrothed, their eagerness to know every detail, 
 their searching questions about her people, all veiled under that 
 affectionate friendliness which excuses the most tormenting curiosity. 
 
 Mrs. Vansittart was a good woman and a devoted mother, but 
 she had the temperament which easily yields to worrying ideas, to 
 apprehensions of potential evils, and her love of her son had just 
 that alloy of jealousy which is apt to cause trouble. While Van- 
 sittart was going about with his betrothed from one scene of amuse- 
 ment to another, utterly happy in her company, enchanted to show 
 her places and people which were as new to her as if they had been 
 in fairyland, his mother was brooding over her fears and fostering 
 her forebodings, and affording Wilfred Sefton every opportunity of 
 improving his acquaintance with her. It was a shock to Vansittart 
 to find that Sefton had established himself on the most familiar 
 footing in Charles Street, a privileged dropper-in, who might call 
 six days out of the seven if he chose, since Mrs. Vansittart had no 
 allotted day for receiving, but was always at home to her friends 
 between four and five during the summer season, when the pleasantest 
 hour for driving was after five. 
 
 Sefton was clever, lived entirely in society and for society, during 
 the brief London season, frequented the studios of artists and tho 
 tea-parties of litterateurs, knew, or pretended to know, everything 
 that was going to happen in the world of art and letters, and would 
 have been welcome on his own merits in the circles of the frivolous. 
 He contrived to amuse Mrs. Vansittart, and to impress her with an 
 exaggerated idea of his talent and versatility. 
 
 " He can talk well upon every subject," she told her son. 
 
 " My dear mother, you mean that he is an adept in the season's 
 jargon, and can talk of those subjects which came into fashion last 
 month ; like the new cut of our coat collars, and the new colour of 
 our neckties. A man of that kind always impresses people with his 
 cleverness in May and the first half of June. Talk with him later, 
 and you'll find him flat, stale, and unprofitable. By July he will 
 have emptied his bag." 
 
 It was scarcely a surprise to Vansittart, knowing his mother's 
 liking for Mr. Sefton, to find that gentleman seated in her drawing- 
 room one Saturday evening when he returned rather late from a 
 polo match at Hurlingham. It was to be Eve's last Saturday in 
 London. June was at hand, and she was to go back to Fernhurst 
 on the first of the month, to spend the small remnant of her single 
 life with her sisters. She was to be married on St. John's Day. 
 
 They had lingered at the tea-table on the lawn, sighing senti- 
 mentally over the idea that this was positively the last Saturday :
 
 156 The Venetians. 
 
 that not again for nearly a year could they sit together drinking tea 
 out of the homely little brown teapot, and watching the careless 
 crowd come and go in the sunshine and the summery air. 
 
 In Charles Street, the cups and saucers had not been cleared 
 away, although it was past seven. A side window in the front 
 drawing-room looked westward, up the old-fashioned street, towards 
 tbe Park, and the low sunlight was pouring in through the Madras- 
 muslin curtain, shining on the jardiniere of golden lilies and over the 
 glittering toys on the silver table. 
 
 Vansittart opened the drawing-room door, but changed his mind 
 about going in when he saw Sefton established on the sofa, half 
 hidden in a sea of pillows. 
 
 " I'm very late," he said. '• How do you do, Sefton ? " with a 
 Curt nod. " I'm to dine in Bruton Street, mother. Good night, if 
 I don't see you again." 
 
 " Pray come in, Jack. I have something very serious to tell you 
 — or at least Mr. Sefton has. He has been waiting for you ever 
 since five o'clock. I wanted him to tell you at once. It is too 
 serious for delay." 
 
 " If I hadn't left Miss Marchant and my sister five minutes ago 
 I should think, by your solemnity, that one of them had been 
 killed," exclaimed Vansittart, scornfully, crossing the room with 
 leisurely step, and seating himself with his back to the yellow 
 brightness of that western window. " And now, my dear mother, 
 may I inquire the nature of the mountain which you and Mr. Sefton 
 have conjured out of some innocent molehill ? Please don't be 
 very slow and solemn, as I have only half an hour to dress and 
 get to Bruton Street. Boi'to's Mephistopheles will begin at half-past 
 eight." 
 
 "This is no trivial matter, Jack. Perhaps when you have heard 
 what Mr. Sefton has to tell you may hardly care about the opera — 
 or about seeing Miss Marchant, before you have had time for serious 
 thought." 
 
 " There is nothing that Mr. Sefton — or the four Evangelists — 
 could tell me that would alter my feelings about Miss Marchant by 
 one jot or one tittle," cried Vansittart, furiously, his angry feeling 
 about this man leaping out of him like a sudden flame. 
 
 " Wait," said the mother, gravely — " wait till you have heard." 
 
 " Begin, Mr. Sefton. My mother's preamble is eminently calcu- 
 lated to give importance to your communication." 
 
 " I am hardly surprised that you should take the matter some- 
 what angrily, Vansittart," said Sefton, in his smooth, persuasive 
 voice. "I dare say I shall appear an officious beast in this business 
 — and, had it not been for Mrs. Vansittart's express desire, I should 
 not be here to tell you the facts which have come to my knowledge
 
 "Love should be Absolute Love." 157 
 
 within the last two days. I considered it my duty to tell your 
 mother, because in our previous conversations she has been good 
 enough to allude to old ties of friendship between your father and 
 my father — and this made a claim upon me." 
 
 " Proem the second," cried Vansittart, impatiently. " When are 
 we coming to facts ? " 
 
 " The facts are so uncommonly disagreeable that I may bo 
 pardoned for approaching them diffidently. You know, I believe, 
 that Miss Marchant has a brother " 
 
 " Who disappeared some years ago, and about whose fate you 
 nave busied yourself," interrupted Vansittart, with ever-growing 
 impatience. 
 
 " All my efforts to trace Harold Marchant's movements after his 
 departure from Mashonaland resulted in failure, until the day before 
 yesterday, when one of the .two men whom I employed to make 
 inquiries turned up at my house in Tite Street as suddenly as if he 
 had dropped from the moon. This man is a courier and jack-of-all- 
 trades, as clever and handy a dog as ever lived, a man who has 
 travelled in all the quarters of the globe, a Venetian. When I 
 began the search for Miss Marchant's brother, I put the business in 
 the first place into the hands of a highly respectable private detec- 
 tive ; but as a second string to my bow it occurred to me to send 
 .1 full statement of the circumstances, and a careful description of 
 the missing man, to my old acquaintance, Ferrari, the courier, who 
 travelled with my poor father on the sea-board of Italy for several 
 months, and who helped to nurse him on his sick-bed." 
 
 Vansittart bridled his tongue, but could not keep himself from 
 drumming with his fingers on the dainty silver table and setting all 
 the toy harpsichords, and sofas, and bird-cages, and watering-pots, 
 and tiny tables rattling. 
 
 " I had half forgotten that I had employed this man in Harold 
 Marchant's business when the fellow turned up in Tite Street, 
 irrepressibly cheerful, with the most unpleasant information." 
 
 " What information ? For God's sake, come to the point ! " 
 
 " He had traced Marchant's career — from Mashonaland to the 
 diamond fields, where he picked up a good bit of money ; from the 
 diamond fields to New York, from New York to Venice. For God's 
 sake, leave those bibelots alone," as the silver toys leapt and rattled 
 on the fragile table. " Do you think no one has nerves except 
 yourself? " 
 
 " Your man traced Marchant to Venice," said Vansittart, the 
 restless hand suddenly motionless ; " and what of him at Venice ? " 
 
 " At Venice Marchant lived with a girl whom he had taken out 
 of a factory. Pardon me, Mrs. Vansittart, for repeating these un- 
 pleasant facts — lived, gambled, drank, and enjoyed life after his own
 
 153 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 inclination, which always leaned to low company even when he was 
 an undergraduate. From Venice he vanished suddenly, more than 
 three years ago." 
 
 Vansittart fancied they must needs hear that heavily beating 
 heart of his thumping against his ribs. He fancied that, even in 
 that dimly lighted room, they must needs see the ashen hue of his 
 face, the beads of sweat upon his forehead. All he could do was to 
 hold his tongue, and wait for that which was to come. 
 
 " Do you happen to remember a murder, or, I will rather say, a 
 scuffle ending in homicide, which occurred at Venice three years 
 ago in Carnival time — an English tourist stabbed to death by another 
 Englishman, who got away so cleverly that he was never brought to 
 book for what he had done? The row was about a woman, and the 
 woman was Harold Marchant's mistress. Marchant was jealous of 
 the stranger's attentions to the lady — he had lived long enough in 
 Italy to have learnt the use of the knife — and after a free fight of a 
 few moments he stabbed his man to the heart. Ferrari heard the 
 story from a Venetian, who was present in the Caffe Florian when 
 the thing happened." 
 
 " Did the Venetian know Marchant ? " 
 
 The words came slowly from dry lips, the voice was husky ; but 
 neither Mrs. Vansittart nor Mr. Sefton wondered that Eve Marchant's 
 lover should be deeply moved. 
 
 " I don't know; but there were people in Venice who knew him, 
 and from whom Ferrari heard his mode of life." 
 
 " But you said that Marchant was living under an assumed name." 
 
 " Did I ? " asked Sefton, surprised. " I don't remember saying 
 it, but it is the fact all the same. At Venice Harold Marchant called 
 himself Smith ; and Smith was the name he gave on board the 
 P, and 0. steamer which took him to Alexandria." 
 
 " Why did he go to Alexandria ? " 
 
 "Why? To get away from Venice in the quickest and com- 
 pletest manner he could. When he saw that the knife had been 
 fatal, he grasped the situation in an instant, made a dash for the 
 door, ran through the crowd along the Piazzetta, jumped into the 
 water, and swam to the steamer, which was getting up steam for 
 departure. No one guessed that he would make for the steamer. 
 It was a longish swim ; and while his pursuers were groping about 
 among the gondolas the steamer was moving off with Harold on 
 board her. Just like him — always quick at expedients ; ready at 
 every point where his own interests were at stake ; tricky, shifty, 
 dishonest to the core ; but a devil for pluck, and as strong as a 
 young lion." 
 
 " I begin to remember the story, now you recall the details," said 
 Vansittart, who had by this time mastered every sign of agitation,
 
 u Love should be Absolute Love? 159 
 
 and was firm as iron. " But in all that you have said I see nothing 
 to fix Harold Marchant as the homicide. lie might as easily have 
 been the man who was killed." 
 
 " No, no ; the man who was killed was a stranger — a Cook's 
 tourist, a nobody, about whose fate there were no inquiries. It was 
 Marchant who was the Venetian girl's protector. It was Marchant 
 who was jealous. The whole story is in perfect accord with Mar- 
 chant's character. I have seen his temper in a row — seen him 
 when, if he had had a knife handy, by Heaven ! he would have 
 used it." 
 
 "But where is the link between Marchant — Marchant at the 
 diamond fields, Marchant at New York — and the man at Venice 
 calling himself Smith ? You don't even pretend to show me that." 
 
 " Ferrari shall show you that. The story is a long one, but there 
 is no solution of continuity. Ferrari shall take you over the ground, 
 step by step, till he brings you from Marchant in Mashonaland to 
 Marchant landing at Alexandria." 
 
 " And after the landing at Alexandria ? What then ? The 
 thing happened more than three years ago, you say. Did the earth 
 open and swallow Harold Marchant after he landed at Alexandria ? 
 Or, if not, what has he been doing since ? Why has not your 
 Ferrari — this courier-guide who is so clever at tracing people — 
 traced him a little further ? Why should the last link of the chain 
 be the landing at Alexandria ? " 
 
 " Because, as I have been telling you, Harold Marchant is an un- 
 commonly clever fellow ; and having got off with a whole skin — 
 escaping the penalty of a crime which at the least was manslaughter 
 — he would take very good care to sink his identity ever afterwards, 
 and in all probability would bid a long farewell to the old world." 
 
 " But your genius — your heaven-born detective — would track him 
 down in the new world. My dear Sefton, the whole story is a farrago 
 of nonsense ; and I wonder that yon, as a man of the world, can be 
 taken in by so vulgar a trickster as your incomparable Ferrari." 
 
 " He is not a trickster. I have the strongest reasons, from past 
 experience, for believing in his honesty. Will you see him, Van- 
 sittart ? Will you hear his story, calmly and dispassionately? " 
 
 " I will not see him. I will not hear his story. I will see no man 
 who trumps up a sensational charge against my future wife's brother. 
 I can quite understand that you believe in this man — that you have 
 brought this absurd story to my mother and me in all good faith." 
 
 " Why absurd ? You admit that there was such a catastrophe — 
 an English traveller killed by an English resident in a Venetian caffe 
 in Carnival time." 
 
 "Yes; but plain fact degenerates into nonsense when your cou- 
 rier tries to fasten the crime upon Eve Marchant's brother."
 
 i6o The Venetians. 
 
 "Hear his statement before you pronounce judgment. He had 
 his facts from people who knew this young man in New York as 
 Harold Marchant, who met him afterwards in Venice, and visited 
 him at his Venetian lodgings, and played cards with him, when he 
 was calling himself Smith — respectable American citizens, whose 
 names and addresses are set down in Ferrari's note-book. I am not 
 utterly wanting in logic, Mr. Vansittart, and if the circumstantial 
 evidence in this matter had been obviously weak I should never have 
 troubled Mrs. Vansittart or you with the story." 
 
 The mother spoke now for the first time since Sefton had begun 
 his revelation. Her voice was low and sympathetic. Her son might 
 doubt her wisdom, but he could not doubt her love. 
 
 " I am deeply sorry for you. Jack," she said, "deeply sorry for 
 poor Eve, who is a blameless victim of evil surroundings, but I 
 cannot think that you will obstinately adhere to your engagement in 
 the face of these dreadful facts. It would have been bad enough to 
 be Colonel Marchant's son-in-law ; but you cannot seriously mean 
 to marry a girl whose brother has committed murder." 
 
 " It was not murder," cried Vansittart, furiously. " Even Mr. 
 Sefton acknowledges that the crime at worst was manslaughter — a 
 fatal blow, struck in a moment of blind passion." 
 
 "With a dagger against an unarmed man," interjected Sefton. 
 " You are inclined to minimize the crime when you call it man- 
 slaughter at the worst. I said that at the least — taking the most 
 indulgent view of the case — the crime was manslaughter ; and I 
 doubt if an Italian tribunal would have dealt very leniently with that 
 kind of manslaughter. I take it that rapid run and long swim of his 
 saved Harold Marchant some years of captivity in an Italian prison." 
 
 " It is too horrible," said Mrs. Vansittart. " My dear, dear son, 
 for God's sake don't underrate the horror of it all because of your 
 love for this poor girl. You cannot marry a girl whose brother is an 
 unconvicted murderer." 
 
 How she harped upon the word murder ! Vansittart ground his 
 nails into the palms of his clasped hands, as he stood up, frowning 
 darkly, in an agony of indignant feeling. His mother to be so 
 womanish, so illogical, so foolish in her exaggeration of evil. 
 
 " I say again, the man who struck that unlucky blow was no mur- 
 derer. The word is a lying word applied to him," he protested. 
 " The story you have told me — the crime you try to fix upon Harold 
 Marchant — can make no shadow of difference in my love for Harold 
 Marchant's sister. Had she ten brothers, and every one of the ten 
 were a felon, I would marry her. It is she whom I love, mother — ■ 
 not her surroundings. And as for your modern fad of heredity, I 
 believe in it no more than I do in table-turning. God made my Eve 
 — as pure, and single, and primitive a being as that other Eve in Hia
 
 "Love should be Absolute Love." 161 
 
 Garden of Eden ; and over the morning of her fair life no act of her 
 kindred can cast a shadow." 
 
 There was a silence. Sefton had risen when Vansittart rose. He 
 took up his hat, and came through the flickering lights and shadows 
 towards Mrs. Vansittart, who sat with drooping head and clasped 
 hands, betwixt sorrow and anger — sorrow for her son's suffering, 
 anger at his obstinate adherence to the girl he loved. She gave 
 Sefton her hand mechanically, without looking up. 
 
 " Good night, Vansittart," said Sefton, as he moved towards the 
 door. " I can only admire your loyalty to Miss Marchant, though I 
 may question your wisdom. She is a very charming person, I grant 
 you ; but, after all " — with a little laugh — " she is not the only 
 woman in the world." 
 
 " She is the only woman in my world." 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 The intonation of this one word, the slight shrug of the shoulders, 
 were full of meaning. Vansittart perceived the covert sneer in that 
 parting speech, and saw in it an allusion to that lovely foreigner 
 whom Sefton had seen hanging affectionately upon his arm a few 
 days ago on the Chelsea Embankment. 
 
 " One word, Mr. Sefton," said Vansittart, in a peremptory tone. " I 
 take it that your employment of detectives and couriers — that all 
 you have done in this business — has been done out of regard for a 
 college chum, who was once your friend, and from a kindly desire 
 to relieve Miss Marchant's anxiety about a brother whom — whom 
 she appears to have dearly loved. I think, under these circum- 
 stances, I need not suggest the wisdom of keeping this unhappy 
 business to yourself — so far as she is concerned." 
 
 " You are right. I shall say nothing to Miss Marchant." 
 
 " Remember that, clever as your courier may be, he is not infal- 
 lible. The case is only a case of suspicion. The Smith, of Venice, 
 may be anybody. One missing link in your amateur detective's 
 chain of evidence, and the whole fabrication would drop to pieces. 
 Don't let Miss Marchant be tortured needlessly. Promise me that 
 you will never tell her this story." 
 
 " On my honour, I will not." 
 
 " I thank you for that promise, and I beg you to forgive any 
 undue vehemence upon my part just now." 
 
 " There is nothing to forgive— I can sympathize with your feelings. 
 Good night." 
 
 " Good night." 
 
 Vansittart dined in Bruton Street, as he had promised, sat by his 
 betrothed, and listened to her happy talk of the things they had seen 
 and the people they had met, sat behind her chair all through Boi'to's 
 opera, unhearing, unseeing, his mind for ever and for ever travelling 
 
 M
 
 1 62 The Venetians. 
 
 over the same ground, acting over and over again the same scene — 
 the row at Florian's, the scuffle, the fall — his own fall — the knife ; 
 and then that fatal fall of his adversary, that one gasping, surprised 
 cry of the unarmed man, slain unawares. 
 
 Her brother ! His victim, and her brother. The nearest, dearest 
 kin of this girl on whose milk-white shoulder his breath came and 
 went, as he sat with bent head in the shadow of the velvet curtain, 
 and heard the strange harmonies of Pandemonium, almost as if 
 voices and orchestra had been interpreting his own dark thoughts. 
 
 Charmed as she was with the music, Eve Marehant was far too 
 sensitive to be unconscious of her lover's altered spirits. Once 
 during the applause that followed that lovely duet at the beginning 
 of the last act, and while Lady Hartley's attention was fixed upon 
 the stage, Eve's hand crept stealthily into the hand of her lover, 
 while she whispered, " What has happened, Jack ? I know there is 
 something wrong. Why won't you trust me ? " 
 
 Trust her ? Trust her with a secret that must part them for ever — 
 let her suffer the agony of knowing that this strong right hand which 
 her slim fingers were caressing had stabbed her brother to the heart? 
 
 " There can be nothing wrong, dearest, while I have you," he 
 answered, grasping her hand as if he would never let it go. 
 
 " But outside me, you have been worried about something. You 
 have quite changed from your gay spirits at Hurlingham." 
 
 "My love, I exhausted myself at Hurlingham. You and I were 
 laughing like children. That can't last. But for me there is no 
 outside world. Be sure of that. My world begins and ends where 
 you are." 
 
 " My own dear love," she whispered softly. 
 
 And so hand in hand they listened to the last act, while Lady 
 Hartley amused herself now with the stage, and now with the 
 audience, and left these plighted lovers alone in their fool's paradise. 
 
 Sunday was given up to church and church parade, looking at 
 people and gowns and bonnets in Hyde Park. Vansittart had to be 
 observant and ready, amusing and amused, as he walked beside his 
 sister and his betrothed. He had to say smart things about the 
 people and the bonnets, to give brief biographies of the men whom he 
 saluted, or with whom he spoke. He had to do this, and to be gay 
 and light-hearted in the drive to Richmond, and at the late luncheon 
 in the pretty upstairs room at the Star and Garter, where the balcony 
 hung high over the smiling valley, over the river that meanders in 
 gracious curves through wooded meadows and past the townlet of 
 " Twicks." Happiness is the dominant in the scale of prosperous 
 love. Why or how should he fail to be happy, adored by this sweet 
 girl, who in less than six weeks was to be his, to have and to hold 
 till death?
 
 "Love should be -Absolute Love." 163 
 
 lie played his part admirably, was really happy during some of 
 those frivolous hours, telling himself that the thing which had hap- 
 pened at Venice was a casualty for which Fate would not too 
 cruelly punish him. 
 
 " Even CEdipus Hex had a good time of it after he killed his father 
 at the cross roads," he told himself mockingly. " It was not till his 
 daughters were grown up that troubles began. He had a long run 
 of prosperity. And so, Dame Fortune, give me my darling, and let 
 her not know for the next twenty years that this right hand is red 
 with her kindred's blood. Let her not know ! And after twenty 
 years of bliss — well, let the volcano explode, and bury me in the 
 ashes. I shall have lived my life." 
 
 He parted with Eve in Bruton Street after tea. She was going to 
 an evening service with Lady Hartley. They were to hear a famous 
 preacher, while the mundane Sir Hubert dined at Greenwich with 
 some men. Eve was to leave Waterloo Station early next morning, 
 and as Lady Hartley was sending her maid to see the young lady 
 and her luggage safely lodged at the Homestead, Vansittart was told 
 he would not be wanted. 
 
 " This is a free country," he said. " You will find me at the 
 station to say good-bye." 
 
 He went home to dine with his mother, a very melancholy dinner. 
 Mrs. Vansittart's pale cheeks bore traces of tears, and she was 
 obviously unhappy, although she struggled to keep up appearances, 
 talked about the weather, the sermon she had heard in the morning, 
 the dinner, anything to make conversation while the servants were 
 in the room. 
 
 Vansittart followed her to the drawing-room directly after dinner, 
 and seated himself by her side in the lamplight, and laid his hand 
 on hers as it turned the pages of the book upon her knee. 
 
 "Canon Liddon is a delightful writer, mother; logical, clear- 
 headed, and eloquent, and you could hardly have a better book than 
 his Bampton Lectures for Sunday evening ; but you might spare a 
 few minutes for your son." 
 
 " As many minutes or as many hours as you like, Jack," answered 
 his mother, as she closed the book. " My thoughts are too full of 
 you to give themselves to any book that was ever written. My dear 
 son, what can I say to you ? Do you really mean to persist in this 
 miserable alliance ? " 
 
 " Oh, mother, how cruel you are even in your kindness ! How 
 cruel a mother's love can be ! It is not a miserable alliance— it is 
 the marriage of true minds. Remember what your Shakespeare 
 says, ' Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.' 
 Will you, mother, admit impediments here, where practically there 
 is none ? "
 
 164 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 " Jack, Jack, love has made you blind. Is the existence of that 
 wicked young man no impediment — a man who may at any day be 
 tried for his life as a murderer ? " 
 
 " Again, mother, I say he was no murderer. The utmost that 
 can be urged against this wicked young man is that he was a hot- 
 tempered athlete who killed a man in a scuffle. Let us forget his 
 existence, if we can. There is nothing in this life more unlikely 
 than that we shall ever hear of him again. From that night in the 
 Venetian caffe he ceased to exist— at any rate for England and his 
 kindred. Be sure, mother, that Harold Marchant will never be 
 heard of again." 
 
 " You believe what you wish *o believe, Jack, and you forget the 
 French proverb that nothing is so likely to happen as the unexpected." 
 
 " No, I don't, mother. That useful adage has been borne in upon 
 me of late. But now, dearest and best, let us be at peace for ever 
 upon this question. I mean to marry my beloved, and I mean you 
 to love her, second only to Maud and me. She is ready to love 
 you with all her heart— with all the stored-up feeling of those 
 motherless years in which she has grown from child to woman, 
 without the help of a mother's love. You are not going to shut 
 your heart against her, are you, mother ? " 
 
 " No, Jack, not if she is to be your wife. I love you too well to 
 withhold my love from your wife." 
 
 " That's my own true mother." 
 
 On this mother and son, between whom there had hung a faint 
 cloud of displeasure, kissed, not without tears ; and it was agreed 
 that for these two henceforward the name of Harold Marchant 
 should be a dead letter. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 TO LIVE FORGOTTEN AND LOVE FORLORN. 
 
 Vansittart had made up his mind. Were that which he accounted 
 but a dark suspicion to be made absolute certainty he meant still to 
 cleave to the girl whom he had chosen for his wife, and who had 
 given him her whole heart. He would marry her, even although 
 his hand had shed her brother's blood, that brother whom of all her 
 kindred she loved best, with the romantic affection which clings 
 round the image of a friend lost in childhood, when the feelings are 
 warmest, and when love asks no questions. 
 
 Once, in the little room in Bruton Street, between two stolen 
 kisses, he said to her, " You pretend to be very fond of me, Eve. I 
 wonder whom you love next best? " 
 
 " Harold," she answered quickly. " I used to think I should never
 
 To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn. 165 
 
 give any one his place in my heart. But you have stolen the first 
 place. He is only second now, poor dear— dead or living, only second." 
 
 The tears welled up in her eyes as she spoke of him. A brother 
 is not often loved so fondly ; hardly ever, unless he is a scamp. 
 
 And would she marry him, Jack Vansittart, if she knew that he 
 had killed her brother ? Alas, no ! That dark story would make 
 an impassable gulf between them. Loving him with all her heart, 
 dependent upon him for all the happiness and prosperity of her 
 future life, she would sacrifice herself and him to the manes of that 
 worthless youth, slain by the man his brutality had provoked to 
 responsive violence. 
 
 " There was not much to choose between us," Vansittart told 
 himself; " ruffians both. And are two lives to be blighted because 
 of those few moments of fury, in which the brute got the upper 
 hand of the man ? No, a thousand times no. I will marry her, 
 and let Fate do the worst to us both. Fate can but part us. Why 
 should I anticipate evil by taking the initiative ? A man who has 
 happiness in his hand and lets it go, for any question of conscience, 
 may be a fine moral character, but he is not the less a fool. Life 
 is not long enough for scruples that part faithful lovers." 
 
 He looked the situation full in the face. He told himself that it 
 was for Eve's welfare as well as for his own that he should keep 
 from her the knowledge of his wrong-doing. Would she be happier, 
 would mankind be any the better off for his self-abnegation, if he 
 should tell her the truth, and accept his dismissal ? Knowing what 
 he knew she coidd scarcely lay her hand in his and take him for 
 her husband ; but once the vow spoken, once his wife, he thought 
 that she might forgive him even her brother's blood. 
 
 She must never know! He had blustered and raged in that 
 troubled scene with Sefton ; but sober reflection taught him that if 
 he were to be safe in the future he must conciliate the man he hated. 
 A word from Sefton could spoil his happiness ; and he could not 
 afford to be ill friends with the man who had power to speak that 
 word ; nor could he afford to arouse that man's suspicions by any 
 eccentricity of conduct. He had refused to hear the story of Harold 
 Marchant's life from the courier's lips, as Sefton suggested, had 
 refused with scornful vehemence. But reflection told him that he 
 ought to examine the courier's chain of evidence, and to discover 
 for himself if the links were strong enough to make Harold Mar- 
 chant's identity with Fiordelisa's lover an absolute certainty. He 
 wanted to know the worst, not to be deluded by the illogical 
 imaginings of an amateur detective. Again, it was natural that a 
 man in his position should look closely into this story, testing its 
 accuracy by the severest scrutiny ; and he wanted to act naturally, 
 to act as Sefton would expect him to act.
 
 1 66 The Venetians. 
 
 Influenced by these considerations, he called in Tite Street on 
 Monday afternoon, and found Sefton at home, in a room which 
 occupied the entire first floor of a small house, but which could be 
 made into two rooms by drawing a curtain. 
 
 It was the most luxurious room that Vansittart had seen for a long 
 time, but there was a studied sobriety in its luxury which marked 
 the man of sense as well as the sybarite. The colouring was subdued 
 — dull olive — -without relief save from a few pieces of old Italian 
 ebony and ivory work, a writing-table, a coffer, a book-case. Every 
 inch of the floor was carpeted with dark-brown velvet pile. No 
 slippery parquetry or sham oak here, no gaudy variety of Oriental 
 prayer-rugs or furry trophies of the chase. Capacious armchairs 
 tempted to idleness ; a choice selection of the newest and oldest 
 books invited to study ; two large windows looking east and west 
 flooded the room with light; and a fireplace wide enough for a 
 baronial hall promised heat and cheerfulness when frosts and fogs 
 combine to make London odious. 
 
 "You like my den," said Sefton, when Vansittart murmured his 
 surprise at finding so good a room in so small a house. " Comfort- 
 able, ain't it ? The house is small, but I've reduced the number of 
 rooms to three. Below I have only a dining-room ; above, only my 
 bedroom. There is a rabbit-hutch at the back of the landing for my 
 valet, and a garret in the roof for the women. Living in a colony 
 of artists, I have taken pains to keep clear of everything artistic. I 
 have neither stained glass nor tapestry, neither Eaffaelle ware nor 
 bronze idols ; but I can offer my friends a comfortable chair and a 
 decently cooked dinner. I hope you'll put my professions to the 
 test some evening, when I can get one or two of my clever neigh- 
 bours to meet you." 
 
 Vansittart professed himself ready to dine with Mr. Sefton on any 
 occasion, and straightway proceeded to the business of his visit. 
 
 " You were good enough to suggest that I should see the courier, 
 Ferrari," he said, " and I was impolite enough to refuse — rather 
 roughly, I fear." 
 
 " You were certainly a little rough," answered Sefton, with his 
 suave smile, " but I could make allowances for a man in your posi- 
 tion. I honour the warmth of your feelings ; and I admire the 
 chivalry which makes you indifferent to the belongings of the woman 
 you love." 
 
 " That which you are pleased to call chivalry, I take to be the 
 natural conduct of any man in such circumstances. Honestly, now, 
 Mr. Sefton, would you give up the girl you love if you found her 
 brother had been the — the chief actor in such a scene as that row 
 in the Venetian caffe ? " 
 
 " Well, I suppose not ; if I were tremendously in love. But life
 
 To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn. 167 
 
 would be considerably embittered, to my mind, by the apprehension 
 of such a brother-in-law's reappearance, or by any unlooked-for 
 concatenation which might bring his personality into the foreground." 
 
 "I am willing to risk such a concatenation. In the mean time 
 it has occurred to me that I ought to see Ferrari, and look into his 
 story dispassionately. If you will kindly give me his address I will 
 write and ask him to call upon me." 
 
 "You will find him a very good fellow — a splendid animal, with 
 a fair intelligence," said Sefton, writing an address. "And now I 
 hope you have forgiven me for bringing an unpleasant train of cir- 
 cumstances under your notice. You must remember that the facts 
 in question came to my knowledge solely from my wish to oblige 
 Miss Marchant. It would not have been fair to you to leave you 
 in ignorance of what so nearly concerned your future wife." 
 
 " Certainly not ; but it would have been kinder, or wiser, on your 
 part to have kept this knowledge from my mother." 
 
 " Mrs. Vansittart had won my warmest regard by her kindness 
 to the son of an old friend. I felt my first duty was to her." 
 
 " That was unwise ; and your unwisdom has caused much pain. 
 However, I thank you for having spared Miss Marchant the know- 
 ledge that would make her miserable. I may rely upon you to keep 
 the" secret always — may I not? " asked Vansittart, earnestly. 
 
 " Always. You have my promise." 
 
 " Thank you. That sets my mind at rest. I know how to deal 
 with my mother's prejudices ; and I know that her affection for Eve 
 will overcome those prejudices— in good time." 
 
 Ferrari called at Charles Street at eleven o'clock next morning, 
 in accordance with Vansittart's request. As the clock struck the 
 hour a tall, good-looking man, with reddish-brown hair, reddish- 
 brown eyes, and a cheerful, self-satisfied smile, was ushered into 
 Vansittart's study. 
 
 "You are punctual, Signor Ferrari. Sit down, please, and come 
 to business at once. Mr. Sefton tells me that you are the most 
 business-like of men, as well as the best of fellows." 
 
 "Mr. Sefton have know me many years, sir. I have had the 
 honour to nurse the of him father in his last illness. Ten years ago 
 we was at Venice, at the Grand Hotel — Mr. Sefton's father threw 
 himself out of the window in a paroxis of pain — I pick him out of 
 the canal at risk of to drown. The son does not forget what Ferrari 
 did for the father." 
 
 Those who knew Ferrari intimately discovered that this rescuing 
 of would-be suicides from the Grand Canal was an idiosyncrasy of 
 his. He affected to have saved half the distinguished travellers of 
 Europe in this manner.
 
 1 68 The Venetians. 
 
 " Now, Signor Ferrari, you have no doubt considered that the 
 charge you have brought against Mr. Harold Marchant is a very 
 serious one " 
 
 " Scusatemi, illustrissimo gentleman, I bring no charge," protested 
 Ferrari, in his curious English, which he spoke with an American 
 accent, having improved his knowledge of the language in the society 
 of American travellers, few of whom condescended to Italian or even 
 French. " I bring no charge. Mr. Sefton tell me, trace for me the 
 movements of a young man called 'Arol Marchant. Find him for 
 me. He was last heard of with a party of explorers in Mashonaland. 
 He good shot. Kill big game. With these bare facts I set to 
 work. I am one who never stop. I am like the devil in Job, 
 always going to and fro over the earth. I know men in all parts ; 
 couriers, interpreters, servants of every class, money-changers, 
 shipping agents. From among these I get my information, and 
 here it is tabulated. It is for the illustrissimo to judge for herself, 
 having seen my facts." 
 
 He opened a neat little book, where, upon ruled paper, appeared 
 a record of the movements of Harold Marchant from the hour of his 
 appearing at the diamond fields to his return from New York with a 
 party of Americans, in whose company he put up at the Hotel di 
 Itoma, Pension Suisse, on the Grand Canal. 
 
 When he was at the Hotel di Koma he was known as Marchant. 
 His signature was in the visitors' book at the hotel. Ferrari had 
 seen it, and had recorded the date, which was in the September 
 preceding that February in which Vansittart had shared in the 
 gaieties of the Carnival at Venice. A fortnight later Mr. Marchant 
 took a second floor in the Campo Goldoni, under the name of Smith. 
 There was no doubt in the courier's mind as to the identity of the 
 man in the Campo Goldoni with the man at the Hotel di Roma. 
 He had talked with a New Yorker who had known Marchant under 
 both names, and who knew of his relations with the pretty lace- 
 maker. Bat there was nothing in Ferrari's statement which could 
 be called proof positive of this identity. The facts rested on infor- 
 mation obtained at second hand. It was open to Vansittart to doubt 
 — since error was not impossible — error as complete as that mistake 
 which had put the man who was killed in the place of the man who 
 killed him. 
 
 Ferrari tracked the fugitive on his voyage to Alexandria : recorded 
 the name of Smith given to the captain of the P. and 0. After 
 Alexandria there was nothing. 
 
 " Do you think he came back to Europe by another steamer ? " 
 asked Vansittart, testing the all-knowing Venetian. 
 
 " Not he, Altissimo. Having once set his foot upon the soil of 
 Africa he would be too wise to return to Europe. He might go to
 
 To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn. 169 
 
 India, to America — north or south — but ho would not come to 
 England, to answer for the English life which he had taken. You 
 Englishmen set great store upon life." 
 
 Vansittart dismissed the man with a present, but before he went 
 Eerrari laid his card upon the table, and begged that if ever the 
 illustrissimo required a travelling servant, he, Eerrari, might bo 
 remembered. 
 
 When he was gone Vansittart took up his pen and wrote hastily 
 to Scfton. 
 
 " Dear Mk. Seftox, 
 
 " Your excellent Ferrari has been here, and I have gone 
 carefully through his statement. It is plausible, but by no means 
 convincing; and I see ample room for error in a chain of facts 
 which rest upon hearsay. Under these conditions I am more than 
 ever desirous that no hint of Ferrari's story should reach Miss Mar- 
 chant. Forgive me for reminding you of your promise. It would 
 be a deplorable business if this dear girl were made unhappy about 
 a chimera. 
 
 " I go to Eedwold to-morrow, and shall stay over Whitsuntide. 
 We are to be married before the end of June, very quietly, at Fern- 
 hurst Church. 
 
 "Yours sincerely, 
 
 "J. Vansittart." 
 
 He rather despised himself for writing in this friendly strain to a 
 man for whom he had an instinctive dislike ; but he tried to believe 
 that his dislike was mere prejudice, and that Sefton's manner with 
 Eve, to which he had taken such violent objection, was only Sefton's 
 manner to young women in general ; a bad manner, but without 
 any sinister feeling underlying it — only a bad manner. 
 
 To-morrow he was to go to Eedwold, to be his sister's guest till 
 after Whitsuntide, or until the wedding, if he pleased. And before 
 June was pushed aside by her sultrier sister July, he was to be Eve 
 Marchant's husband. Every day of his life brought that union a day 
 nearer. It had come now to the counting of days. It seemed to 
 him as if time and the calendar were no more — as if he and his love 
 were being swept along on the strong current of their happiness. 
 He could think of nothing, care for nothing but Eve. His bailiff's 
 letters, his lawyer's letters, remained unanswered. He could not 
 bring himself even to consider his mother's suggestions as to this or 
 that improvement at Merewood, whither Mrs. Vansittart was going 
 at Whitsuntide, to prepare all tilings for the coming of the bride, and 
 to arrange for her own removal. 
 
 " Do as much or as little as you like, mother," Vansittart said. 
 "You need alter nothing. Eve will be pleased with things as theyare."
 
 170 TJie Venetians. 
 
 " It will be a great change from a cottage," sighed Mrs. Vansittart. 
 "I'm afraid she will be bewildered and overpowered by a large 
 household. She can have no idea of managing servants." 
 
 " The servants can manage themselves, mother. I don't want a 
 managing wife. Yet from what I have seen of Eve in her own 
 home I take her to be well up in domestic matters. Everything at 
 the Homestead seemed the essence of comfort." 
 
 He remembered his wintry tea-drinking, the tea and toast, the 
 cake and jam-pots, and Eve's radiant face ; the firelight on Eve's 
 hair ; the sense of quiet happiness which pervaded the place where 
 his love was queen. It seemed to him that there could not have 
 been one inharmonious note in that picture. Order and beauty and 
 domestic peace were there. Should Fate reduce him to poverty 
 he could be utterly happy with his love in just such a home. He 
 wanted neither splendid surroundings nor brilliant society. 
 
 Having heard all that Ferrari could tell him, he felt easier in his 
 mind than he had felt since that unpleasant hour with his mother 
 and Sefton on Saturday evening. The more he thought of the 
 courier's chain of evidence, the weaker it seemed to him. No, he 
 could not think that the man he had killed was the brother of the 
 woman he was going to marry. He tried to recall the man's lace ; 
 but the suddenness and fury of that deadly encounter had afforded 
 no time for minute observation. The man's face had flashed upon 
 him out of the crowd — fair-haired, fair-skinned, amidst all those olive 
 complexions — a face and figure that bore down upon him with the 
 impression of physical power ; handsome only as the typical gladiator 
 is handsome. What more could he remember ? Irregular features, 
 strongly marked ; a low forehead ; and fight blue eyes. The 
 Marchants were a blue-eyed race ; but that went for little in a 
 country where the majority of eyes are blue or grey. 
 
 Vansittart remembered his promise to visit Fiordelisa and her 
 aunt ; and as this was his last day in London, perhaps, for some 
 time, he gave up his afternoon to the performance of that promise. 
 Tuesday was one of the Professor's days ; and he had promised to 
 hear the Professor's opinion of Signora Vivanti's progress. 
 
 Since that painful hour on Saturday he had thought seriously of 
 the impulsive Venetian, and of his relations with her — relations 
 which he felt to be full of peril. It had occurred to him that there 
 was only one way to secure Fiordelisa's future welfare, while strictly 
 maintaining his own incognito, and that was by the purchase of an 
 annuity. It would cost him some thousands to capitalize that in- 
 come of two hundred a year, which he had resolved to allow Lisa ; 
 but he had reserves which he could afford to draw upon, the accumu- 
 lations of his minority, invested in railway stock. Any lesser 
 sacrifice would appear to him too poor an atonement ; for after all,
 
 To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn. 171 
 
 it was possible that, but for him, Fiordelisa's Englishman might have 
 kept his promise and married her. No, Vansittart did not think ho 
 would be doing too much in securing these two women against 
 poverty for the rest of their lives — and the annuity once bought he 
 would be justified in disappearing out of Fiordelisa's life, and leaving 
 her in ignorance of his name and belongings. 
 
 He spent an hour with Ids lawyer before going to Chelsea, and 
 from that gentleman obtained all needful information as to the proper 
 manner of purchasing an annuity, and the best people with whom to 
 invest his money 
 
 This done, he walked across the Park, and arrived at Saltero's 
 Mansion on the stroke of four. Lisa had told him that her lesson 
 lasted from three to four, so he had timed himself to meet the 
 maestro. 
 
 The ripe round notes of Lisa's mezzo soprano rose full and strong 
 in one of Conconi's exercises as la Zia opened the door. She 
 attacked a florid passage with force and precision, ran rapidly up the 
 scale to A sharp, and held the high note long and clear as the call of 
 a bird. 
 
 " Brava, brava ! " cried Signor Zinco, banging down a chord and 
 rising from the piano as Vansittart entered. 
 
 Lisa flew to meet him. She was in her black frock, with a bit of 
 scarlet ribbon tied round her throat, and another bit of scarlet tying 
 up her great untidy knot of blue-black hair. The rusty black gown, 
 the scarlet ribbons, the olive face, with its carnation flush and star- 
 like eyes, made a brilliant picture after the school of Murillo. 
 Vansittart could but see that she was strikingly handsome — just the 
 kind of woman to take the,town by storm, if she were once seen and 
 heard in opera bouffe. 
 
 Zinco was a little old man, with no more figure than an eighteen- 
 gallon cask. He had a large bald head, and benevolent eyes. He 
 was very shabby. His coat, which might once have been black, 
 was now a dull green — his old grey trousers were kneed and frayed, 
 his old fat hands were dirty. 
 
 "Ah, I thought you had forgotten me again," said Lisa. "But you 
 are here at last; and now ask the master if he is pleased with me." 
 
 "lam more than pleased," began Zinco, bowing and smiling at 
 Vansittart as one who would fain have prostrated himself at the 
 feet of so exalted a patron. 
 
 " Stay," cried Lisa. " You shall not talk of me before my face. 
 I will go and make the tea — and then Zinco will tell you the truth, 
 Si'or mio, the very truth about me. He will not be obliged to praise." 
 
 She dashed out of the room, as if blown out on a strong wind, 
 so impetuous were her movements. La Zia began to clear a table
 
 172 77ie Venetians. 
 
 for tea, a table heaped with sheets of music and play-books. 
 Fiordeh'sa had been learning English out of Gilbert's librettos, which 
 were harder work for her than Metastasio for an English student. 
 
 " Well, Signor Zinco, what do you think of your pupil ? " asked 
 Vansittart. 
 
 " Sir, she is of a marvellous natural. She has an enormous talent, 
 and with that talent an enormous energy. She is destined to a 
 prodigious success upon the English scene." 
 
 " I am delighted to hear it." 
 
 " She has all the qualities which succeed with your English 
 people — a fine voice, a fine person, and — that that may not displease 
 you — a vulgarity which will command applause. Were I more 
 diplomatist I should say genius — where I say vulgarity — but this 
 divine creature is adorably vulgar. She has no nerves. I say to 
 her sing, and she sings. ' Attack me the A sharp, 1 and she attacks, 
 and the note rings out like a bell. She is without nerves, and she 
 is without self-consciousness, and she has the courage of a lion. 
 She has worked as no pupil of mine ever worked before. She is 
 mastering your difficult language in as many months as it cost me 
 years. She has laboured at the theory of music, and though she is 
 in most things of a surprising ignorance, she has made no mean 
 progress in that difficult science. She has worked as Garcia's gifted 
 daughter worked ; and were this age worthy of a second Malibran, 
 she has hi her the stuff to make a Malibran." 
 
 The fat little maestro stopped for breath, not for words. He 
 stood mopping his forehead and smiling at Vansittart, who was 
 inclined to believe in his sincerity, for that roulade he had heard at 
 the door just now displayed a voice of brilliant quality. 
 
 " You are enthusiastic, Signor Zinco," he said quietly. " And 
 pray when you have trained this fine voice to the uttermost what 
 do you intend to do with it ? " 
 
 " I hope to place the Signora in the way of making her fortune. 
 Were you English a nation of music-lovers, I should say to this 
 dear lady, give yourself up to hard study of classical opera for the 
 next three years, before you allow yourself to be heard in public ; 
 but pardon me if I say, Signor, you English are not connoisseurs. 
 You are taken with show and brilliancy. You think more of youth 
 and beauty in the prima donna than of finish or science. Before 
 your winter season of opera bouffe shall begin the Signora will have 
 learnt enough to ensure her a succes fou. I count upon getting 
 her engaged at the Apollo in November. There is a new opera 
 being written for the Apollo — an opera in which I am told there 
 are several female characters, and there will be a chance for a new 
 singer. I have already spoken to the manager, and he has promised 
 to hear the Signora sing before concluding his autumn engagements."
 
 To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn. 173 
 
 " Festina lente, Signor Zinco. You are going at railroad pace. 
 Do not spoil the Signora's future by a hasty debut." 
 
 " Have no fear, sir. She will have all the summer for practice, 
 and for further progress in English. A foreign accent will be no 
 disadvantage. It takes with an English audience. You have had 
 so many sham Italians in opera that it will be well to have a real 
 one. 1 ' 
 
 The maestro bowed himself out, as Fiordelisa came in with the 
 tea-tray, beaming with smiles, happy and important. She placed 
 a chair for Vansittart by the open window. She arranged the light 
 bamboo table in front of him, and began to pour out the tea, while 
 la Zia seated herself at a little distance. 
 
 "I have learnt to make tea in your English fashion, 1 ' Lisa said 
 gaily, as she handed the teacups. " Strong, oh, so strong. No 
 xe vero ? Our neighbour on the upper floor taught me. She 
 laughed at my tea one day when she came to see me. And now, 
 what did little Zinco say ? He always pretends to be satisfied with 
 
 me." 
 
 " He praised you to the skies. He says you will make your 
 fortune in opera." 
 
 " And do you like operas ? " Lisa asked, after a thoughtful pause. 
 
 " I adore music of all kinds, except hurdy-gurdies and banjos." 
 
 " And will you come sometimes to hear me sing ? " 
 
 " Assuredly ! With the greatest pleasure." 
 
 " I shall owe fame and fortune to you, if ever I am famous or 
 rich," said Lisa, seating herself on a low stool by the window, in 
 the full afternoon sunlight, basking in the brightness and warmth. 
 
 " What has become of Paolo? " asked Vansittart, looking round 
 the room, where some scattered toys reminded him of the child's 
 existence. 
 
 " Paolo has gone to tea with the lady on the top floor. She has 
 three little girls and a boy, and they all love el puttelo. They let 
 him play with their toys and pull their hair. Hark ! there they go." 
 
 A wild gallop of little feet across the ceiling testified to the 
 animation of the party. 
 
 "He has been there all the afternoon. He is a bold, bad boy, 
 and so full of mischief," said Lisa, with evident pride. " He is 
 very big for his age, people say, and as active as a monkey. You 
 must go and fetch him directly you have had your tea, Carina mia," 
 she added to her aunt. " He has been with those children nearly 
 two hours. He will be awake all night with excitement." 
 
 "Is he excitable? " asked Vansittart, who felt a new and painful 
 interest in this child of a nameless parent. 
 
 " Oh, he is terrible. He is ready to jump out of the window 
 when he is happy. He throws himself down on the floor, and kicks
 
 174 The Venetians. 
 
 and screams till he is black in the face, when he is not allowed to 
 do what he likes. He is only a baby, and yet he is our master. 
 That is because he is a man, I suppose. We were created to be 
 your slaves, were we not, Si'or mio ? La Zia spoils him." 
 
 La Zia protested that the boy was a cherub, an angel. He wanted 
 nothing in life but his own way. And he was so strong, so big, and 
 so beautifid that people turned in the streets to look at him. 
 
 " Among all the children in Battersea Park I have never seen 
 his equal. And he is not yet three years old. He fought with a 
 boy of six, and sent him away howling. He is a marvel." 
 
 " When he is old enough I shall send him to a gymnasium," said 
 Lisa. " I want him to be an athlete, like his father. He told me 
 once that he won cups and prizes at the University by his strength. 
 Oh, how white you have turned ! " she cried, distressed at the 
 ghastly change in Vansittart's face. " I forgot. I forgot. I ought 
 not to have spoken of him. I never will speak of him again. We 
 will forget that he ever existed." 
 
 She hung over his chair. She took up his hand and kissed it. 
 
 " Forgive me ! Forgive me ! " she murmured, with tears. 
 
 Unmoved by this little scene, la Zia emptied her teacup, rose, 
 and left the room ; and they two — Vansittart and Fiordelisa — were 
 alone. 
 
 " You know that I would not pain you for the world," she sighed. 
 " You have been so good to me, my true and only friend." 
 
 " No, no, Si'ora ; I know that you would not willingly recall that 
 memory which is branded upon my heart and brain. I can never 
 forget. Do not believe even that I wish to forget. I sinned ; and 
 I must suffer for my sin. My friendship for you and for your good 
 aunt arose out of that sin. I want to atone to you as far as I can 
 for that fatal act. You understand that, I am sure." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; I understand. But you like us, don't you ? " she 
 pleaded. " You are really our friend? " 
 
 "lam really your friend. And I want to prove my friendship 
 by settling an income upon you, in such a manner that you will not 
 be dependent upon my forethought for the payment of that income. 
 It will be paid to you as regularly as the quarter-day comes round. 
 I am going to buy you an annuity, Lisa ; that is to say, an income 
 which will be paid to you till the end of your life ; so that whether 
 you make your fortune as a singer or not, you can never know 
 extreme poverty." 
 
 " But who will give me the money when quarter-day comes ? " 
 
 " It will be sent to you from an office. You will have no trouble 
 about it." 
 
 " I should hate that. I would rather have the money from your 
 hand. It is you who give it me — not the man at the office. I want
 
 To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn. 175 
 
 to kiss my benefactor's hand. You are my benefactor. That was 
 one of the first words I taught myself after I came to this house. 
 Be'n-e'-factor ! " she repeated, with her Italian accent; "it is easier 
 than most of your English words." 
 
 " Cara Si'ora, I may be far away. It would be a bad thing for 
 you to depend on my memory for the means of living. Let us be 
 reasonable and business-like. I shall see to this matter to-morrow. 
 And now, good-bye." 
 
 He rose, and took up his hat. Lisa hung about him, very pale, 
 and with her full lower lip quivering like the lip of a child that is 
 trying not to cry. 
 
 "Why are you doing this? why are you changing to me?" she 
 asked piteously. 
 
 " I am not changing, Lisa. There is no thought of change in me. 
 Only you must be reasonable. There is a dark secret between us 
 — the memory of that fatal night in Venice. It is not well that we 
 should meet often. We cannot see each other without remember- 
 ing , 
 
 " I remember nothing when I am with you — gnente, gnente ! " 
 she cried passionately. " Nothing except that I love you — love you 
 with all my heart and soid." 
 
 She tried to throw herself upon his breast, but as he recoiled, 
 astonished and infinitely pained, she fell on her knees at his feet, and 
 clasped his hand in both of hers, and kissed and cried over it. 
 
 " I love you," she repeated ; " and you — you have loved me — you 
 must have loved me — a little. No man was ever so kind as you 
 have been, except for love's sake. You must have cared for me. 
 You cared for me that day in Venice — the happiest day in my life. 
 Your heart turned to me as my heart turned to you, in the sunshine 
 on the lagune, in the evening at the theatre. Every day that I have 
 lived since then has strengthened my love. For God's sake, don't 
 tell me that I am nothing to you." 
 
 " You are very much to me, Lisa. You are a friend for whom I 
 desire all good things that this world and the world that comes after 
 death can give. Get off your knees, child. This is childish folly ; 
 no wiser than Paolo's anger when you won't let him have all his own 
 way. Come, Si'ora mia, let us laugh and be friends." 
 
 He tried to make light of her feelings ; but she gave him a look 
 that frightened him, a look of unmitigated despair. 
 
 " I thought you loved me ; that by-and-by, when I was a famous 
 singer, you would marry me. I should be good enough then to be 
 your wife. You would forget that I was once a poor working girl at 
 Burano. But I was foolish ; yes, foolish. I could never be good 
 enough to be your wife — I, the mother of Paolo. Let me go on 
 loving you. Only come to see me sometimes — once a week, perhaps !
 
 176 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 The weeks are so long when you don't come. Only care for me a 
 little, just a little, and I shall be happy. See how little I am asking. 
 Don't forsake me, don't abandon me." 
 
 " There is nothing further from my thoughts than to forsake you ; 
 but if you make scenes of this kind I can never trust myself to come 
 here again," he answered sternly. 
 
 " You will never come here again ! " she cried, looking at him with 
 wild eyes. " Then I will not live without you ; I cannot, I will not," 
 
 The window stood open with its balcony and flowers, and the 
 sunlit river, and the sunlit park and dim blue horizon of house-tops 
 and chimneys stretching away to the hills of Sydenham. The girl 
 looked at him for a moment, clenched her teeth, clenched her hands, 
 and made a rush for the balcony. Happily he was quick enough 
 and strong enough to stop her with one outstretched arm. He took 
 her by the shoulder, savagely almost, with something of the brutal 
 roughness of her old lover it might be, but with no love. Beautiful 
 as she was in her passionate self-abandonment, he felt nothing for 
 her in that moment but an angry contempt, which he was at little 
 pains to conceal. 
 
 The revulsion of feeling upon that wild impulse towards self- 
 destruction came quickly enough. The tears rolled down her flushed 
 cheeks, she sank into the chair towards which Vansittart led her, 
 and sat, helpless and unresisting, with her hands hanging loose 
 across the arms of the chair, her head drooping on her breast, the 
 picture of helpless grief. 
 
 He could but pity her, seeing her so childlike, so unreasoning, 
 swayed by passion as a lily is bent by the wind. He shut the 
 window, and bolted it, against any second outbreak ; and then lie 
 seated himself at Lisa's side and took one of those listless hands 
 in his. 
 
 "Let us be reasonable, Si'ora," he said, "and let us be good 
 friends always. If I were not in love with a young English lady 
 whom I hope very shortly to make my wife I might have fallen in 
 love with you." 
 
 She gave a melancholy smile, and then a deep sigh. 
 
 " No, no, impossible ! You would never have cared. I am too 
 low — the mother of Paolo — only fit to be your servant." 
 
 " Love pardons much, Lisa ; and if my heart had not been given 
 to another your beauty and your generous nature might have won 
 me. Only my heart was gone before that night at Covent Garden. 
 It belonged for ever and for ever to my dear English love." 
 
 " Your English love ! I should like to see her " — with a moody 
 look. " Is she handsome, much handsomer than I? " 
 
 " There are some people who would think you the lovelier. Beauty 
 is not all in all, Lisa. We love because we love."
 
 To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn. 177 
 
 " ' We love because we love,' " she repeated slowly. " Ah, that is 
 what makes it so hard. We cannot help ourselves. Love is destiny." 
 
 " Your destiny was in the past, Lisa. It came to you at Burano." 
 
 " No, no, no. I never cared for him as I have cared for you. I 
 was happier in that one day on the Lido, and that one evening in 
 Venice, than in all my life with him. There was more music in 
 your voice when you spoke to me, ever so lightly, than in all he 
 ever said to me of love. You are my destiny." 
 
 '•' You will think the same about some one else by-and-by, Si'ora 
 — some one whose heart will be free to love you as you deserve to 
 be loved. You are so young and so pretty and so clever that you 
 must needs win a love worth the winning by-and-by, if you will 
 only be reasonable and live a tranquil, self-respecting life in the 
 meanwhile." 
 
 She shook her head hopelessly. 
 
 "I shall never care for anyone again," she said. "No other 
 voice would ever sound sweet in my ears. Don't despise me ; don't 
 think of me as a shameless creature. I was mad just now. I 
 should never have spoken as I did ; but I thought you cared for me. 
 You were so kind ; you did so much for us." 
 
 "I have tried to do my duty, that was all." 
 
 " Only duty ! Well, it was a dream, a lovely dream — and it is 
 over." 
 
 "Let it go with a smile, Lisa. Ycu have so much to make life 
 pleasant— a face that will charm every one ; a voice that may make 
 your fortune." 
 
 " I don't care about fortune." 
 
 " Ah, but you will find it very pleasant when it comes — carriages and 
 horses, a fine house, jewels, laurel wreaths, applause, all that is most 
 intoxicating in life. It is for that you have been working so hard." 
 
 " No, it is not for that. I have been working only to please you ; 
 so that you should say by-and-by, ' This poor little Lisa, for whom 
 I have taken so much trouble, is something more than a common 
 lace-worker, after all.'" 
 
 "This poor little Lisa is a genius, I believe, and will have the 
 world at her feet, by-and-by. And now, Si'ora, I must say good-bye. 
 I am going into the country to-morrow." 
 
 " For long ? " 
 
 " Till after my marriage, perhaps." 
 
 '• Till after your marriage ! And when you are married will you 
 ever come and see me ? " 
 
 " Perhaps ; if you will promise never again to talk as foolishly as 
 you have talked to-day." 
 
 " I promise. I promise anything in this world rather than not 
 see you." 
 
 N
 
 i;8 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 "If I come, be sure I shall come as your true and loyal friend. 
 Ah, here is your son," as a babyish prattle made itself heard in the 
 little vestibule. 
 
 First came a rattling of the handle, and then the door was burst 
 open, and Paolo rushed in — a sturdy block of a boy, with flaxen 
 hair and great black eyes — a curious compromise between the Saxon 
 father and the Venetian mother ; square-shouldered, sturdy, stolid, 
 yet with flashes of southern impetuousness. He was big for his age, 
 very big, standing straight and strong upon the legs of an infant 
 Hercules. He excelled in everything but speech. 
 
 Vansittart lifted him in his arms, and looked long and earnestly 
 into the cherubic countenance, which first smiled and then frowned 
 at him. He was trying, in this living picture of the dead, to see 
 whether he could discover any trace of the Marchant lineaments. 
 
 It might be that a foregone conclusion prompted the fancy — that 
 the fear of seeing made him see — but in the turn of the eyebrow 
 and the contour of cheek and chin he thought he recognized lines 
 which were familiar to him in the faces Of Eve and her sisters — ■ 
 lines which were not in Fiordelisa's face. 
 
 He set the boy down with a sigh. 
 
 "Don't spoil him, Signora," he said to la Zia. " He looks like a 
 boy with a good disposition, but a strong temper. He will want 
 judicious training by-and-by." 
 
 Lisa followed him to the vestibule, and opened the door for him. 
 
 " Tell me that you are not angry before you go," she said im- 
 ploringly. 
 
 " Angry ? No, no ; how could I be angry ? I am only sorry that 
 you should waste so much warmth of feeling on a man whose heart 
 belongs to some one else." 
 
 "What is she like — that some one else? Tell me that — I want 
 to know." 
 
 " Very lovely, very good, very gentle and tender and dear. How 
 can I describe her? She is the only woman in the world for me." 
 
 " Shall I ever see her ? " 
 
 " I think not, Si'ora. It would do no good. There is that sad 
 secret which you and I know, but which she does not know. I 
 could not tell her about you without making her wonder how you 
 and I had come to be such friends ; and then " 
 
 " You do not think that I would tell her ? " exclaimed Lisa, with 
 a wounded air. 
 
 " No, no ; I know you would not. Only secrets come to light, 
 sometimes, unawares. Let the future take care of itself. Once 
 more, good-bye." 
 
 "Once more,good-bye,"she echoed, in tones of deepest melancholy.
 
 ( '79 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SHE WAS MOKE FAIR THAK WORDS CAX SAY." 
 
 If Easter had been a time of happiness for Vansittart and Eve, 
 bringing with it the revelation of mutual love, Whitsuntide was no 
 less happy ; happier, perhaps, in its serene security, and in tho 
 familiarity of a love which seemed to have lasted for a long time. 
 
 " Only seven weeks ! " exclaimed Eve, in one of their wanderings 
 among the many cattle-tracks on Bexley Hill, no sound of life or 
 movement in all the world around them save the hum of insects 
 and the chime of cow bells. " To think that we have been engaged 
 only seven weeks ! It seems a lifetime." 
 
 " Because you are so weary of me ? " asked Vansittart, with a 
 lover's fatuous smile. 
 
 "No; because our love is so colossal. How can it have grown 
 so tremendous in so short a time ? " 
 
 " Romeo and Juliet's love grew in a single night." 
 
 " Ah, that was in Italy — and for stage effect. I don't think much 
 of a passion that springs up in a night, like one of those great red 
 1 ragi which one sees in this wood on an October morning. I should 
 like our love to be as strong and as deep-rooted as that old oak over 
 there, with its rugged grey roots cleaving the ground." 
 
 " Why, so it is ; or it will be by the time we celebrate our golden 
 wedding." 
 
 "Our golden wedding! Yes, if we go on living we must be old 
 and grey some day. It seems hard, doesn't it ? How happy those 
 Greek gods and goddesses were, to be for ever young ! It seems 
 hard that we must change from what we are now. I cannot think 
 of myself as an old woman, in a black silk gown and a cap. A 
 cap ! " she interjected, with ineffable disgust, and an involuntary 
 movement of her ungloved hand to the coils of bright hair which 
 were shining uncovered in the sun. " And you with grey hair and 
 wrinkles ! Wrinkles in your face ! That is what your favourite 
 Spencer calls ' Unthinkable.' Stay " — looking at him searchingly 
 in the merciless summer light. " Why, I declare there is just one 
 wrinkle already. Just one perpendicular wrinkle ! That means 
 care, does it not? " 
 
 " What care can I have when I have you, except the fear of 
 losing you ? " 
 
 " Ah, you can have no such fear. I think, like Juliet, ' I should 
 have had more cunning to be strange.' I let you see too soon that 
 I adored you. I made myself too cheap."
 
 1S0 The Venetians. 
 
 " No more than the stars are cheap. We may all see them and 
 worship them." 
 
 " But that deep perpendicular line, Jack. It must mean something. 
 I have heen reading Darwin on Expression, remember." 
 
 " Spencer — Darwin. You are getting far too learned. I liked 
 you better in your ignorance." 
 
 " How ignorant I was " — with a long-drawn sigh — " till you began 
 to educate me ! Poor dear Mutterchen never taught us anything but 
 the multiplication table and a little French grammar. We used to 
 devour Scott, and Dickens, and Bulwer, and Thackeray. The books 
 on our shelves will tell you how they have been read. They have 
 been done to rags with reading. They are dropping to pieces like 
 over-boiled fowls. And we know our Shakespeare — we have learnt 
 him by heart. We used to make our winter nights merry acting 
 Shakesperean scenes to Nancy and the parlour-maid. They were 
 our only audience. But, except those dear novelists and Shakespeare, 
 we read nothing. History was a blank ; philosophy a word without 
 meaning. You introduced me to the world of learned authors." 
 
 " Was I wise ? Was it not something like Satan's introduction 
 of Eve to the apple ? " 
 
 " Wise or foolish, you gave me Darwin. And now I want to know 
 what kind of trouble it was that made that line upon your forehead. 
 Some foolish love affair, perhaps. You were in love — ever eo much 
 deeper in love than you are with me." 
 
 " No, my dearest. All my earlier loves were lighter than vanity 
 i — no more than Romeo's boyish passion for Rosaline." 
 
 " What other care, then ? You, who are so rich, can have no 
 money cares." 
 
 " Can I not ? Imprimis, I am not rich ; and then what income I 
 have is derived chiefly from agricultural land cut up into smallish 
 farms, with homesteads, and barns, and cowhouses, that seem always 
 ready to tumble about the tenant's ears, unless I spend half a year's 
 rent in repairs." 
 
 " Dear, picturesque old homesteads, I've no doubt." 
 
 " Eminently picturesque, but very troublesome to own." 
 
 "And did repairs — the cost of roofs and drainpipes — write that 
 deep line on your brow ? " 
 
 "Perhaps. Or it may be only a habit of frowning, and of trying 
 to emulate the eagles in looking at the sun." 
 
 " Ah, you have been a wanderer in sunny lands— in Italy ! And 
 now we had better go and look for the girls." 
 
 They roamed over Bexley Hill or Blackdown during that happy 
 Whitsuntide, favoured with weather that made these Sussex hills a 
 paradise. It was the season of hawthorn blossom, and an undulating 
 line of white may bushes came dancing down the hill like a bridal
 
 "J fore Fair than Words can say!' 181 
 
 procession. It was the season of blue-bells ; and all the woodland 
 hollows trembled with azure bloom, luminous in sunlight, darkly 
 purple in shadow ; the season of blossoming trees in cottage gardens, 
 of the laburnum's golden rain, the acacia's perfumed whiteness, the 
 tossing balls of the guelder rose, the mauve blossoms of wistaria 
 glorifying the humblest walls, the small white woodbine scenting the 
 warm air. It was a season that seemed especially invented for youth 
 and love ; for the young foals sporting in the meadow ; for the young 
 lambs on the grassy hills ; and for Eve and Vansittart. 
 
 They almost lived out of doors in this delicious weather. The 
 four sisters were always ready to bear them company, and were 
 always discreet enough to leave them alone for the greater part of 
 every rambling expedition. Mr. Tivett had reappeared on the scene. 
 He had been particularly useful in London, where he was full of 
 information about the very best places for buying everything, from 
 a diamond bracelet to a tooth-brush, and had insisted upon taking 
 Eve and Lady Hartley to some of his favourite shops, and upon 
 having a voice in a great many of their purchases. He took as 
 much interest in Eve's trousseau as if he had been her maiden 
 aunt. ' 
 
 The wedding was to be the simplest ceremonial possible. Neither 
 Vansittart nor Eve wished to parade their bliss before a light-minded 
 multitude. The Homestead was not a house in which to entertain 
 a large assembly ; and Colonel Marchant was not a man to make a 
 fuss about anything in life except his own comfort. He ordered 
 a frock-coat and a new hat for the occasion ; and the faithful 
 Nancy, cook, housekeeper, and general manager, toiled for a week of 
 industrious days in order that the house might be in faultless order, 
 and the light collation worthy of the chosen few who were invited 
 to the wedding. There were to be no hired waiters, no stereotyped 
 banquet from the confectioner's, only tea and coffee, champagne of 
 a famous brand — upon this the Colonel insisted — and such cakes 
 and biscuits and delicate sandwiches as Nancy knew well how to 
 prepare. For bridesmaids, Eve had her four sisters, all in white 
 frocks, and carrying big bunches of Mare*chal Niel roses. Hetty and 
 Peggy had been in ecstatic expectation of the day for a month, and 
 full of speculation as to what manner of present the bridegroom 
 would give them. They squabbled about this question almost every 
 night at bedtime, under the sloping roof of the attic which they 
 occupied together, close to the overhanging thatch where there was 
 such a humming and buzzing of summer insects in the June mornings. 
 
 " He is bound to give us a present," said Peggy. " It's etiquette " 
 —accentuating the first syllable. 
 
 "You should say etiquette," reproved Hetty. " Lady Hartley lays 
 a stress upon the kett."
 
 1 82 The Venetians. 
 
 " Don't bother about pronounciation," muttered Peggy; " one can 
 never get on with one's talk when you're so fine-ladyfied." 
 
 " Pronounciation ! " cried Hetty. " You pick up your language 
 from Susan. No wonder Sophy is horrified at you." 
 
 " Sophy is too fine for anything. Mr. Vansittart said so yesterday 
 when she gave herself airs at the picnic, because there were no table 
 napkins. I wonder what the present will be ! He's so rich, he's 
 sure to give us something pretty. Suppose he gives us watches ? " 
 
 A watch was the dream of Peggy's life. She thought the difference 
 between no watch and watch was the difference between a humdrum 
 existence and a life of exquisite bliss. 
 
 " Suppose he doesn't," exclaimed her sister, contemptuously. 
 "Did you ever hear of a bridegroom giving watches? Of course, 
 the bridesmaids are supposed to have watches. Their fathers give 
 them watches directly they are in their teens, unless they are hard-up, 
 like our father. I shouldn't wonder if he were to give us diamond 
 arrow brooches." 
 
 Hetty had seen a diamond arrow in Lady Hartley's bonnet-strings, 
 and had conceived a passion for that ornament. 
 
 " What do you bet that it will be diamond arrows ? " 
 
 " There's no use in betting. It you lose, one never gets paid." 
 
 "I don't often have any money," Peggy replied naively; and 
 then came a knocking at the lath and plaster partition, and Sophy's 
 sharp voice remonstrating — 
 
 " Are you children never going to leave off chattering ? You are 
 worse than the swallows in the morning." 
 
 There was one blissfullest of days for Peggy during the week before 
 the wedding, a balmy June morning on which Vansittart came in a 
 dog-cart to take Eve and her youngest sister to Haslemere station, 
 whence the train carried them through a smiling land, perfumed 
 with bean blossoms and those fragrant spices which pine woods 
 exhale under the summer sun, to Liss, where another dog-cart was 
 waiting for them, and whence they drove past copse and common 
 to Merewood, Vansittart's very own house, to which he brought his 
 future wife on a visit of inspection — " to see if she would like any 
 alterations," he said. 
 
 "As if any one could want to alter such a lovely house," exclaimed 
 Peggy, who was allowed to run about and pry into every hole and 
 corner, and open all the wardrobes and drawers, except in Mrs. 
 Vansittart's rooms, where everything was looked at with almost 
 religious reverence. 
 
 There were boxes packed already in this lady's dressing-room, 
 the note of departure already sounded. 
 
 "My mother talks of a house at Brighton," said Vansittart.
 
 'More Fair than Words can say." i8^> 
 
 o 
 
 "She has a good many friends settled there, and the winter climate 
 suits her." 
 
 " I am sorry she should feel constrained to go away," said Eve, 
 looking ruefully round the spacious morning room, with its three 
 French windows opening on to a wide balcony, a room which could 
 have swallowed up half the Homestead. " It seems as if I were 
 turning her out. And I am sure there would have been ample room 
 for both of us in this big house." 
 
 " So I told her, love ; but English mothers don't take kindly to 
 the idea of a joint menage. She will come to us often as our guest, 
 I have no doubt, but she insists upon giving up possession to you 
 and me." 
 
 They loitered in all the lower rooms, drawing-room and anteroom, 
 library, billiard-room — an unpretentious country house, spread over 
 a good deal of ground, roomy, airy, beautifully lighted, but boasting 
 no art collections, no treasures of old books, unpretentiously furnished 
 after the fashion of a century ago, and with only such modern 
 additions as comfort required. The drawing-room would have 
 appeared shabby to eyes fresh from London drawing-rooms ; but 
 the colouring was harmonious, and the room was made beautiful by 
 the flowers on tables, chimney-piece, and cabinets. 
 
 "I dare say you would like to refurnish this room by-and-by," 
 said Vansittart. 
 
 " Not for worlds. I would not change one detail that can remind 
 you of your childhood. I remember the drawing-room in Yorkshire, 
 and how dearly I loved the sofas and easy-chairs — the glass cabinets 
 of old blue china. It would grieve me to go back and see strange 
 furniture in that dear old room ; and I love to think that your eyes 
 looked at these things when they were only on a level with that 
 table " — pointing to a low table with a great bowl of roses upon it. 
 
 " Not my eyes alone, but my father's and grandfather's eyes have 
 looked from yonder low level. I am glad you don't mind the shabby 
 furniture. I confess to a weakness for the old sticks." 
 
 " Shabby furniture ! " repeated Eve. " One would think you were 
 going to marry a princess. Why, this house is a palace compared 
 with the Homestead ; and yet I have contrived to be happy at the 
 Homestead." 
 
 " Because Heaven has given you one of its choicest gifts — a happy 
 disposition," said Vansittart. "It is that sunny temperament which 
 irradiates your beauty. It is not that tip-tilted little nose, so slender 
 in the bridge, so ethereal in its upward curve, nor yet those violet 
 eyes, which make you so lovely. It is the happy soul for ever 
 singing to itself, like the lark up yonder in the fathomless blue." 
 
 " I shouldn't think you cared for me, if you didn't talk nonsense 
 sometimes," answered Eve, gaily; "but it is a privilege to be
 
 1 84 The Venetians. 
 
 happy, isn't it ? Sophy and I have had the same troubles to bear, 
 but they have hurt her ever so much more than they hurt me. 
 Jenny and I sometimes call her Mrs. Gummidge. I think it is 
 because she has never left off struggling to be smart, never left off 
 thinking that we ought to be on the same level as the county 
 families ; while Jenny and I gave up the battle at once, and con- 
 fessed to each other frankly that we were poor and shabby, and the 
 daughters of a scampish father. And so we have managed to be 
 happy. I love to think that I am like Beatrice, and that I was born 
 under a star that danced." 
 
 " You were born under a star that brought me good luck." 
 
 They were in the flower-garden, a delightful old garden of velvet 
 turf and herbaceous borders, a garden brimful of roses, standard 
 roses and climbing roses and dwarf roses, arches of roses that made 
 the blue sky beyond look bluer, alleys shaded with roses, like the 
 vine-clad berceaux of Italy. It was a garden shut in by walls of 
 ilex and yew, and so secluded as to make an al fresco saloon for 
 summer habitation ; a saloon in which one could breakfast or dine, 
 without fear of being espied by any one approaching the hall door. 
 
 Eve was enchanted with her new home. She poured out her 
 confidence to him who was so soon to be her husband, with the 
 right to know her inmost thoughts, her every impulse or fancy. It 
 was not often that she talked of herself; but to-day she was full of 
 personal reminiscences, and Vansittart encouraged her innocent 
 egotism. 
 
 " I don't think you realize that you are playing the part of King 
 Cophetua, and marrying a beggar-maiden," she said. " I don't think 
 you can have any idea what a struggle my life has been since I was 
 twelve years old — how that clear Nancy and I have had to scheme 
 and manage, in order to feed four hungry girls. You remember 
 how Hetty and Peggy giggled when you talked about dinner. We 
 scarcely ever had a meal which you and Lady Hartley would call 
 dinner. We were vegetarians half our time — we abstained when it 
 wasn't Lent. We had our Ember days all the year round. Oh, 
 pray don't look so horrified. We had the kind of food we liked. 
 Vegetable soups, and savoury messes, salads and cheese, cakes and 
 buns, bread and jam. We had meals that we all enjoyed tre- 
 mendously — only we could not have asked a dropper-in to stay and 
 lunch or dine — could we ? So it was lucky people took so little 
 notice of us." 
 
 " My darling, you were the pearls, and your neighbours were the 
 swine." 
 
 " And then our dress. How could we be neat tailor-made girls 
 when a ten-pound note once in a way was all we could extort from 
 father for the whole flock ? Ten pounds ! Lady Hartley would
 
 "Afore Fair than Words can say." 185 
 
 pay as much for a bonnet as would buy gowns for all five of us. 
 And then you bring me to this delicious old house — so spacious, so 
 dignified, with such a settled air of wealth and comfort — and you 
 ask if I can suggest improvement in things which to my mind are 
 perfect." 
 
 "My dearest, I want you to be happy, and very happy; and to 
 feel tbat this house is your house, to deal with as you please." 
 
 " I only want to live in it, with you," she answered shyly, " and 
 not to disappoint you. What should I do if King Cophetua were 
 to repent his romantic marriage, and were to think of all the brilliant 
 matches he might have made ? " 
 
 " When we are settled here I will show you the girls my mother 
 would have liked me to marry, and you will see that they are not 
 particularly brilliant. And I do not even know if any of them would 
 have accepted me, had I been minded to oiler myself." 
 
 " They could not have refused you. No one could. To know 
 you is to adore you. Come, Jack, you have been talking rodo- 
 montade to me. It is my turn now. You are not extraordinarily 
 handsome. I suppose, as a sober matter of fact, Mr. Sefton is 
 handsomer. Don't wince at the sound of his name. You know 
 1 have always detested him. I doubt if you are even exceptionally 
 clever — but you have a kind of charm — you creep into a girl's heart 
 unawares. I pity the woman who loved you, and whom you did 
 not love." 
 
 Vansittart thought of Fiordelisa. Perhaps in every man's life 
 there comes one such ordeal as that— love cast at his feet, love 
 worthless to him ; but true love all the same, and priceless. 
 
 Eve Marchant's wedding gifts were few but costly. She had no 
 wide circle of acquaintances to shower feather fans and ivory paper- 
 knives, standard lamps and silver boxes, teapots and cream-jugs, 
 fruit spoons and carriage clocks upon her, till she sat among her 
 treasures, bewildered and oppressed, like Tarpeia under the iron 
 rain from warrior hands. Neighbours had stood aloof from the 
 family at the Homestead, and could hardly come with gifts in their 
 hands, now that the slighted girl was going to marry a man of some 
 standing in an adjoining county, and to take her place among the 
 respectabilities. The givers therefore were few, but the gifts were 
 worthy. Mrs. Vansittart gave the pearl necklace which she had 
 worn at her own bridal — a single string of perfect pearls, with a 
 diamond clasp that had been in the family for a century and a half. 
 Lady Hartley gave a set of diamond stars worthy to blaze in the 
 fashionable firmament on a Drawing-Eoom day. Sir Hubert gave 
 a three-quarter bred mare of splendid shape and remarkable power, 
 perfect as hack or hunter, on whose back Eve had already taken
 
 1 86 The Venetians. 
 
 her first lessons in equitation. And for the bridegroom ! His gifts 
 were of the choicest and the best considered ; jewels, toilet neces- 
 eaire, travelling bag, books innumerable. He watched for every 
 want, anticipated every fancy. 
 
 " Pray, pray don't spoil me," cried Eve. " fou make me feel so 
 horribly selfish. You load me with gifts, and you say you are not 
 rich. You are ruining yourself for me." 
 
 " A man can afford to ruin himself once in his life for his nearest 
 and dearest," he answered gaily. " Besides, if I give you all you 
 want now, I shall cure you of any incipient tendency to extravagance." 
 
 " I have no such tendency. My nose has been kept too close to 
 the grindstone of poverty." 
 
 " Poor, pretty little nose ! Happily the grindstone has not 
 hurt it," 
 
 " And as for wants, who said I wanted Tennyson and Browning 
 bound in vellum, or a travelling bag as big as a house ? I have no 
 wants, or they are all centred upon one object, which isn't to be 
 bought with money. I want you and your love." 
 s "I and my love are yours — have been yours since that night in 
 the snowy road, when you entered into my life at a flash, like the 
 sunlight through Newton's shutter, like Undine, like Titania." 
 
 One of the few wedding presents was embarrassing alike to bride 
 and bridegroom, for it came from a man whom both disliked, but 
 whom one of the two would rather not offend. 
 
 Eve's appearance in the family sitting-room just a little later than 
 usual one morning was loudly hailed by Hetty and Peggy, who were 
 squabbling over a small parcel which had arrived, registered and 
 insured, by the morning post. 
 
 " It is a jeweller's box in the shape of a crescent," cried Peggy. 
 »' It must be a crescent brooch. How too utterly lovely ! But it is 
 not from Mr. Vansittart." 
 
 They called him Mr. Vansittart still, although he had begged 
 them to call him Jack. 
 
 " It would be too awfully free and easy to call so superb a gentle- 
 man by such a vulgar name," Hetty said, when the subject came 
 under discussion. 
 
 " I say it is from Mr. Vansittart," protested Hetty. " Who else 
 would send her a diamond crescent ? " 
 
 " How do you know it's diamonds ? " 
 
 "Oh, of course. Bridegrooms always give diamonds. Did you 
 ever see anything else in the weddings in the Lady's Pictorial t " 
 
 " Bother the Lady's Pictorial ! it ain't his handwriting." 
 
 " Ain't it, stupid ? Yv T ho said it was ? It's the jeweller's writing, 
 of course — with Mr. Vansittart's card inside."
 
 "More Fair than Words can say." 187 
 
 "Perhaps you will allow me to open the parcel, and see what it 
 all means," said Eve, with the eldest sister's dignity. 
 
 The two young barbarians had had the breakfast-table to them- 
 selves, Sophy and Jenny not having appeared. There were certain 
 operations with spirit-lamp and tongs which made these young ladies 
 later than the unsophisticated juniors. 
 
 " I shall scold him savagely for sending me this, after what I told 
 him yesterday," said Eve, as she tore open the carefully sealed 
 parcel. 
 
 She was of Hetty's opinion. The gift could be from none but her 
 lover. 
 
 " Oh, oh, oh 1 " they cried, all three of them, in a chorus of rapture, 
 as the box was opened. 
 
 The crescent was of sapphires, deeply, darkly, beautifully blue, 
 without flaw or feather. Small brilliants filled in the corners between 
 the stones, but these hardly showed in that blue depth and darkness. 
 The effect was of a solemn, almost mysterious splendour. 
 
 " Oh, how wicked, how wilful of him, to waste such a fortune upon 
 me ! " cried Eve, taking the crescent out of its velvet bed. 
 
 Under the jewel, like the asp under the fig-leaves, there lay a 
 visiting-card. 
 
 " From Mr. Sefton, with all best wishes." 
 Eve dropped the brooch as if it had stung her. 
 " From him ? " she cried. " How horrid ! " 
 "I call it utterly charming of him," protested Hetty, who had 
 adopted as many of Lady Hartley's phrases as her memory would 
 hold. " We all know that he admired you, and I think it too sweet 
 of him to show that he bears no malice now that you are marrying 
 somebody else. Had he sent you anything paltry I should have 
 loathed him. But such a present as this, so simple yet so distingue, 
 
 in such perfect taste " 
 
 " Cease your raptures, Hetty, for mercy's sake ! " cried Eve, 
 wrapping the jewel-box in the crumpled paper, and tying the string 
 round it rather roughly. " Would you accept any gift from a man 
 you hate ? " 
 
 " It would depend upon the gift. I wouldn't advise my worst 
 enemy to try me with a sapphire crescent — such sapphires as 
 those! " 
 
 "You are a mighty judge of sapphires!" said Eve, contemptu- 
 ously ; after which unkind remark she ate her breakfast of bread 
 and butter and home-made marmalade in moody silence. And it 
 was a rare thing for Eve to be silent or moody. 
 
 Vansittart's step was heard upon the gravel before the curling- 
 tongs were done with in the upper story, and Eve ran out to the 
 porch to meet him, with the jeweller's parcel in her hand. They
 
 1 88 The Venetians. 
 
 walked about the garden together, between rows of blossoming peas 
 and feathery asparagus, by borders of roses and pinks, talking of 
 Sefton and his gift. Eve wanted to send it back to the giver. 
 
 " I can decline it upon the ground that I don't approve of wedding 
 presents except from one's own and one's bridegroom's kindred," 
 she said. " I won't be uncivil." 
 
 " I fear he would think the return of his gift uncivil, however 
 sweetly you might word your refusal. Wedding gifts are such a 
 customary business ; it is an unheard-of act to send one back. No, 
 Eve, I fear you must keep the thing," with a tone of disgust ; " but 
 you need not wear it." 
 
 " Wear it ! I should think not ! Of course I shall obey you ; but 
 I hate the idea of being under an obligation to Mr. Sefton, who — 
 well, who always made me feel more than any one else that I wasn't 
 one of the elect. His friendliness was more humiliating than other 
 people's stand-offishness. I wonder you mind offending him, Jack. 
 I know you don't like him.", 
 
 " No ; but he is my sister's neighbour ; and he and the Hartleys 
 are by way of being friendly." 
 
 " Ah, I see ! That is a reason. I wouldn't for the world do any- 
 thing to make Lady Hartley uncomfortable. He might go to her 
 and tax her with having an unmannerly young woman for a sister-in- 
 law. So I suppose I must write a pretty little formal letter to thank 
 him for his most exquisite gift, the perfect taste of which is only 
 equalled by his condescension in remembering such an outsider as 
 Colonel Marchant's daughter. Something to that effect, but not 
 quite in those words." 
 
 She broke into gay laughter, the business being settled, and stood 
 on tiptoe to offer her rosy lips to Vansittart's kiss ; and all the in- 
 Adsible fairies in the peaseblossom, and all the microscopic Cupids 
 lurking among the rose leaves, beheld that innocent kiss and laughed 
 their noiseless laugh in sympathy with these true lovers. 
 
 " I have a good mind," said Eve, as she ran back to the house, 
 " to give Peggy the blue crescent to fasten her pinafore." 
 
 The wedding at Fernhurst Church was as pretty a wedding as any 
 one need care to see, although it was a ceremony curtailed of all 
 those surroundings which make weddings worthy to be recorded in 
 the Society papers. There was no crowd of smart people, no 
 assemblage of smart gowns stamped with the man mantua-maker's 
 cachet, and marking the latest development of fashion. No long 
 train of carriages choked the rural road, or filled the little valley 
 with clouds of summer dust. Only the kindred of bride and bride- 
 groom were present; but even these made a gracious group in the 
 chancel, while the music of the rustic choir and the school children
 
 "More Fair than Words can say." 1S9 
 
 ■with their baskets of roses were enough to give a bridal aspect to 
 the scene. 
 
 Eve, in her severely simple gown, with no ornaments save the 
 string of pearls round her full firm throat, and the natural orange 
 blossoms in her bright hair, was a vision of youthful grace and 
 beauty that satisfied every eye, and made the handsome bridegroom 
 in all his height, and breadth, and man!}' strength, a mere accessory, 
 hardly worth notice. The four sisters, in their gauzy white frocks 
 and Gainsborough hats, when clustered in a group at the church 
 door, might have suggested four cherubic heads looking out of a 
 tleecy cloud, so fresh and bright were the young faces, in the un- 
 alloyed happiness of the occasion — happiness almost supernal, for, 
 regardless of precedent, and mysteriously divining Peggy's desire, 
 the bridegroom had given them watches, dainty little watches, with 
 an " E " in brilliants upon each golden back — E, for Eve ; E, for 
 Ecstasy ; E, for Everlasting bliss ! Peggy felt she had nothing 
 more to ask of life. And for spectators, who need have wished a 
 friendlier audience than honest Yorkshire Nancy, and the cottagers 
 who had seen Eve Marchant grow up in their midst, and had ex- 
 perienced many kindnesses from her — the cottagers whose children 
 she had taught in the Sunday-school, whose old people she had 
 ( omforted on their death-beds, and for whose sake she had often 
 stinted herself in order to take a jug of good soup, or a milk pudding, 
 to a sick child? 
 
 Colonel Marchant made a dignified figure at the altar, in a frock- 
 coat extorted from the reviving confidence of a tailor, who saw hope 
 in Miss Merchant's marriage. He did all that was required of him 
 with the grace of a man who had not forgotten the habits of good 
 society. The modest collation at the Homestead was a success ; for 
 everybody was in good spirits and good appetite. Even Mis. Yansit- 
 I art was reconciled to a marriage which gave her son so fair a bride, 
 content to believe that, whatever evil Harold Marchant might have 
 done upon the earth, no shadow from his dark past need ever fall 
 across his sister's pathway. 
 
 And so in a clash of joy-bells, and in a shower of rice from girlish 
 hands, Eve and Vansittart ran down the steep garden path to the 
 carriage which was to take them to llaslemere, whence they were 
 going to Salisbury, on the first stage of their journey to that rock- 
 bound coast 
 
 " Where that prc.it vision of the guarded mount 
 Looks o'er Nauiancos and Bavona's hold."
 
 190 The Venetians, 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 "the shadow passeth whek the tree shall fall." 
 
 What a happy honeymoon it was, along the porphyry walls of 
 Western England ; what joyous days that were so long and seemed 
 so short ! There never was a less costly honeymoon, for the bride's 
 tastes were simple to childishness, and the bridegroom was too deeply 
 in love to care for anything she did not desire. To ramble in that 
 romantic land, staying here a few days, and there a week, all along 
 the wild north coast, from Tintagel to St. Ives, southward then to 
 Penzance, and Falmouth, and Fowey, was more than enough for 
 bliss. And yet in all Eve's childish talk with her sisters of what 
 she would do if ever she married a rich man, the honeymoon tour 
 in Italy had been a leading feature in her programme ; but in those 
 girlish visions beside the schoolroom fire the husband had been a 
 nonentity, a mere purse-bearer, and all her talk had been of the 
 places she was to see. Now, with this very real husband, all earth was 
 paradisaic, and Sorrento could not have seemed more like a dream 
 of beauty than Penzance. She was exquisitely happy; and what 
 can the human mind require beyond perfect bliss ? 
 
 These wedded lovers lingered long over that summer holiday. It 
 was an ideal summer — a summer of sunshine and cloudless skies, 
 varied only by an occasional thunderstorm — tempest enjoyed by 
 Vansittart and Eve, who loved Nature in her grand and awful as 
 well as in her milder aspects — and a tempest from the heights above 
 Boscastle, or from the grassy cliffs of the Lizard, is a spectacle to 
 remember. They spun out the pleasures of that simple Cornish 
 tour. There was nothing to call them home — no tie, no duty, only 
 their own inclination ; for the dowager Mrs. Vansittart was staying 
 at Redwold, absorbed in worship of the third generation, and was 
 to go from Eedwold to Ireland for a round of visits to the friends 
 of her early married life. The lovers were therefore free to prolong 
 their wanderings, and it was only when the shortening days sug- 
 gested fireside pleasures that Vansittart proposed going home. 
 
 " Going home," cried Eve ; "how sweet that sounds ! To think 
 that your home is to be my home for evermore ; and the servants, 
 your old, well-trained servants, will be bobbing to me as their 
 mistress — I who never had any servant but dear old motherly 
 Nancy, who treats me as if I were her own flesh and blood, and an 
 untaught chit for a parlour-maid, a girl who was always dropping 
 knives off her tray, or smashing the crockery, in a most distracting 
 maimer. We had only the cheapest things we could buy at White-
 
 The Shadow passeth* 1 9 1 
 
 ley's sales, with a few relics of former splendour ; and it was gene- 
 rally the relics that suffered. I cannot imagine myself the mistress 
 of a fine house, with a staff of capable servants. What an insigni- 
 ficant creature I shall seem among them ! " 
 
 " You will seem a queen — a queen out of the great kingdom of 
 poetry — a queen like Tennyson's Maud, in a white frock, with roses 
 in your hair, and an ostrich fan for a sceptre. Don't worry about 
 the house, Eve. It will govern itself. The servants are all old 
 servants, and have been trained by my mother, whose laws are the 
 laws of Draco. Everything will work by machinery, and you and 
 I can live in the same happy idleness we have tasted here." 
 
 "Can we? May we, do you think? Is it not a wicked life? 
 We care only for ourselves ; we think only of ourselves." 
 
 " Oh, we can mend that in some wise. I'll introduce you to all 
 my cottage tenants; and you will find plenty of scope for your 
 benevolence in helping them through their troubles and sicknesses. 
 You can start a village reading-room ; you can start — or revive — 
 a working man's club. You shall bo Lady Bountiful — a young and 
 blooming Bountiful — not dealing in herbs and medicines, but in tea, 
 and wine, and sago puddings, and chicken broth ; finding frocks for 
 the children, and Sunday bonnets for the mothers — flashing across 
 loverty's threshold like a ray of sunshine." 
 
 Life that seems like a happy dream seldom lasts very long. 
 There is generally a rough awakening. Fate comes, like the servant 
 bidden to call us of a morning, and shakes the sleeper by the 
 shoulder. The dream vanishes through the ivory gate, and the 
 waking world in all its harsh reality is there. 
 
 Eve's awakening came in a most unexpected shape. It came one 
 October morning in the first week of her residence at Merewood. 
 It came in a letter from her old servant, a letter in a shabby envelope, 
 lying hidden among that heap of letters, monogrammed, coronetted, 
 fashionable, which lay beside Mrs. Vansittart's plate when she took 
 her seat at the breakfast table. 
 
 She left that letter for the last, not recognizing Nancy's penman- 
 ship, an article of which the faithful servant had always been 
 sparing. Eve read all those other trivial letters — invitations, ac- 
 ceptances, friendly little communications of no meaning — and com- 
 mented upon them to her husband as he took his breakfast — and 
 finally opened Nancy's letter. It was October, and Vansittart was 
 dressed for shooting. October, yet there was no house-party. Eve 
 had pleaded for a little more of that dual solitude which husband 
 and wife had found so delightful ; and Vansittart had been nothing 
 loth to indulge her whim. November would be time enough to 
 invite his friends ; and in the mean time they had their pine woods
 
 192 The Venetians. 
 
 and copses and common all to themselves ; and Eve could tramp 
 about the covers with him when he went after his pheasants, with- 
 out feeling herself in anybody's way. October had begun charmingly, 
 with weather that was balmy and bright enough for August. They 
 were breakfasting with windows open to the lawn and flower-beds, 
 and the bees were buzzing among the dahlias, and the air was 
 scented with the Dijon roses that covered the Avail. 
 
 " Why, it is from Nancy," exclaimed Eve, looking at the sig- 
 nature. " Dear old Nancy. What can she have to write about ? " 
 
 '• Rrxd, Eva, read," crie 1 Yansittart. "I believe Nancy's letter 
 will be more interesting than all those inanities you have been read- 
 ing to me. There is sure to be some touch of originality, even if it 
 is only in the spelling." 
 
 Eve's eyes had been hurrying over the letter while he spoke. 
 
 " Oh, Jack," she exclaimed, in a piteous voice, " can there be any 
 truth in this ? " 
 
 The letter was as follows, in an orthography which need not bo 
 reproduced : — 
 
 " Hoxouked Madam, 
 
 " I should not take the liberty to write to you about dear 
 Miss Peggy, only at Miss Sophy's and Miss Jenny's age they can't 
 be expected to know anything about illness, and I'm afraid they 
 may pass things over till it's too late to mend matters, and then I 
 know you would blame your old servant for not having spoken out." 
 
 " What an alarming preamble ! " said Jack. " What does it all 
 mean ? " 
 
 " It means that Peggy is very ill. Peggy, who seemed the 
 strongest of all of us." 
 
 She went on reading the letter. 
 
 " You know what beautiful weather we had after your marriage, 
 honoured Madam. The young ladies enjoyed being out of doors all 
 day long, and all the evening, sometimes till bedtime. They seldom 
 had dinner indoors. It was ' Picnic basket, Nancy,' every morning, 
 and I had to make them Cornish pasties — any scraps of meat was 
 good enough so long as there was plenty of pie-crust — and fruit 
 turnovers ; and oft" they used to go to the copses and the hills 
 directly after breakfast. They were all sunburnt, and they all 
 looked so well, no one could have thought any harm would come 
 of it. But Miss Peggy she used to run about more than her sisters, 
 and she used to get into dreadful perspirations, as Miss Hetty told 
 me afterwards, and then, standing or sitting about upon those windy 
 hills, no doubt she got a chill. Even when she came home, with 
 the perspiration teeming down her dear little face, she didn't like 
 the tew of changing all her clothes, and I was too busy in the
 
 The Shadow passcth. 193 
 
 kitchen — cooking, or cleaning, or washing — to look much after the 
 poor clear child, and so it came upon me as a surprise in the middle 
 of August when I found what a bad cold she had got. I did all I 
 could to cure her. You know, dear Miss Eve, that I'm a pretty 
 good nurse — indeed, I helped to nurse your poor clear ma every 
 winter till she went abroad — but, in spite of all my mustard 
 poultices and hot footbaths, this cough has been hanging about 
 Miss Peggy for more than six weeks, and she doesn't get the 
 better of it. Miss Sophy sent for the doctor about a month ago, 
 and he told her to keep the child warmly clad, and not to let her 
 go out in an east wind, and he sent her a mixture, and he called 
 two or three times, and then he didn't call any more. But Miss 
 Peggy's cough is worse than it was when the doctor saw her, and 
 the winter will be coming on soon, and I can't forget that her poor 
 ma died of consumption : so I thought the best thing I could do 
 was to write freely to you. — Your faithful friend and servant, 
 
 " Naxcy." 
 
 " Died of consumption ! " The words came upon Vansittart like 
 the icy hand of Death himself, taking hold of his heart. 
 
 "Is that true, Eve?" he asked. "Did your mother die of 
 consumption?" 
 
 " I never heard exactly what her complaint was. She was far 
 away from us when she died. I remember she always had a cough 
 in the winter, and she had to be very careful of herself — or, at least, 
 people told her she ought to be careful. She seemed to fade away, 
 and I have always fancied that her grief about Harold had a good 
 deal to do with her death." 
 
 " Ah, that was it, no doubt. It was grief killed her. Her son's 
 exile, her change of fortune, were enough to kill a sensitive woman. 
 She died of a broken heart." 
 
 Anything ! He would believe anything rather than accept the 
 idea of that silent impalpable enemy threatening his beloved — the 
 horror of hereditary consumption — the shadow that walketh in 
 noonday. 
 
 " My sweet Peggy ! " cried Eve, with brimming eyes. " I have 
 been home a week, and I have not been to see my sisters — only an 
 hour's journey by road and rail ! It is nearly three months since 
 I saw them, and we were never parted before in all our lives. May 
 I go to-day — at once, Jack ? I shall be miserable " 
 
 " Till you have discovered a mare's nest, which I hope and 
 believe Nancy's letter will prove," her husband interjected sooth- 
 ingly. " Yes, dear, we'll go to Haslemere by the first train that 
 will carry us, and we'll telegraph for a fly to take us on to 
 Fernhurst. There shall not he a minute lost. You shall have 
 

 
 194 The Venetians. 
 
 Peggy in your arms before lunch-time. Dear young Peggy ! Do you 
 suppose she is not precious to me, as well as to you? I promised 
 1 would be to her as a brother. Your sisters are my sisters, Eve." 
 
 Tic rang the bell at the beginning of his speech, and ordered the 
 dog-cart at the end. 
 
 "We must catch the London train, at 10.15," he told the foot- 
 man. " Let them bring round the cart as soon as it can be got 
 ready. And now, dearest, your hat and jacket, and I am with you." 
 
 There was comfort in this prompt action. Eve rushed upstairs, 
 threw on the first hat she could find, too eager to ring for her maid, 
 with whose attendance she was always willing to dispense, as a novel 
 and not always pleasant sensation. She came flying down to the 
 hall ten minutes before the cart drove round, and she and Van- 
 sittart walked up and doWn in front of the porch, talking of the 
 sisters, she breathless and with fast-beating heart, protesting more 
 than once at the slowness of the grooms. 
 
 " My dearest, for pity's sake be calm. Why should you think 
 the very worst, only because Nancy is an alarmist ? These people 
 are always full of ghoulish imaginings. Peasants gloat over the 
 idea of sickness and death. They will stab one to the heart 
 unwittingly ; they will look at one's nearest and dearest, and say, 
 ' Poor Miss So-and-so does not look as if she was long for this world.' 
 Long for this world, forsoooth ! Thank Heaven the threatened 
 life often outlasts the prophet's. Come, here is the cart. Jump in, 
 Eve. The drive through the fresh air will revive your spirits." 
 
 She was certainly in better spirits by the time the 'cart drew up 
 at the railway station, and in better spirits all the way to Hasle- 
 mere ; but it was her husband's hopefulness rather than the crisp 
 autumn air which revived her. Yes, she would take comfort. 
 Jack was right. Nancy was the best of creatures, but very apt to 
 dwell upon the darker aspects of life, and to prophesy evil. 
 
 Yes, Jack was right; for scarcely had the fly stopped at the 
 little gate when Peggj*- came dancing down the steep garden path, 
 with outstretched arms, and wild hair flying in the wand, and legs 
 much too long for her short petticoats — that very Peggy whom 
 Eve's fearful imaginings had depicted stretched on a sick-bed, faint 
 almost to speechlessness. No speechlessness about this Peggy, the 
 real flesh and blood Peggy, whose arms were round Eve's neck 
 before she had begun the ascent of the pathway, whose voice was 
 greeting her vociferously, and who talked unintermittingly, without so 
 much as a comma, till they were in the schoolroom. The arms 
 that clung so lovingly were very skinny, and the voice was some- 
 what hoarse; but the hoarseness was no doubt only the conse- 
 quence of running fast, and the skinnyness was the normal condition 
 of a growing girl. Yes, Peggy had grown during her sister's long
 
 The Shadow passeth. 195 
 
 honeymoon. There was decidedly an inch or so more leg under 
 the short skirt. 
 
 Eve wept aloud for very joy, as she sat on the sofa with Peggy 
 on her lap — the dear old Yorkshire sofa — the sofa that had been a 
 ship, an express train, a smart barouche, an opera-box, and ever 
 so many other things, years ago, in their childish play. She could 
 not restrain her tears as she thought of that terrible vision of a 
 dying Peggy, and then clasped this warm, joyous, living Peggy closer 
 and closer to her heart. The other sisters had gone to a morning 
 service. She had this youngest all to herself for a little while. 
 
 " I don't go to church on weekdays now," said Peggy, " only on 
 Sundays. It makes my chest ache to sit so long." 
 
 Ah, that was like the dull sudden sound of the death-bell. 
 
 " That's because you're growing so fast, Peg," said Vansittart's 
 cheery voice. " Growing girls are apt to be weak. I shall send 
 you some port which will soon make you sit up straight." 
 
 " You needn't trouble," said Peggy. " I could swim in port if I 
 liked. Sir Hubert sent a lot for me — the finest old wine in his 
 cellar — just because Lady Hartley happened to say I was growing 
 too fast. And they have sent grapes, and game, and all sorts of 
 <1 licious things from Redwold, only because I grow too fast. It's 
 a fine thing for all of us that I grow so fast — ain't it, Eve ? — for, of 
 course, I can't eat all the grapes or the game." 
 
 Peggy looked from wife to husband, with a joyous laugh. She 
 had red spots on her hollow cheeks, and her eyes were very blight. 
 Vansittart heard the death-bell as he looked at her. 
 
 The sisters came trooping in, having seen the fly at the door and 
 guessed its meaning. They were rapturous in their greetings, had 
 worlds to say about themselves and their neighbours, and were 
 more eager to talk of their own experiences than to hear about 
 Eve's Cornish wanderings. 
 
 "You should just see how the people suck up to us, now you are 
 Lady Hartley's sister-in law," said Hetty, and was immediately 
 silenced for vulgarity, and to make way for her elder sisters. 
 
 Vansittart left them all clustered about Eve, and all talking to- 
 gether. He went out into the garden — the homely garden of shrubs 
 and fruit and flowers and vegetables, garden which now wore its 
 autumnal aspect of over-ripeness verging on decay, rosy-red toma- 
 toes hanging low upon the fence, with flabby yellowing leaves, 
 vegetable marnnvs grown out of knowledge, and cucumbers that 
 prophesied bitterness, cabbage stumps, withering bean-stalks — a 
 wilderness of fennel : everywhere the growth that presages the end 
 of all growing, and the long winter death-sleep. 
 
 It was not to muse upon decaying Nature that Vansittart had 
 come out among the rose and carnation borders, the patches of
 
 196 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 parsley and mint. He had a purpose in his sauntering, and made 
 his way to the back of the straggling cottage, where the long-tiled 
 roof of the kitchen and offices jutted out from under the thatch. 
 Here through the open casement he saw Yorkshire Nancy bustling 
 about in the bright little kitchen, her pupil and slave busy cleaning 
 vegetables at the sink, and a shoulder of lamb slowly revolving before 
 the ruddy coal fire — an honest, open fireplace. " None of your 
 kitcheners for me," Nancy was wont to say, with a scornful emphasis 
 which recalled the fox in his condemnation of unattainable grapes. 1 
 
 Vansittart looked in at the window. ' 
 
 " May I have a few words with you, Nancy ? " he asked politely. 
 
 " Lor, sir, how you did startle me to be sure. Sarah, look to 
 lamb and put pastry to rise," cried Nancy, whisking off her apron, 
 and darting out to the garden. " You see, sir, you and Miss Eve 
 have took us by surprise, and it's as much as we shall have a bit of 
 lunch ready for you at half-past one." 
 
 " Never mind lunch, my good soul. A crust of bread and cheese 
 would be enough." 
 
 " Oh, it won't be quite so bad as that. Miss Eve likes my chiss- 
 cakes, and she shall have a matrimony cake to her afternoon tea." 
 
 " Nancy, I want a little serious talk with you," Vansittart began 
 gravely, when they had walked a little way from the house, and 
 were standing side by side in front of the untidy patch where the 
 vegetable marrows had swollen to huge orange-coloured gourds. 
 " I am full of fear about Miss Peggy." 
 
 " Oh, sir, so am I, so am I," cried Nancy, bursting into tears. " I 
 didn't want to frighten dear Miss Eve — I beg pardon, sir, I never 
 can think of her as Mrs. Vansittart." 
 
 " Never mind, Nancy. You were saying " 
 
 " I didn't want to frighten your sweet young lady in the midst 
 of her happiness ; but when I saw that dear child beginning to go 
 off just like her poor mother " 
 
 " Oh, Nancy ! " cried Vansittart, despairingly, with his hand on 
 the Yorkshirewoman's rough red arm. "Is that a sure thing? 
 Did Mrs. Marchant die of consumption ? " 
 
 " As sure as you and I are standing here, sir. It was a slow 
 decline, but it was consumption, and nothing else. I've heard the 
 doctors say so." 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " UK SAID, ' SHE HAS A LOVELY FACE.' " 
 
 December's fogs covered London as with a funeral pall, and hansom 
 and four-wheeler crept along the curb more slowly than a funeral 
 procession. It was the winter season, the season of cattle-shows, and
 
 "He said, 'S/ie has a Lovely Face." 197 
 
 theatres, and middle-class suburban gaieties, and snug little dinners 
 and luncheons in the smart world, casual meetings of birds of pas- 
 sage, halting for a few days between one country visit and another, 
 or preparing for migration to sunnier skies. There were just people 
 enough in Mayfair to make London pleasant ; and there were people 
 enough in South Kensington and Tyburnia to fill the favourite 
 theatres to overflowing. 
 
 A new comic opera had been produced at the Apollo at the 
 beginning of the month, and a new singer had taken the town by 
 storm. 
 
 The opera was called Fanchonelte. It was a story of the Regency; 
 the Regency of Philip of Orleans and his roues; the age of red 
 heels and lansquenet, of little suppers and deadly duels ; a period 
 altogether picturesque, profligate, and adapted to comic opera. 
 
 Fanchonette was a girl who sang in the streets ; a girl born in the 
 gutter, vulgar, audacious,^irresistible, and the good genius of the piece. 
 
 Fanchonette was Fiordelisa — and Fiordelisa in her own skin ; 
 good-natured, impetuous, a creature of smiles and tears ; buoyant 
 as a sea-gull on the crest of a summer wave ; rejoicing in her 
 strength and her beauty as the Sun rejoiceth to run his race. 
 
 What people most admired in this new songstress was her perfect 
 ibandon, and that abundant power of voice which seemed strong 
 t nough to have sustained the most exacting rule in the classic reper- 
 toire, with as little effort as the light music of opera bouft'e — the 
 power of a Malibran or a Tietjens. The music of Fanchonette was 
 florid, and the part had been written up for the new singer. 
 Manager, artists, and author had thought Mervyn Hawberk, the 
 composer, reckless almost to lunacy when he elected to entrust the 
 leading part in his new opera to an untried singer ; but Hawberk 
 had made Signora Vivanti rehearse the music in his own music- 
 room, not once, but many times, before he resolved upon this experi- 
 ment; and having so resolved, he turned her over to Mr. Watling, 
 the author of the libretto, to be coached in the acting of her part; 
 and Mr. Watling was fain to confess that the young Venetian's 
 vivacity and quickness of apprehension, the force and fire, the 
 magnetism of her southern nature, made the work of dramatic 
 education a very different thing to the weary labour of grinding his 
 ideas into the bread-and-butter misses who were sometimes sent to 
 him as aspirants for dramatic fame. This girl was so quick to learn 
 and to perceive, and struggled so valiantly with the difficulties of a 
 foreign language. And her Venetian accent, with its soft slurring 
 of consonants, was so quaint and pretty. Mr. Watling took heart, 
 and began to think that his friend and partner, Mervyn Hawberk, 
 had some justification for his faith in this untried star. 
 
 The result fully justified Hawberk's confidence. There were two
 
 iqS 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 principal ladies in the opera — the patrician heroine, written for a 
 light soprano, and the gutter heroine, a mezzo soprano, whose music 
 made a greater call upon the singer than the former character, which 
 had been written especially for the Apollo's established prima donna, 
 a lady with a charming birdlike voice, flexible and brilliant, but a 
 little worn with six years' constant service, and a handsome face 
 which was somewhat the worse for those six years in a London 
 theatre. There could have been no greater contrast to Miss 
 Emmeline Danby, with her sharp nose, blonde hair, sylph-like 
 figure and canary-bird voice, than this daughter of St. Mark, whose 
 splendour of colouring and fulness of form seemed in perfect harmony 
 with the power and compass of her voice. The town, without being 
 tired of Miss Danby, was at once caught and charmed by this new 
 singer. Her blue-black hair and flashing eyes, her easy movements, 
 her broken English, her girlish laughter, were all new to the audience 
 of the Apollo, who hitherto had been called upon to applaud only 
 the highest training of voice and person. Here was a girl who, like 
 the character she represented, had evidently sprung from the prole- 
 tariat, and who came dancing on to the London stage, fresh, fearless, 
 unsophisticated, secure of the friendly feeling of her audience, and 
 giving full scope to her natural gaiety of heart. 
 
 Signora Vivanti's personality was a new sensation ; and to a blase 
 London public there is nothing so precious as a new sensation. 
 Signor Zinco proved a true prophet. That touch of vulgarity which 
 he had spoken of deprecatingly to Vansittart had made Lisa's 
 fortune. Had she come straight from the Milan Conservatorio, 
 cultivated to the highest pitch, approved by Verdi himself, she 
 would hardly have succeeded as she had done, with all the rough 
 edges of her grand voice unpolished, and all the little caprices and 
 impertinences of a daughter of the people unchastened and un- 
 restrained. 
 
 Lisa took the town by storm, and " Fanchonette," in her little 
 mob cap and striped petticoat, appeared on half the match-boxes 
 t'.iat were sold by the London tobacconists ; and " Fanchonette," with 
 every imaginable turn of head and shoulder, smiled in the windows 
 of the Stereoscopic Company, and of all the fashionable stationers. 
 
 Among the many who admired the new singer one of the most 
 enthusiastic was Wilfred Sefton, who generally spent a week or two 
 of the early winter in his bachelor quarters at Chelsea, for the 
 express purpose of seeing the new productions at the fashionable 
 theatres, and of dining with his chosen friends. 
 
 Sefton was passionately fond of music, and knew more about it 
 than is known to most country gentlemen. The loftiest classical 
 school was not too high or too serious for him ; and the lightest 
 opera bonflfe was not too low. He had a taste sufficiently catholic
 
 "He said, l Ske has a Lovely Face." 199 
 
 to range from Wagner to Offenbach. He was a profound believer 
 in Sullivan, and he had a warm affection for Massenet. 
 
 Fanchonette was by far the cleverest opera which Mervyn Haw- 
 berk had written ; and Sefton was at the Apollo on the opening 
 night, charmed with the music, and amused by the new singer. 
 He went a second, a third, a fourth time during his fortnight in 
 town ; and the oftener he heard the music the better he liked it ; 
 and the oftener he saw Signora Vivanti the more vividly was he 
 impressed by her undisciplined graces of person and manner. She 
 had just that spontaneity which had ever exercised the strongest 
 influence over his mind and fancy. He had passed unmoved 
 through the furnace of the best society, had danced and flirted, and 
 had been on the best possible terms with some of the handsomest 
 women in London, and had yet remained heartwhole. He had never 
 been so near falling in love in all seriousness as with Eve Marchant; 
 and Eve's chief charm had been her frank girlishness, her unsophis- 
 ticated delight in life. 
 
 Well, he was cured of his passion for Eve, cured by that cold 
 douche of indifference which the young lady had poured upon him ; 
 cured by the feeling of angry scorn which had been evoked by her 
 preference for Yansittart ; for a man who, in worldly position, in 
 good looks, and in culture, Wilfred Sefton regarded as his inferior. 
 He could not go on caring for a young woman who had shown her- 
 self so deficient in taste as not to prefer the dubious advances of a 
 Sefton to the honest love of a Vansittart. He dismissed Eve from 
 his thoughts for the time being; but not without prophetic musings 
 upon a day when she might be wearied of her commonplace husband, 
 and more appreciative of Mr. Sefton's finer qualities of intellect and 
 person. He was thus in a measure fancy free as he lolled in his 
 stall at the Apollo, and listened approvingly to Lisa's full and bell- 
 like tones in the quartette, which was already being played on all 
 the barrel-organs in London, a quartette in which the composer had 
 borrowed the dramatic form of the famous quartette in Rigoletto, 
 and adapted it to a serio-comic situation. He was free to admire 
 tins exuberant Italian beauty, free to pursue a divinity whom he 
 judged an easy conquest. He and the composer were old friends — 
 Hawberk being a familiar figure at all artistic gatherings in the 
 artistic suburb of Chelsea — and from the composer Sefton had heard 
 something of the new prima donna's history. He had been told 
 that she was a daughter of the Venetian people, a lace-maker from 
 one of the islands ; that she had come to London with her aunt, to 
 seek her fortune ; and that her musical training had been accom- 
 plished within the space of a year, under the direction of Signor 
 Zinco, the fat little Italian who played the 'cello at the Apollo. 
 
 Such a history did not suggest inaccessible beauty, and there was
 
 200 The Venetians. 
 
 a touch of originality in it which awakened Sefton's interest. The 
 very name of Venice is a sound of enchantment for some minds ; 
 and Sefton, although a man of the world, was not without romantic 
 yearnings. He was always glad to escape from beaten tracks. 
 
 He had been troubled and perplexed from the night of Signora 
 Vivanti's debut by the conviction that he had seen that brilliant face 
 before, and by the inability to fix the when or the where. Yes, that 
 vivid countenance was decidedly familiar. It was the individual 
 and not the type which he knew — but where and when — where and 
 when ? The brain did its work in the usual unconscious way, and 
 one night, sitting lazily in his stall, dreamily watching the scene, 
 and the actress whose image seemed to fill the stage to the exclusion 
 of all other figures, the memory of a past rencontre flashed suddenly 
 upon the dreamer. The face was the face of the foreign girl he had 
 seen on the Chelsea Embankment, hanging upon Vansittart's arm. 
 
 " By Heaven, there is something fatal in it," thought Sefton. 
 " Are the threads always to cross in the web of our lives ? He has 
 worsted me with Eve ; and now— now am I to fall in love with his 
 cast-off mistress ? " 
 
 He had been quick to make inferences from that little scene on 
 the Embankment ; the girl hanging on Vansittart's arm, looking up 
 at him pleadingly, passionately. What could such a situation mean 
 but a love affair of the most serious kind ? 
 
 Had there been any doubt in Sefton's mind as to the nature of the 
 intrigue, Vansittart's evident embarrassment would have settled the 
 question. Mr. Sefton was the kind of man who always thinks 
 the worst about everybody, and prejudice had predisposed him to 
 think badly of Eve's admirer. 
 
 This idea of the singer's probable relations with Vansittart pro- 
 duced a strong revulsion of feeling. An element of scorn was now 
 mixed with his admiration of the lovely Venetian. Until now he 
 had approached her with deference, sending her a bouquet every 
 evening, with his card, but making no other advance. But the day 
 after his discovery he sent her a diamond bracelet, and asked with 
 easy assurance to be allowed to call upon her. 
 
 The bracelet was returned to him, with a stately letter signed 
 Zinco; a letter wherein the 'cello player begged that his pupil might 
 be spared the annoyance of gifts, which she could but consider as 
 insults in disguise. 
 
 This refusal stimulated Sefton to renewed ardour. He forgot 
 everything except the rebuff, which had taken him by surprise. He 
 put the bracelet in a drawer of his writing-table, and turned the key 
 upon it with a smile. 
 
 " She will be wiser by-and-by," he said to himself. 
 
 He went back to the country next day, and tried to forget Signora
 
 "He said, ' She has a Lovely Face." 201 
 
 Vivanti's eyes, and the thrilling sweetness of her voice, tried to 
 banish that seductive image altogether from his mind, while he 
 devoted himself to the conquest of an untried hunter, a fine bay 
 mare, whose pace was better than her manners, and who showed 
 the vulgar strain in her pedigree very much as Signora Vivanti 
 showed her peasant ancestry. 
 
 The season was not a good one, and after a couple of days with 
 the hounds a hard frost set in, and the bay mare's evolutions were 
 confined to the straw-yard, where she might walk on her hind legs 
 to her heart's content ; while her owner had nothing to do but brood 
 upon the image that had taken possession of his fancy. It was only 
 when he found himself amidst the tranquil surroundings of his 
 country seat that he knew the strength of his infatuation for the 
 Venetian singer. 
 
 He looked back upon his life as he strolled round the billiard 
 table, cue in hand, trying a shot now and then yawningly, as the 
 snow came softly down outside the Tudor windows, and gradually 
 clouded and muffled garden and park. He looked back upon his 
 life, wondering whether he had done the best for himself, starting 
 from such an advantageous standpoint ; whether, in his own care- 
 less phraseology, he had got change for his shilling. 
 
 He had always had plenty of money; he had always been his own 
 master ; he had always studied his own pleasure ; and yet there 
 had been burdens. His first love affair had turned out badly; so 
 badly that there were people in Sussex who still gave him the cold 
 shoulder on account of that old story. He had admired a good 
 many women since he left Eton ; but he had never seen the woman 
 for whom he cared to sacrifice his liberty, for whose sake he could 
 bind himself for all his life to come. He knew himself well enough 
 to know that all his passions were short-lived, and that, however 
 deeply he might be in love to-day, satiety might come to-morrow. 
 
 He was ambitious, and he meant to marry a woman who could 
 bring him increase of fortune and social status. He was not to be 
 drifted into matrimony by the caprice of the hour. Much as he had 
 admired Eve Marchant, he had never thought of marrying her. 
 A penniless girl with a disreputable father and a bevy of half- 
 educated sisters was no mate for him. He had allowed himself full 
 license in admiring her, and in letting her see that he admired her ; 
 and he had wondered that she should receive that open admiration 
 as anything less than an honour. 
 
 And then a fool had stepped in to spoil sport — a besotted fool who 
 took this girl for his wife, careless of her surroundings, defiant of Fate, 
 which might overtake him in the shape of a blackguard brother. He 
 felt only contempt for Vansittart when he thought over the story. 
 
 " He might have been content with his Venetian sweetheart," he
 
 202 The Venetians. 
 
 thought. She is ever so much handsomer than Eve, and she 
 obviously adored him ; while that kind of manage has the con- 
 venience of being easily got rid of when a man tires of it." 
 
 The snow lay deep on all the country round before nightfall, and 
 Sefton went back to his nest in Chelsea on the following afternoon, 
 and was in a stall at the Apollo in the evening. lie tried to per- 
 suade himself that the music was the chief attraction. 
 
 " Your music is like a vice, Hawberk,'' he told the composer, at a 
 tea-party next day. " It takes possession of a man. I go night after 
 night to hear Fanchoiicite, though I know I am wasting my time." 
 
 " Thanks. FancJionette is a very pretty opera, quite the best thing 
 I have done," replied Hawberk, easily ; " and it is very well sung and 
 acted. The singing is good all round, but Lisa Vivanti is a pearl." 
 
 " You are enthusiastic," said Sefton ; and then smiling at the 
 composer's young wife, who went everywhere with her husband, and 
 whose province was to wear smart frocks and look pretty, "You 
 must keep your eye upon him, Mrs. Hawberk, lest this Venetian siren 
 should prove as fatal as the Lurlei." 
 
 "No fear," cried Hawberk. "Little Lisa is as straight as an 
 arrow and as good as gold. She lives as sedately as a nun, with a 
 comfortable dragon in the shape of an aunt. She would hardly look 
 at a ripping diamond bracelet which some cad sent her the other 
 day. She just tossed bracelet and letter over to her old singing 
 master, and told him to send it back to the giver. She has no 
 desire for carriages and horses and fine raiment. She comes to the 
 theatre in a shabby little black frock, and she lives like a peasant on 
 a third floor in this neighbourhood." 
 
 "That will not last," said Sefton. "Your vara avis will soon 
 realize her own value. The management will be called upon to 
 provide her with a stable and a chef, and diamonds will be accepted 
 freely as fitting tribute to her talents." 
 
 " I don't believe it. I think she is a genuine, honest, right-minded 
 young woman, and that she will gang her ain gait in spite of all 
 counter influences. There may have been some love affair in the 
 past that has sobered her. I think there has been ; for there is 
 a little boy who calls her mother, and for whom she takes no trouble 
 to account. I will vouch for my little Lisa, and I have allowed 
 Mrs. Hawberk to go and see her." 
 
 " She is quite too sweet," assented the lady ; " such a perfectly 
 naive little person." 
 
 " Upon my honour," said Hawberk, as his wife fluttered away and 
 was absorbed in a group of acquaintances, " I believe Vivanti is a 
 good woman, in spite of the little peccadillo in a sailor suit." 
 
 " I am very glad to hear it, for I want vou to introduce me to the 
 lady."
 
 "He said, 'S/ie has a Lovely Face!" 203 
 
 " Oh, but really now that is just what I don't care about doing. 
 She is keeping herself to herself, and is working conscientiously at 
 her musical eduoation. She is a very busy woman, and she has no 
 idea of society, or its ways and manners. What can she want with 
 such an acquaintance as you? " 
 
 "Nothing; but I very much want to know her; and I pledge 
 myself to approach her with all the respect due to the best woman 
 in England." 
 
 " To approach her, yes ; I can believe that. No doubt Lucifer 
 approached Eve with all possible courtesy ; yet the acquaintance 
 ended badly. I don't see that any good could arise from your 
 acquaintance with my charming Venetian." 
 
 " I understand," said Sefton, with an aggrieved air ; " she is so 
 charming that you would like to keep her all to yourself." 
 
 " Oh, come now, that's a very weak thing in the way of sneers," 
 exclaimed the composer. " I hope I am secure from any insinua- 
 tions of that sort. Look here, Sefton, I'm just a bit afraid of you ; 
 but if you promise to act on the square I'll get my wife to send you 
 a card for a Sunday evening, at which I believe she is going to get 
 Vivanti to sing for her. That is alwaj'S the first thing Lavinia 
 thinks of if I venture to introduce her to a singer." 
 
 " That would be very friendly of you, and I promise to act on the 
 square. I am not a married man, and I am my own master. If I 
 were desperately in love " 
 
 " You wouldn't marry a Venetian lace-maker, with a damaged 
 reputation. I know you too well to believe you capable of that sort 
 of thing." 
 
 "Nobody knows of what a man is capable; least of all the man 
 himself," said Sefton, sententiously. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Hawberk lived in a smart little house in that dainty 
 and artistic region of Cheyne Walk, which even yet retains a faint 
 flavour of Don Saltero, of Bolingbroke and Walpole, of Chelsea buns 
 and Chelsea china, Kanelagh routs, and Thames watermen. Mr. 
 Hawberk's house was in a terrace at right angles with the Embank- 
 ment, but further west than Tite Street. It was a new house, with 
 all the latest improvements, and all the latest fads — tiny panes to 
 Queen Anne windows, admitting the minimum of light and not 
 overmuch air; a spacious ingle nook in a miniature dining-room, 
 whereby facetious friends had frequently been heard to ask Mrs. 
 Hawberk which was the ingle nook and which was the dining-room. 
 
 The house was quaint and pretty, and being entirely furnished 
 with Japaneseries was a very fascinating toy, if not altogether the 
 most commodious thing in the way of houses. For party-giving 
 it was delightful, for leso than a hundred people choked every inch
 
 204 The Venetians. 
 
 of space in rooms and staircase, and suggested a tremendous recep- 
 tion : so that the smallest of Mrs. Hawberk's parties seemed a crush. 
 
 Sefton arriving at half-past ten, only half an hour after the time 
 on Mrs. Hawberk's card, found the drawing-rooms blocked with 
 people, mostly standing, and could see no more of Signora Vivanti 
 than if she had been on the other side of the river ; but the people 
 in the doorway were talking about her, and their talk informed him 
 that she was somewhere in the innermost angle of the back drawing- 
 room, behind the grand piano, and that she was going to sing. 
 
 Then there came an authoritative " Silence, please," from Hawberk, 
 followed by a sudden hush as of sentences broken off in the middle, 
 and anon a firm hand played the symphony to Sullivan's Orpheus, 
 and the grand mezzo soprano voice rolled out the grand Shakesperean 
 words set to noble music. The choice of the song was a delicate 
 compliment to Hawberk's master in art, who was among Mrs. 
 Hawberk's guests. 
 
 The Venetian accent was still present in Lisa's pronunciation, 
 but her English had improved as much as her vocalization, under 
 Hawberk's training. He had taken extraordinary pains with this 
 particular song, and every note rang out clear as crystal, pure as 
 thrice-refined gold. The composer's " Brava, bravissima ! " was 
 heard amidst the applause that followed the song. 
 
 Sefton elbowed his way through the crowd — as politely as was 
 consistent with a determination to reach a given point — and con- 
 trived to mingle with the group about the singer. She was stand- 
 ing by the piano in a careless attitude, dressed in a black velvet 
 gown, which set off the yellowish whiteness of her shoulders and 
 full round throat. Clasped round that statuesque throat, she wore 
 a collet necklace of diamonds, splendid in size and colour, a necklace 
 which could not have been bought for less than six or seven hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 " So," thought Sefton. " Those diamonds don't quite come into 
 Hawberk's notion of the lady's character." 
 
 Mr. Sefton did not know that, after the manner of Venetian 
 women, Lisa looked upon jewellery as an investment, and that nearly 
 all her professional earnings since her debut were represented by the 
 diamonds she wore round her neck. She and la Zia were able to 
 live on so little, and it was such a pleasure to them to save, first to 
 gloat over the golden sovereigns, and then to change them into 
 precious stones. There was such a delightful feeling in being able 
 to wear one's fortune round one's neck. 
 
 Mr. Hawberk had accompanied the singer, and he was still 
 sitting at the piano, when Sefton's eager face reminded him of his 
 promise. 
 
 " Signora, allow me to introduce another of your English admirers.
 
 "He said, 'She has a Lovely Face? 205 
 
 Mr. Sefton, a connoisseur in the way of music, and a cosmopolitan in 
 the way of speech." 
 
 Lisa turned smilingly to the stranger. " You speak Italian," she 
 said in her own language, and Sefton replying in very good Tuscan, 
 they were soon on easy terms ; and presently he had the delight of 
 taking her down to the supper-room, where there was a long narrow 
 table loaded with delicacies, and a perpetual flow of champagne. 
 
 Lisa enjoyed herself here as frankly as she had enjoyed herself 
 at the sign of the Black Hat, in the Piazza di San Marco. She was 
 the same unsophisticated Lisa still, in the matter of quails and 
 lobster mayonnaise, creams and jellies. She stood at the table and 
 eat all the good things that Sefton brought her, and drank three or 
 four glasses of champagne with jovial unconcern, and talked of the 
 people and the gowns they were wearing in her soft southern tongue, 
 secure of not being understood, though Sefton warned her occasion- 
 ally that there might be other people in the room besides themselves 
 who knew the language of Dante and Boccaccio. 
 
 Never had he talked to any beautiful woman who was so 
 thoroughly unsophisticated ; and that somewhat plebeian nature 
 had a curious charm for him. He could understand Vansittart's 
 infatuation for such a woman, but could not understand his giving 
 her up for the sake of Eve Marchant, whose charms as compared 
 with Lisa's were 
 
 "As moonlight unto sunlight, or as water unto wine." 
 
 He hoped to discover all the history of that intrigue by-and-by, 
 seeing how freely Lisa talked of herself to an acquaintance of an 
 hour. He meant to follow up that acquaintance with all the 
 earnestness of which he was capable. 
 
 " There are no finer diamonds in the room than your necklace," 
 he said, when she had been praising an ancient dowager's jewels, 
 gems whose beauty was not enhanced by a neck that looked as if its 
 bony structure had been covered with one of the family parchments. 
 
 " Do you really like them ? " asked Lisa, with a flashing smile. 
 
 " She doesn't even blush for her spoil," thought Sefton. 
 
 " I'm so glad you think them good," continued Lisa. " They are 
 all my fortune. The jeweller told me I should never repent buying 
 them." 
 
 " What, Signora, did you buy them ? I thought they were the 
 offering of some devoted admirer." 
 
 "Do you suppose I would accept such a gift from any one except 
 — except somebody I cared for ? " she exclaimed indignantly. " A 
 man sent me a diamond bracelet one night at the theatre — I found 
 it in my dressing-room when I arrived — with his card. I sent it 
 back next morning — or at least Zinco sent it back for me."
 
 206 The Venetians. 
 
 " And I dare say you have even forgotten the man's name ? " 
 said Sefton. 
 
 " Yes. Your English names are very ugly, and very difficult to 
 remember. They are so short ; so insignificant." 
 
 And then she told him the history of her diamonds ; how the 
 manager of the Apollo had first doubled, and then trebled, and 
 quadrupled her salary ; how she had kept the money in her trunk, all 
 in gold, sovereigns upon sovereigns, and how she and her aunt had 
 counted the gold every week, and how only last Saturday she and 
 la Zia had gone off in a cab to Piccadilly, with'a bag full of gold, and 
 had bought the diamonds, which were now shining on Fiordelisa's 
 throat. 
 
 " We had less than half the price of the necklace," concluded 
 Lisa, " but when the jeweller heard who I was, he insisted that I 
 should take it away with me, and pay him by degrees, just as I find 
 convenient, so I shall pay him my salary every Saturday until I am 
 out of debt." 
 
 " It sounds like a fairy tale," said Sefton. " Do you and your 
 aunt live upon rose leaves and dew, Signora ; or how is it that you 
 can afford to invest all your earnings in diamonds ? " 
 
 " Oh, we have other money," answered Lisa, with a defiant glance 
 at the questioner. " I need not sing unless I like." 
 
 " Indeed ! " exclaimed Sefton, strengthened in his conviction that 
 Signora Vivanti was not altogether so "straight" as Hawberk 
 believed, or affected to believe. 
 
 Mr. Sefton was not so confiding as the composer. He was a man 
 prone to think badly of women, and he was inclined to think the 
 worst of this brilliant Venetian, much as he admired her. He 
 followed her like a shadow for the rest of the evening, escorted her 
 up the narrow staircase, and stood near the piano while she sang, 
 and then took her from the stifling atmosphere of the lamp-lit house 
 to the semi-darkness of the garden, which Mrs. Hawberk had con- 
 verted into a tent, shutting out the wintry sky, and enclosing the 
 miniature lawn and surrounding shrubbery; a tent dimly lighted 
 with fairy lamps, nestling among [the foliage. Here he sat talking 
 with Lisa in a shadowy corner, while three or four other couples 
 murmured and whispered in other nooks and corners, and while 
 Hawberk, feeling he had done his duty as host, smoked and drank 
 "whisky and soda with a little group of chosen friends — an actor, 
 a journalist, a playwright, and a brace of musical critics, who had 
 an inexhaustible flow of speech, and a delicious unconsciouness 
 of time. 
 
 Sefton too was unconscious of time, talking with Lisa in that soft 
 Italian tongue, having to bend his head very near the full red lips 
 in order to catch the Venetian elisions, the gentle, sliding syllables.
 
 "He said, 'She has a Lovely Face.' 207 
 
 The hum of voices, the occasional ripples of laughter, the music, 
 and song, dwindled and died into silence — even the lights in the 
 lower windows grew dim, and gradually Sefton awakened to the 
 fact that the party was at an end, and that he and Signora Vivanti, 
 and Hawberk's Bohemian group yonder, were all that remained of 
 Mrs. Hawberk's musical evening. He bent down to look at his 
 watch by one of the fairy lamps. 
 
 Three o'clock. 
 
 " By Jove, we are sitting out everybody else," he said, with a 
 pleased laugh, triumphant at the thought that he had been able to 
 amuse and interest his companion. " Three o'clock. Very late 
 for a musical evening. You did not know it was so late, did you, 
 Signora? " 
 
 " No," answered Lisa, carlessly ; " but I don't mind. I've been 
 enjoying myself." 
 
 "So have I; but it's rather rough on Mrs. Hawberk, who may 
 want to rest from her labours." 
 
 "I am quite ready to go home as soon as I get my shawl," said 
 Lisa, rising from the low wicker chair, straight as a dart, her neck 
 and shoulders and long bare arms looking like marble in the glimmer 
 of the toy lamps. Sefton stood and looked at her, drinking her 
 loveliness as if it had been a draught of wine from an enchanted cup. 
 Oh, the charm of those Italian eyes; so brilliant, yet so soft; so 
 darkly deep ! Could there be any magic in fairyland more potent 
 than the spell this Calypso was weaving round him ? " 
 
 " May I call your carriage ? " he asked. 
 
 " I have no carriage. I live close by." 
 
 " Let me see you home, then." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders with a gesture which meant that the 
 question wasn't worth disputing, and Sefton followed her across the 
 little bit of grass to the house door. Hawberk stopped her on her 
 way. 
 
 " What, my Vivanti not gone yet!" he cried. "I would have 
 had another song out of you if I had known you were there. What 
 have you and Mr. Sefton found to say to each other all this time? " 
 
 " We have found plenty to say. He has been talking Italian, 
 which none of you stupid others can talk. It is a treat to hear my 
 own language from some one besides la Zia. Good night, Signor. 
 Shall I find la Signora to wish her good night ? " 
 
 " No, child. La Signora Hawberkini retired to rest an hour ago, 
 when all the respectable people had gone. She did not wait to see 
 the last of such night-birds as you and Sefton, and these disreputable 
 journalists here." 
 
 " I love the night," said Lisa, in no wise abashed. "It is ever so 
 much nicer than day."
 
 2o8 The Venetians. 
 
 The servants had vanished, but she found her wrap lying on a 
 sofa — an old red silk shawl, a Bellaggio shawl, whose dinginess went 
 ill with her velvet gown and diamond necklace ; but she wrapped 
 it about her head and shoulders, nothing caring, and she looked a 
 real Italian peasant as she turned to Sefton in the light of the hall 
 lamps. He admired her even more at this moment than he had 
 admiredjier before — he liked to think of her as a peasant ; with no 
 womanly sensitiveness to suffer, no pride to be wounded ; divided 
 from him socially by a great gulf of difference ; and so much the 
 more surely, and so much the more lightly to be won. 
 
 They went out into the street together. It was moonlight, a Feb- 
 ruary moon, cold, and sharp, and clear, with a hoar frost whitening 
 the wintry shrubs and iron railings. Lisa caught up her velvet train, 
 and tripped lightly along the pavement in bronze beaded slippers 
 and bright red stockings, Sefton at her side. She would not take his 
 arm, both hands being occupied, one clutching the silk shawl, the 
 other holding up her skirt. The walk was of the shortest, for Sal- 
 tero's Mansion was only just round the corner ; nor could Sefton 
 detain her on the doorstep for any sentimentality about the moonlit 
 river. She had her key in the door in a moment, and as he pushed 
 the big, heavy door open for her, she vanished behind it with briefest 
 " Grazie, e buona notte, caro Signor." 
 
 There had not been time for the gentlest pressure of her strong, 
 broad hand, or for his tender " Addio, bellissima mia," to be heard. 
 
 But to know where she lived was something gained, and as he 
 walked homeward humming " la donna e mobile," he meant.to follow 
 up that advantage. He had told her that he was her near neighbour. 
 He had gone even further, and had asked her if she would sing for 
 him at a little tea-party, were he to give one in her honour; on 
 which she had only laughed, and said that she had never heard of a 
 man giving a tea-party. 
 
 The acquaintance begun so auspiciously gave Wilfred Sefton a 
 new zest for London life. He hailed the hardening frosts of Feb- 
 ruary with absolute pleasure, he for whom that month had hitherto 
 been the cream of the hunting season. He cared nothing that his 
 latest acquisitions, the hunters in whose perfections he still believed, 
 whose vices he had not had time to discover, were eating their heads 
 off in his Sussex stables. He was in his stall at the Apollo every 
 night; and Lisa's singing and Lisa's beauty, and the "quips and 
 cranks and wanton wiles " which constituted Lisa's idea of acting, 
 were enough for his contentment. 
 
 He waited till Wednesday before he ventured to call upon his 
 divinity. He would gladly have presented himself at her door on 
 Monday afternoon ; but he did not want to appear too eager. 
 Tuesday seemed a long blank day to his impatience, although there
 
 "He said, ' She has a Lovely Face! 209 
 
 was plenty to do in London for a man of intellect and taste ; pictures, 
 people, politics, all manner of interests and amusements. 
 
 Lisa had told him about the aunt who lived with her and kept 
 house for her. There could be no impropriety in his visit. He made 
 up his mind indeed to ask for the elder lady in the first instance ; 
 but all uncertainty was saved him, as it was la Zia who opened the 
 door. Those diamonds of Lisa's could not have been earned so 
 speedily had the Venetians taken upon themselves the maintenance 
 of a servant. What was she there for, argued la Zia — when Haw- 
 berk suggested the necessity of a parlour-maid — except to sweep 
 and dust, and market and cook? An English servant, who would 
 want butcher's meat every day, and would object to the cuisine a 
 Vhuile, would be a ruinous institution. 
 
 La Zia was not too tidy in her indoor apparel, since her love for 
 finery was stronger than her sense of the fitness of things. She had 
 one gown at a time, a gown of silk or plush or velveteen, which she 
 wore as a best gown till it began to be shabby or dilapidated, when Lisa 
 bought her another fine gown, and the old one was taken for daily use. 
 
 Lisa's taste had become somewhat chastened since she had lived 
 at Chelsea. A casual word or two from Vansittart, whose lightest 
 speech she remembered, had made her scrupulously plain in her 
 attire — save on such an occasion as Mrs. Hawberk's party, when her 
 innate love of finery showed itself in scarlet stockings and beaded 
 shoes. This afternoon Sefton found her sitting on the hearthrug in 
 front of the bright little tiled grate, in the black stuff gown she had 
 worn when he first saw her, and with just the same touch of colour 
 at her throat, and in her blue-black hair. 
 
 She and the little boy were sitting on the rug together, dividing 
 the caprices of a white kitten, the plaything of mother and son, 
 mother and son laughing gaily, with laughter which harmonized and 
 sounded like music. The boy made no change in his sprawling atti- 
 tude as Sefton entered ; but he looked up at the stranger with large 
 dark eyes, wondering, and slightly resentful. 
 
 " His boy," thought Sefton, and felt a malignant disposition to 
 kick the sprawling imp, hanging on to the mother's skirts, and 
 preventing her from rising to greet her visitor. 
 
 " Let go, Paolo," said Lisa, laughing. " What with you and the 
 kitten, I can't stir." 
 
 She shook herself free, transferred the kitten to the boy's eager 
 arms, rose, and gave Sefton her hand, with a careless grace which 
 was charming from an artistic point of view, but which showed him 
 how faint an impression all his attentions of Sunday night had made 
 upon her. A woman who had thought of him in the interval would 
 have been startled at his coming. Lisa took his visit much too easily. 
 There was neither surprise nor gladness in her greeting.
 
 2io The Venetians, 
 
 " I saw you in the stalls," she said, " last night, and the night 
 before. Aren't you tired of Fanchonette ? " 
 
 " Not in the least." 
 
 "You must be monstrously fond of music," she said, always in 
 Italian. 
 
 "lam — monstrously; but I have other reasons for liking Fan- 
 chonette. I like to see you act, as well as to hear you sing." 
 
 " So do other people," she answered, with frank vanity, tossing 
 up her head. " They all applaud me when I first come on, before I 
 have sung a note. I have to stand there in front of the lights for 
 ever so long, while they go on applauding like mad. And yet 
 people say yon English have no enthusiasm, that you care very little 
 for anything." 
 
 " We care a great deal for that which is really beautiful ; most of 
 all when it is fresh and new." 
 
 " Ah ! that's what Mr. Hawberk says — I am all the better because 
 I am not highly trained like other singers. My ignorance is my 
 strength." 
 
 " But she has worked," interposed la Zia ; " ah ! how hard she 
 has worked ! At her piano ; at the English language. She has such 
 a strong will. She has but to make up her mind, and the thing is 
 d«.ne." 
 
 " One can read as much, Signora, in those flashing eyes ; in that 
 square brow and firmly moulded chin," said Sefton, putting down 
 his hat and cane, and establishing himself in one of the prettily 
 draped basket-chairs. " And pray how did it happen that you two 
 ladies made up your minds to seek your fortunes in London ? " 
 
 " It was the impresario who brought us. We were at Milan, and 
 we came to London to sing in the chorus at Covent Garden. It was 
 good fortune which brought us so far from home." 
 
 " And you hate London, no doubt, after Italy? " 
 
 "No, indeed, Signor. London is a city to love — the wide, wide 
 streets ; the big, big houses ; the great squares — ah ! the Piazza is 
 nothing to your square of Trafalgar — and the shops, the beautiful 
 shops ! Your sky is often gloomy, but there are summer days — 
 heavenly days — when the wind blows down to the sea, and sweeps 
 all the darkness out of the heavens, and your sky grows blue, like 
 Italy. Those are days to remember." 
 
 " True ! They are rare enough to be counted on the fingers ot 
 one hand," answered Sefton, stooping to take hold of the boy, who 
 had been pursuing his kitten on all-fours, and had this moment 
 plunged between Sefton's legs to extract the animated ball of white 
 fluff from under his chair. He felt nothing but aversion for the 
 handsome, dark-eyed brat ; but he felt that he must take some notice 
 of the creature, if he wanted to stand well with the mother.
 
 "He said, 'S/ie has a Lovely Face! 211 
 
 "Che sta facendo, padroncino?" 
 
 The hoy was friendly, and explained himself in a torrent of broken 
 speech. The cat was a bad cat, and wouldn't stay with him. 
 Would the Signor make him stay ? Sefton had to stoop and risk a 
 scratching from the tiny claws, in a vain endeavour to get hold of 
 the rebellious beast, which rolled away from him, hissing and spitting, 
 and finally scampered across the room and took refuge behind the 
 piano. Sefton lifted the boy on to his knee, and produced his watch, 
 that unfailing object of interest to infancy, usually denominated, on 
 the principle of all slang nomenclature, " tick-tick.'' Once interested 
 in the opening and shutting of the " tick- tick," Paolo sat on the 
 visitor's knee, comme tin image, and allowed Sefton to talk to Lisa 
 and her aunt. 
 
 He was careful to make himself agreeable to the elder lady, who 
 was charmed to find an Englishman who understood her native 
 tongue. She had contrived to learn a little English, but had made 
 no such progress as her niece, and it was a labour to her to talk. 
 What a pleasure, therefore, to find this suave, handsome Englishman, 
 with his courtly manners, quick comprehension, and ready replies. 
 
 From la Zia he heard a good deal about Lisa's early life ; yet 
 there was a certain wise reticence even on that loquacious lady's 
 part. She breathed no word of Lisa's Englishman, the first Mr. 
 Smith, or of the second. In all her talk of their old life, in Venice, 
 at Milan, there was no hint of any one but themselves. They 
 appeared to have been alone, unprotected, dependent on their own 
 small earnings. 
 
 After waiting in vain for any allusion to Vansittart, Sefton came 
 straight to the point, with a direct question. 
 
 " I think vou know a friend of mine, Signora," he said to Lisa. 
 '•Mr. Vansittart?" 
 
 "Vansittart?" 
 
 Lisa repeated the name slowly, with a look of blank wonder. 
 
 " Have you never heard that name before ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 "So," thought Sefton, " she knew him under an alias. That means 
 a good deal, and confirms my original idea." 
 
 He put the boy off his knee almost roughly, and rose to depart. 
 
 " Good-bye, Signora. You will let me call in again some day, I 
 hope?" 
 
 " If you like. Why did you think I knew your friend, Mr. Van — 
 sit— tart ? " 
 
 " Because last May I saw you in Cheyne Walk talking to a man 
 whom I took for Vansittart. A tall man, with fair hair. You 
 seemed very friendly with him ; your hands were clasped upon his 
 arm: you were smiling up at him."
 
 212 The Venetians. 
 
 This time Lisa blushed a deep carnation, and her face saddened. 
 
 " Oh, that," she stammered — " that was some one I knew in Italy." 
 
 "Not Vansittart?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But the gentleman has a name of some kind," persisted Sefton. 
 
 " Never mind his name," she answered abruptly. " I don't want 
 to talk about him. I may never see him again, perhaps." And 
 then, "brushing away a tear, and becoming suddenly frivolous, she 
 asked, " How did you come to remember me — after so long ? " 
 
 " Because that moment by the river yonder has lived in my 
 memory ever since — because no man can forget the loveliest face he 
 ever saw in his life." 
 
 With that compliment, and with a lingering clasp of the strong 
 hand, he concluded his first visit to Saltero's Mansion, la Zia 
 accompanying him to the door and curtsying him out. 
 
 CHAPTER XX, 
 
 peggy's chance. 
 
 If there Were blue skies now and then in a London February, what 
 was February along the Riviera but the most exquisite spring-time ? 
 And perhaps on all that favoured shore, Cannes has the richest 
 firstfruits of the fertile year, for it is then that the mimosas are in 
 their glory, and the hill of Californie is a yellow fairyland, an en- 
 chanted region, were all the trees drop golden rain. 
 
 Eve and her lover husband were at Cannes. Delicious as the 
 place was at this season, and new as the shores of the Mediterranean 
 were to Eve, she and her husband had not come there for their own 
 pleasure. They had come at the advice of the doctors — to give 
 Peggy a chance. That was what it had come to. Peggy's only 
 chance of living through the winter was to be found in the south. 
 One doctor had suggested Capri, another Sorrento ; but for some 
 unexplained reason Vansittart objected to Italy, and then Mentone 
 or Cannes had been talked about ; and finally Cannes was decided 
 upon, for medical reasons, in order that Peggy might have the 
 watchful care of Dr. Bright, which might give her an additional 
 chance in the hand-to-hand struggle with her grim adversary. 
 
 Vansittart had offered, in the first instance, to send Peggy to the 
 south in the care of one of her elder sisters and an experienced 
 travelling-maid, who should be also a skilled nurse ; but Eve had 
 been so distressed at the idea of parting with the ailing child, that 
 of his own accord he had offered to accompany his youngest sister- 
 in-law on the journey that was to give her a chance — alas ! only a
 
 Pcg^ys Chance. 2 r 
 
 j 
 
 chance. None of the doctors talked of cure as a certainty. Peggy's 
 family history was had ; and Peggy's lungs were seriously affected. 
 
 It was almost inevitable that the youngest child — horn k?ter the 
 mother's health had hegun to fail— should inherit the mother's fatal 
 tendency to lung disease ; hut things were altogether different in the 
 case of Eve, the eldest daughter, horn before her mother had begun 
 to develop lung trouble. For Eve there was every chance. This 
 was what a distinguished specialist told Vansittart, when he asked 
 piteously if the hereditary disease shown too clearly by Peggy, were 
 likely to appear hy-and-by in Eve's constitution. He was obliged 
 to take what comfort he could from this assurance. He would not 
 alarm Eve by suggesting that her chest should be sounded by the 
 physician who had just passed sentence upon her sister. Perhaps ho 
 did not want to know too much. He was content to see his young 
 wife fair and blooming, with all the indications of perfect health, 
 and to believe that she must needs be exempt from inherited evil. 
 
 She was enraptured when he offered to take her to the south with 
 Peggy. 
 
 " You are more than good, you are adorable," she cried. " Now 
 I feel justified in having worshipped you. What, you will leave 
 Hampshire just when the hunting is at its best? You will forego 
 all your plans for the spring ? And you will put up with a sick 
 child's company ? " 
 
 " I shall have my wife's company, and that is enough. I shall 
 see you happy and at ease, and not wearing yourself to death with 
 anxieties and apprehensions about Peggy." 
 
 " Yes, I shall be ever so much happier with her, should things 
 come to the worst " — her eyes brimmed over with sudden tears at 
 the thought — " it will be so much to be with her — to know that we 
 have made her quite happy." 
 
 They went to Haslemere next morning, and there was a grand 
 scene with Peggy, who screamed with rapture on hearing that Eve 
 and Jack were going to take her to Cannes their very own selves. 
 She, who fancied she had lost Eve for ever, was to live with her, to 
 sleep in the next room to her, to see her every day and all day long. 
 
 Then came the journey — the long, long journey, which made Eve 
 and Peggy open wondering eyes at the width of France from sea to 
 sea. They travelled with all those luxuries which modern civiliza- 
 tion provides for the traveller who is able and willing to pay. And 
 every detail of the journey was a surprise and a joy for Peggy, who 
 brought upon herself more than one bad fit of coughing by her 
 irrepressible raptures. The luncheon and dinner on board the 
 rushing Bapide ; the comfortable wagon-lit to retire to at Lyons, 
 when darkness had fallen over the monotony of the landscape — and 
 anon the surprise of awaking at midnight in a large bright room
 
 214 The Venetians. 
 
 where two small beds were veiled like brides in white net curtains, 
 and where piled up pine-logs blazed on a wide open hearth, such as 
 Peggy only knew of in fairy tales. 
 
 How comforting was the basin of hot sonp which Peggy sipped, 
 squatting beside this cavernous chimney, while Benson, the courier- 
 maid, skilled in nursing invalids, who had been engaged chiefly to 
 wait upon Peggy, unpacked the Gladstone bag, and made everything 
 comfortable for the night. Peggy had slept fitfully all the way from 
 Lyons, hearing as in a dream the porters shouting " Avignon," at a 
 place where they stopped in the winter darkness, and faintly re- 
 membering having heard of a city where Popes lived and tortured 
 people once upon a time. She woke now and again in her white- 
 curtained bed at Marseilles; for however happy her days might lie 
 her nights were generally restless and troubled. The new maid was 
 very attentive to her, and gave her lemonade when her throat was 
 parched, but the maid was able to sleep soundly between whiles, 
 when Peggy was lying awake gazing through the white net curtains, 
 and half expecting Eobin Goodfellow to come creeping out of the 
 wide black chimney, where the spark had faded from the heap of 
 pale grey ashes on the hearth. 
 
 Towards morning Peggy fell into a refreshing slumber, and when 
 she opened her eyes again the room was full of sunshine, and there 
 was a band playing the " Faust Waltz " in the public gardens below. 
 
 " Why, it's summer ! " cried Peggy, clapping her hands, and leap- 
 ing out of the parted white curtains, and rushing to the open window. 
 
 The maid was dressed, and Peggy's breakfast was ready for her. 
 "Oh, such delicious coifee ! " she told Eve afterwards, "in a sweet little 
 copper pot, and rolls such as were never made in humdrum England." 
 
 Yes, it was summer, the February summer of that lovely shore. 
 The Vansittarts stayed nearly a week at Marseilles, to rest Peggy 
 after her forty-eight hours' journey ; and to see the Votive Church 
 on the hill, and that famous dungeon on the rock which owes more 
 of its renown to fiction than to fact ; and the parting of the ways 
 where the ships sail east and west, to Orient or Afric, the two 
 wonder-worlds for the untravelled European. Eve and Peggy 
 looked longingly at the great steamers vanishing on the horizon, 
 hardly knowing whether, if the choice were put to them, they would 
 go right or left — to the country were the Great Moguls, the jewelled 
 temples, the tiger hunts, the palanquins, the tame elephants with 
 castles on their backs are to be found ; or to the country where the 
 Moors live, and where modern civilization camps gipsy-fashion 
 among the vestiges of earth's most ancient people. 
 
 " Where would you like to go best, India or Africa ? " asked Eve, 
 as she and Peggy sat side by side in a fairy-like yawl, that went 
 dipping and dancing over those summer waves, and seemed like a
 
 Peggy s Chance. 2 1 5 
 
 toy boat as it sailed under the lee of an Orient steamer bound for 
 Alexandria. 
 
 " Oh, I think I would rather go up a pyramid than anything," 
 gasped Peggy, breathless at the mere thought. " Don't you re- 
 member ' Belzoni's Travels,' that tattered little old book which 
 once was mother's, and how they used to grope about, Belzoni 
 and his people, and lose themselves in dark passages, and make 
 discoveries inside the Pyramids? And then the Nile, and the 
 crocodiles, which one could always run away from, because they 
 can't turn, don't you know ? Oh, I think Egypt must be best of all." 
 
 Peggy and her companions were out driving along the Cornicho 
 road or sailing over the blue waters every day, and all day long ; and 
 the invalid made a most wonderful recovery during that week. 
 
 Her nights were ever so much quieter, her appetite had improved. 
 Peggy's chance began to look like a certainty, and hope revived in 
 Eve's breast. Hope had never died there. She could not believe 
 that this bright, happy young creature was to be taken away from 
 her. There was such vitality in Peggy, such vigour in those thin 
 arms when they clasped themselves round Eve's neck, such light and 
 life in the full blue eyes when they looked out upon the movement 
 and variety of the Rue Cannabiere, or the bustle of the quays. 
 
 They went on to Cannes, and alighted first at one of the most 
 comfortable hotels in Europe, the Mont Fleuri, so as to take their 
 time in the selection of a home ; for they meant to stay in Provence 
 till there was an end of cold weather in England, to go back only 
 when an English spring should have done its worst, and the foot- 
 steps of summer should be at hand. If Cannes should grow too 
 warm, there was Grasse ; and there were cool retreats perched still 
 higher on the mountain slopes, where they might spend the last 
 month or so of their sojourn. There were reasons why Eve would 
 be glad to escape from the little world in which she was known, 
 reasons why she should prefer the absolute retirement of a villa in 
 a strange land, where she need receive no more visitors than 
 
 « & v, ^.m, 
 
 ne 
 
 chose, where she might let it be known among the little community 
 of British residents that she did not desire to be called upon. 
 
 They found just the retreat that suited them, high on the eastern 
 hill, which at this season was cloaked with the mimosa's golden 
 bloom as with a royal garment. The villa stood on higher ground 
 than the 'Hotel Californie, and all the gulf of San Juan lay at its 
 feet, and the ships at anchor looked like toy ships in the distance of 
 that steep descent, where palm and pine, cypress and olive, lent their 
 varying form and colour to the rough grey rocks, and where garden 
 below garden spread a carpet of vivid flowers, hedges of roses, beds 
 of pink and purple anemones, the scarlet and orange of the ranun- 
 culus, amidst the gloom of rocky gorge and pine forest.
 
 2i6 The Venetians. 
 
 Beyond the gulf rose the islands, shadowy at eventide, clear and 
 sunlit in those early mornings when Peggy watched the red fires of 
 dawn lighting up far away yonder towards Italy. She shared Eve's 
 imaginings about that neighbouring country, and thought with 
 wonder of being so near the border of that mystical land. All her 
 ideas of Italy were derived from " Childe Harold," the more famous 
 passages of which she had read and learnt diligently under Eve's in- 
 struction, the eldest daughter carrying on the education of the 
 youngest in a casual way, after the homely governess had vanished 
 from the scene. 
 
 The villa was small and unpretentious, flung down carelessly, as 
 it seemed, in a spacious garden, a garden which had been neglected 
 of late years, since much smarter villas had risen up, white and 
 ornamental, upon the heights of Californie. But the garden had 
 once been cared for. It was full of roses and ivy-leaved geranium, 
 anemones and narcissi, and, what pleased Peggy most of all, there 
 was a grove of orange trees, where she could lie upon the grass and 
 let the mandarin oranges drop into her lap. Eve and her young 
 sister sat among the oranges for hours at a stretch, Eve working at 
 one of those tiny garments which it was her delight to make — 
 "dressing dolls," Vansittart called it; Peggy pretending to read, but 
 for the most part gazing at sky or sea, watching the white clouds or 
 the white ships sailing by in the blue. 
 
 " Don't you think heaven must be very like this ? " Peggy asked, 
 one quiet noontide, when the sky was of its deepest sapphire, and 
 the air had the warmth and perfume of an English midsummer. 
 
 " What, Peg, do you suppose there are orange trees in the ' Land 
 of the Leal ' — orange trees, and smart villas, and afternoon parties ? " 
 
 " No, no — only the blue sky, and the sea, and the hills jutting 
 out, one beyond another, till they melt into the sky. It looks as if 
 one could never come to the end of it all. It looks just like heaven." 
 
 " Endless, and without limits, like Eternity," said Vansittart, 
 smiling at her, unconscious that Eve's head was bending lower and 
 lower over her work to hide the streaming tears. "A pretty 
 fancy. But that boundless-seeming sea is only a big round pool 
 after all ; and think how clever it was of Columbus to find his way 
 across the great ocean, and what rapture for Cortez to discover a 
 second ocean, bigger than the first. And yet this earth of ours is 
 only like a grain of sand in the multitude of worlds." 
 
 " Don't," cried Peggy, with her fingers in her ears. " You make 
 my head ache. I can't bear to think of the universe. It's much 
 too big. Miitterchen used to tell me about it when I was a small 
 child. She made me dream bad dreams. Why isn't there one 
 nice, comfortable world for us to live in, and one lovely heaven for 
 us to go to after we are dead, and one horrid hell for the very bad
 
 Peggy s Chance. 2 1 7 
 
 people, just to prevent their mixing with the good ones ? That's 
 what the Bible means, doesn't it? I can't bear to think of anything 
 more than that." 
 
 " Don't think, darling," said Eve, sitting down on the grass beside 
 her, and drawing the fragile form close against her own — " don't 
 think. Only be happy. Breathe this delicious air, bask in this 
 delightful sun, be happy, and get well." 
 
 "Oh, I am getting well as fast as ever I can. Except for my 
 tiresome cough, I am as well as anybody can be. I wonder what 
 they are doing at Fernhurst. Skating on Farmer Green's pond, 
 werhaps, or crouching over the fire. You know how Hetty would 
 always sit with her head hanging over the coals, in spite of all you 
 could say about spoiling her complexion. And here we spoil our 
 complexions in the sun. Isn't it wonderful? " 
 
 "Everything in our lives is wonderful, Peggy. Most of all, that 
 I should have such a husband as Jack." 
 
 Eve held out her hand to that model husband, smiling at him, with 
 eyes that were veiled in tears, more grateful for his goodness to this 
 ailing child than for all the love that he had lavished upon herself. 
 
 What a happy season this would have been on the lovely hill 
 beside the tideless sea, if hope had never been dashed with fear ! 
 But, alas ! there were moments, even at Peggy's best, when the 
 shadow of doom fell dark across the summer glory of a land that 
 knows not winter. Sometimes, in the midst of her joyous delight 
 in the things around her, a sudden paroxysm of coughing would 
 surprise the poor child, shaking her as if some invisible demon had 
 seized the wasted form by the narrow shoulders, and were trying to 
 tear it piecemeal. 
 
 " My enemy has been very cruel to me to-day," Peggy would say 
 afterwards, with a serio-comic smile. " I thought Dr. Bright would 
 get the better of him." 
 
 At first she used to call that wearing cough her enemy, as she 
 had heard old people talk of their gout or their rheumatism. Later, 
 she talked of her cough as the dragon, and of Dr. Bright as St. 
 George ; but although the medical champion might get the better 
 of the dragon now and again, he was a sturdy monster, and harder 
 to kill than the toughest crocodile along the sandy shores of old 
 Nile. Peggy was wonderfully patient, wonderfully hopeful about 
 herself, even when hope began to wax faint in the hearts of her 
 companions, when the trained attendant could tell of sorely troubled 
 nights, and when Eve, creeping in from her adjoining bedchamber 
 half a dozen times between night and morning, was saddened at 
 finding the fevered head tossing unquietly upon the heaped-up 
 pillows, the blue eyes wide open, and the parched lips uttering 
 speech that told of semi-delirium.
 
 218 The Venetians. 
 
 However bad Peggy's nights were, her days were generally 
 cheerful. She was never tired of the hillside paths, the luxury of 
 ferns, and palms, and aloes, the glory of the golden-tufted mimosas, 
 the peach blossom, the anemones, the silvery threads of water 
 creeping down the rocky gorges, such narrow streamlets, cleaving 
 Titanic rocks. To Peggy these things brought no satiety ; while 
 the more earthly enjoyment of afternoon tea at Rumpelmeyer's, 
 sitting out of doors, and eating as many cakes and bon-bons as 
 ever she liked, was only a lesser revelation of a world where all was 
 beauty. Eve and her husband saw the crowds at Rumpelmeyer's 
 with an amused interest. They looked on at this curiously blended 
 smart world, this odd mixture of Royal Duchesses and Liverpool 
 merchants, millionaires and impecunious cavaliere servente, Parisian 
 celebrities, the old nobility of France and England — old as the 
 Angevin kings, when England and France were one monarchy — 
 and the newly-gotten wealth of New York and Chicago. Eve and 
 Vansittart looked on and were amused, and then drove back to the 
 villa on the hill, and rejoiced in the seclusion of their own garden, 
 which it had been their delight to improve and beautify. Every- 
 thing grew so quickly — the rose-trees they planted throve so well 
 that it was like gardening in fairyland. 
 
 They were not intruded upon by that smart world which they 
 saw at the tea-shop on the Croisette. At Cannes two things only 
 count as worthy of regard or reverence — the first, fashion ; the 
 second, money. Eve and her husband had neither one nor the 
 other. A Hampshire squire, with three thousand a year and a 
 young wife, was a person who could interest nobody. Had he been 
 a bachelor and a dancing man, he would have been eligible and 
 even courted ; for dancing men are in a minority, and a ball at the 
 Cercle Nautique is apt to recall Edwin Long's famous picture of the 
 Babylonian Marriage Market, women of all nationalities waiting to 
 be asked to dance. A Hampshire squire, living quietly with his 
 wife and Jier sister in one of the cheapest villas in Californie was a 
 person to seek, and not to be sought. If the Vansittarts wanted 
 to be in society they should have brought letters of introduction, 
 observed a Jewish Plutocrat whose garden joined the Vansittarts' 
 modest enclosure. " We can't be expected to take any interest in 
 people of whom we know absolutely nothing." 
 
 It would have been difficult, if not impossible, for the leaders of 
 Cannes society, the owners of palatial villas, and givers of luncheons 
 and dances, to understand that these pariahs did not desire to enter 
 the charmed circle where wealth was the chief qualification, and 
 where the triple millionaire, however humble his origin, and however 
 dubious the source of his gold, was sure of welcome. Granted that 
 such millionaires were talked of lightly as " good fun." The smart
 
 Peggy s Chance. 2 1 9 
 
 people who laughed were pleased to eat their luncheons, and dance 
 at their balls, or drive on their coaches, or sail in their yachts. 
 For the smart world of Californie and La Koute dc Frejus February 
 meant a round of luncheons and teas, dinners and dances. Every- 
 body complained of the " strain," of being " dragged "from party 
 to party, of having " so much to do ; " these butterflies treating 
 the futilities of life as if they were penal servitude without option. 
 To these the tranquil happiness of such a couple as Eve and Van- 
 sittart was unthinkable. Of course the poor things would be in 
 society if society would have them. Cannes must be very dreary 
 for such as they. It was really a pity that this kind of people djd 
 not stop at St. Raphael or go on to Alassio. 
 
 "While society — looking at the "pretty young woman with the 
 rather handsome husband" from afar, through a tortoiseshell 
 merveilleuse — compassionated their forlorn condition, Eve and 
 Vansittart found the resources of the neighbourhood inexhaustible, 
 had schemes and delights for every day, and Peggy was never tired 
 of comparing the Maritime Alps to heaven. What less in loveliness 
 than heaven could be a land where one could picnic in February ? 
 For Peggy's sake there were many picnics — now in a rocky gorge 
 on the road to Vallauris, where one could sit about the dry bed of 
 a cataract, and set out one's luncheon on great rocky boulders, 
 screened by feathery palm trees that suggested the South Sea 
 Islands ; now on the hilltop at Mougins, with the pinnacled walls 
 of Grasse looking at them, across the deep valley of flower fields 
 and mulberry orchards, blossoming lilies and budding vines; and 
 now, with even more delight, in some sheltered inlet on the level 
 coast of St. Honorat, some tiny cove where the water was brilliant 
 as the jasper sea of the Apocalypse. Sometimes they landed and 
 took their picnic luncheon under the pine trees, or on the edge of 
 ti ie lSea — Peggy keenly interested in everything she saw, the time- 
 worn fortress-monastery that rose tall above the level shore, and 
 the modern building with its low-roofed cells and modest chapel, a 
 building whose monastic rule forbade the entrance of Peggy and all 
 her sex, and which therefore inspired the liveliest curiosity on her 
 part. Not less delightful was the sister island of St. Marguerite, with 
 its thrilling mystery of the nameless prisoner, whom Peggy would 
 allow to be none other than a twin brother of the great Louis, and 
 whose faded red velvet chair she looked at with affection and awe. 
 
 " To think of his meekly worshipping in this chapel, with an iron 
 mask upon his face, when he might have been reigning over France 
 and making war all over Europe, like the great King." 
 
 " But in that case Louis must have bee 1 here. You wouldn't 
 have a brace of monarchs, Peggy. One brother must have gone to 
 the wall," argued Vansittart.
 
 220 The Venetians. 
 
 " They needn't have shut him up in a dungeon, and made him 
 wear a mask," said Peggy. 
 
 " True, Peggy ; the whole story involves a want of common sense 
 which makes it incredible. I no more believe in a twin brother of 
 Louis Quatorze than in a twin brother of our Prince of Wales, 
 languishing in the Tower of London at this present moment." 
 
 " But you believe there was a masked prisoner," exclaimed Peggy, 
 with keen anxiety. 
 
 " Oh yes, I am willing to believe in the Italian exile. The 
 record of that gentleman's existence seems tolerably reliable, and a 
 very bad time he had of it. They managed things wonderfully 
 well in those days. A political agitator, or the writer of an un- 
 pleasant epigram, could be promptly suppressed. They had prison 
 walls for inconvenient people of all kinds." 
 
 Peggy sighed. She did not care about the Italian politician. 
 She had read her Dumas, and had a settled belief in the royal twin. 
 She liked to think that he had lived and suffered in that cold grey 
 fortress. She cared nothing for Marshal Bazaine, and his legendary 
 leap from the parapet, which the soldier guide recited with his 
 tongue in his cheek. She despised Vansittart for being so curious 
 about such a humdrum incident — an elderly general creeping out 
 of captivity under the nose of guardians who were wilfully blind, 
 and slipping quietly off in a steamer. 
 
 Those tranquil days on the islands or on the sea would have been 
 as exquisite for Eve as for Peggy if the heart of the elder sister had 
 not been heavy with anxiety about the younger. During the first 
 few weeks in that soft climate Peggy's chance had seemed almost a 
 certainty of cure. Even Dr. Bright had been hopeful for those first 
 weeks, surprised by the marked improvement in his patient ; but of 
 late he had been grave to despondency, and every consultation 
 strengthened Eve's fears. 
 
 Indeed, there was little need of medical science to reveal the 
 cruel truth. Every week that went by left something of Peggy's 
 youth and strength bshind it. The walks which were easy for her 
 in February were difficult in March, and impossible in April. The 
 ground that was lost was never regained. Eve looked back, and 
 remembered how Peggy had walked to the Signal with her a fort- 
 night after their arrival. They had walked very slowly, and they 
 had sat down to rest several times in the course of the journey ; 
 but the ascent had been accomplished without pain, and Peggy had 
 been wild with delight at the prospect which rewarded them at 
 the top. 
 
 " We'll come up here often, won't we, Eve ? " 
 
 " As often as you like, darling." 
 
 The second ascent was made in March, when the peach trees
 
 Peggy s Chance. 221 
 
 and anemones were all in bloom, and the gold of the mimosas was 
 a glory of the past. This time Peggy found the winding walks long 
 and wearisome, and although, in spite of Eve's entreaties, sin; 
 persisted in reaching the summit, the journey had evidently been 
 too much for her. She sank exhausted on a bench, and it was 
 nearly an hour before she was rested enough to mount the little 
 platform on which the telescope stood, and explore the distance, 
 looking for the French squadron which was rounding the point of 
 the Esterelles, on its way to Toulon. Poor little Peggy! She was 
 the only person who did not believe in the seriousness of her case. 
 
 " You and Dr. Bright make too much fuss about me," she said to 
 Eve, seeing tears in the fond sister's eyes. " I am only growing. 
 See how short my frock is ! I have grown inches since Christmas." 
 
 She stretched out her thin legs — so thin as to make the feet look 
 abnormally big, and contemplated the spectacle with a satisfied air. 
 
 " I am going to be very tall," she said. " I have only outgrown 
 my strength. That is all that is the matter with me. Sophy and 
 Jenny always said as much. And as for the cough which seems to 
 frighten you so, it's only a stomach cough. Sophy said so." 
 
 Vansittart had procured every contrivance which could make 
 Peggy's life easier. He bought her a donkey, on whose back she 
 could be carried up to the Signal, and when her own back grew too 
 weak to endure the fatigue of sitting on the donkey he bought her 
 a wheel chair, which a patient Provencal two-legged beast of burden 
 was willing to drag about all day, if Peggy pleased. And at each 
 stage of her weakness — at each step on the downward road — he 
 found some contrivance to make locomotion easier, so that Peggy 
 might live out of doors, in the sunshine and on the sea. 
 
 Alas! there came a day when Peggy no longer cared to be 
 carried about, when even the ripening loveliness of the land, the 
 warmth and splendour of the southern spring, the white-sailed skill' 
 with its quaint old sailors talking their unintelligible Cannois, and 
 chivalrously attentive to Peggy's lightest wish — the time came 
 when even these things could not tempt her from the couch in the 
 garden, where she lay and watched the opening ora-nge blossoms, 
 and wondered who would be there to mark the first change from 
 green to gold in the turn of the year, or thought of Eve's wedding 
 and the orange wreath in her hair, and marvelled to remember how 
 strong her young limbs felt in that gladdest of midsummers, and 
 how slight a thing it had been to walk to the Roman village upon 
 Bexley Hill, or to the pine-crowned crest of Blackdown. And now 
 Vansittart had to carry her to the sofa in the orange grove, and she 
 lay there supine all through the golden afternoon, while Eve, who 
 was said to be herself in delicate health, sat in a low chair near her, 
 and read aloud from Dumas' historical novels, or some fairy tale.
 
 222 The Venetians. 
 
 But this increasing weakness was of no consequence, Peggy 
 protested, when she saw Eve looking anxious about her. She had 
 only outgrown her strength. When she had done growing she 
 would be as strong as ever, and able to climb those Sussex hills 
 just as well as ever. But she would not be here to see the flower 
 change to the fruit. That miracle of Nature's handicraft would be 
 for other eyes — for the eyes of some other weakling, perhaps, 
 passing, like Peggy, through the ordeal of overgrowth. But there 
 was something far more wonderful than tree or flower, which had 
 been whispered about by Peggy's nurse. There was the hope of a 
 baby nephew or a baby niece in the first month of summer, a baby 
 that was to open its eyes on some cool Alpine valley, to which Mr. 
 and Mrs. Vansittart and their charge would migrate, when the plane 
 trees by the harbour had unfolded their broad leaves, and the sun 
 that looked upon Cannes was too fierce for any but the hardy natives 
 of the old fishing village. In that sweet summer time a baby was 
 to appear among them, and take its place in all their hearts and on 
 all their knees, and was to reign over them by the divine right of 
 the firstborn. Peggy's nurse told her that, were it only for the sake 
 of this new-comer, she ought to take care of herself, and get well 
 quickly. 
 
 " You wouldn't like not to see the baby, would you, Miss 
 Margaret?" 
 
 Peggy always felt inclined to laugh when her prim attendant 
 called her Miss Margaret. She had never been addressed by her 
 baptismal name by any one else ; but Benson was a superior person, 
 who had lived only in the best families, and who did everything in 
 a superior way. 
 
 " Like not to see Eve's baby ? Why, of course I shall see it — 
 see it and nurse it, every day of my life," answered Peggy. 
 " Of course, miss, if you are well enough when June comes." 
 " If — I — am — well — enough," Peggy repeated slowly, turning 
 towards the nurse with an earnest gaze. " Perhaps you mean that 
 I may not live till June. I heard you say something about me to 
 the housemaid yesterday morning when she was making your bed. 
 I was only half asleep ; though I was too drowsy to speak and let 
 you know I could hear all you were saying. You are quite wrong 
 — both of you. I have only outgrown my strength. I shall grow 
 up into a strong young woman, and I shall be very fond of Eve's 
 baby. I shall be the first aunt he will know." 
 
 She stopped f laugh — a hoarse little laugh, which it pained 
 Benson to hear. 
 
 "Isn't that absurd?" she asked. "I am calling the baby 'he.' 
 But I do hope it will be a boy — I adore little boys — and I'm afraid 
 I rathe* hate little girls."
 
 Peggy s Chance. 223 
 
 "A son and heir," said the nurse, placidly. " That will look nice 
 in the newspapers." 
 
 " Yes, haby will have to be in the newspapers," agreed Peggy. 
 " His first appearance upon any stage. I should so love to make 
 something for him to wear. Eve is always working for him ; though 
 she contrives to keep her work a secret, even from me. ' Mothers' - 
 meeting work,' she said, when I asked her what she was so busy 
 about. As if I didn't know better than that ! One doesn't use the 
 finest lawn and real Valenciennes for mothers'-meeting work. Let 
 me make something for Eve's baby, Bertfeon, there's a dear. I 
 would take such pains with my stitches." 
 
 "It would tire you too much, Miss Margaret." 
 
 "No, no, it won't. My legs are weak — not my fingers. Let me 
 make something, and surprise Eve with it when it is finished." 
 
 " I don't think Mrs. Vansittart would like you to know. miss. It 
 is a secret." 
 
 "Yes, but Eve knows that I know. I told her that I had been 
 dreaming about her, and that I dreamt there was a baby. It was 
 after I heard you and Paulette whispering — I really did dream— 
 and Eve kissed me, and cried a little, and said perhaps my dream 
 might come true." 
 
 Peggy being very urgent, her nurse brought her some fine flannel, 
 as soft as silk, and cut out a flannel shawl for the unknown, and 
 instructed Peggy as to the manner in which it was to be made, ami 
 Peggy was propped up with pillows, and began a floss-silk scallop 
 with neat little stitches, and with an earnest laboriousness which 
 was a touching spectacle ; but, alas ! after ten minutes of strenuous 
 labour, great beads of perspiration began to roll down Peggy's 
 Hushed face, and the thin arm and hand trembled with the effort. 
 
 " Oh, Miss Margaret, you mustn't work any more," cried Benson, 
 shocked at her appearance. 
 
 " I'm afraid I can't, Nurse ; not any more to-day," sighed Peggy, 
 sinking back into the pillows, breathless and exhausted. " But I'll 
 go on with baby's shawl to-morrow. Please fold it up for me and 
 keep it in your basket. Eve musn't see it till it's finished. The 
 stitches are not too long, are they ? " 
 
 No, the stitches were very small, but crowded one upon another 
 in a manner that indicated resolute effort and failing sight. 
 
 " I feel as if I had been making shawls all day, like the poor 
 woman in the poem," said Peggy. " ' Stitch, stitch, stitch, with 
 eyelids heavy and dim ! ' How odd it is that everything seems 
 difficult when one is ill ! I thought it was only my legs that were 
 •weak, but I'm afraid it's the whole of me. My finger aches with 
 the weight of my thimble— the dear little gold thimble my brother- 
 in-law gave me on Christmas Day."
 
 224 The Venetians. 
 
 She put the little thimble to her lips, and kissed it as if it were a 
 sentient thing. Vansittart came into the room while she was so 
 engaged. 
 
 " Oh, there you are," she said. " Do you know what I was 
 thinking about? " 
 
 " Not I, quotha," said he, sitting down by Peggy's couch and 
 taking her thin little hand in his. '' Who can presume to thread 
 the labyrinth of a young lady's mind, without the least little bit of 
 a clue ? You must giv$ me a clue, Peg, if you want me to guess." 
 
 " Well, then, I was thinking of you. Is that a clue ? " 
 
 " Not much of a one, my pet. You might be thinking anything — 
 that my last coat is a bad fit about the shoulders — a true bill, 
 Peggy ; that I am growing stupid and indolent in this inconsistent 
 climate, where one sleeps half the day and lies awake more than 
 half the night." 
 
 " I was thinking of your goodness to Eve, and to all of us. My 
 gold thimble ; your bringing us here when you would rather have 
 stayed in Hampshire to hunt. And I was thinking how different 
 our lives would have been if you had never come to Fernhurst. 
 Eve would just have gone on slaving to make both ends meet, 
 cutting out all our frocks, and working her Wilcox and Gibbs, and 
 bearing with father's temper, and going without things. I should 
 have outgrown my strength all the same ; but there would have 
 been no one to bring us to Cannes. I should never have seen the 
 Mediterranean, or the Snow Alps, or mother's grave. I should 
 never have seen Eve in pretty tea-gowns, with nothing in the 
 world to do except sit about and look lovely. You have changed 
 our lives." 
 
 "For better, Peggy?" he asked earnestly. 
 
 " Yes, yes ; for worlds and worlds better," she answered, with her 
 arms round his neck. 
 
 Benson had crept off to her dinner ; Peggy and her brother-in-law 
 were alone. 
 
 "God bless you for that assurance, Peggy dear. And — if — if I 
 were not by any means a perfect Christian — if I had done wicked 
 things in my life — given way to a wicked temper, and done some 
 great wrong, not in treachery but in passion, to a fellow-man — could 
 you love me all the same, Peggy? " 
 
 "Of course I could. Do you suppose I ever thought you quite 
 perfect? You wouldn't be half so nice if you were outrageously 
 good. I know you could never be false or treacherous. And as for 
 getting in a passion, and even hitting people, I shouldn't love you 
 one morsel the less for that. I have often wanted to hit people 
 myself. My own sister Sophy, for instance, when she has been too 
 provoking, with her superior airs and high-flown notions. Kiss me,
 
 Peggy s Chance. 225 
 
 Jack, again and again. If you were ever so wicked T think I should 
 love you all the same." 
 
 That was Vansittart's last serious talk with Peggy. It was indeed 
 Peggy's last serious talk upon this planet, save for the murmured 
 conversation in the dawn of an April day, when the London vicar, 
 who was doing duty at St. George's, came in before an early 
 celebration to sit beside Peggy's pillow and speak words of comfort 
 and promise, words that told of a fairer world, whither Peggy's 
 footsteps were being guided by an impalpable Hand— a world where 
 it might be she would see the faces of the loved and lost — those 
 angel faces, missed here, but living for ever there. 
 
 "Do you really believe it, sir?" Peggy asked eagerly^ with her 
 thin hand on the grave Churchman's sleeve, her imploring looks 
 perusing the worn, elderly face. " Shall I really see my mother 
 again — see her and know her in heaven? " 
 
 "We know only what He has told us, my dear. ' In My Father's 
 house there are many mansions ' — and it may be that the homes wo 
 have lost — the firesides we remember dimly — the faces that looked 
 upon our cradles — will be found — again— somewhere." 
 
 •• Ah, you are crying," said Peggy. " You would like to believe 
 —just as I would. That is the only heaven I care for — to be with 
 mother — and for Eve and Jack to come to us by-and-by." 
 
 This day, when the vicar came in the early morning, was thought 
 to be Peggy's last on earth, but she lingered, rallied, and slowly sank 
 again, a gradual fading— painless towards the end ; for the stages of 
 suffering which she had borne so patiently were past, and the last 
 hours were peaceful. She could keep her arms round Eve's neck 
 and listen to the soothing voice of sorrowing love, till even this effort 
 was too much, and the weak arms relaxed their hold, and were gently 
 laid upon the bed in that meek attitude which looked like the final 
 repose. She could hear Eve still — speaking or reading to her in 
 the soft, low voice that was like falling waters— but her mind was 
 wandering in a pleasant dreamland, and she thought she was drifting 
 on a streamlet that winds through the valley between Bexley Hill 
 and Blackdown ; through summer pastures where the meadow-sweet 
 grew tall and white beside the water, and where the voices of hay- 
 makers were calling to each other across the newly cut grass. 
 
 " I should like to have lived to see your child," were Peggy's last 
 words, faltered brokenly into Eve's ear as she knelt beside the bed. 
 
 There were long hours of silence ; the mute faint struggles of the 
 departing spirit ; but that wish was the last of Peggy's earthly speech. 
 
 Eve was brokemhearted. She never knew till the end came how 
 
 Q
 
 226 The Venetians. 
 
 she had clung to some frail thread of hope ; in spite of the Destroyer's 
 palpable advance ; in spite of the physician's sad certainty ; in spite 
 of her husband's gentle warnings, striving to prepare her for the end. 
 The blow was terrible. Vansittart trembled for life and reason when 
 he saw the intensity of her grief. Always highly strung, she was in 
 a condition of health which made hysteria more to be dreaded. The 
 brief delay between death and burial horrified her ; yet to Vansittart 
 that swift departure of the lifeless clay seemed an unutterable relief. 
 For just a few hours the wasted form lay on the rose-strewn bed ; 
 and then in the early dimness, before the mists had floated up from 
 the valley, before harbour and parish church stood out clear and 
 bright in the face of the morning sun, came the bearers of the coffin, 
 and at nine o'clock Vansittart went alone to see the loved youngest, 
 sister laid in the cemetery on the hill, in the secluded corner he 
 himself had chosen — near the mother's grave— as a spot where Eve 
 might like to sit by-and-by, when sorrow should be less poignant, a 
 nook from which she could see the shallow bay, and the cloud-capped 
 islands jutting out into the sea, and the tall white lighthouse of 
 Antibes, standing up above the crest of the hill, glorified in the 
 afternoon sun, as if it were nearer heaven than earth. 
 
 In everything that Vansittart did at this time his thought was of 
 Eve and her feelings. His grief for her sorrow was no less keen 
 than the sorrow itself. He had been very fond of poor little Peggy, 
 and had grown fonder of her as her weakness increased, and 
 strengthened her claim upon his compassion. But now he saw with 
 Eve's eyes, thought with Eve's mind, and every sigh and every tear 
 of hers wrung his heart afresh. 
 
 Those earnest words of Peggy's, spoken with the wasted arms 
 about his neck, were very precious to him. It seemed as if they 
 were in some wise his absolution for the wrong which he had done 
 in keeping the secret of Harold Marchant's death. Peggy had told 
 him that she and her sister owed comfort and happiness to him — 
 that he had changed the tenor of their lives from struggling penury 
 to luxury and ease. He knew that over and above all these material 
 advantages he had given Harold Marchant's sister a profound and 
 steadfast love — a love which would last as long as his life, and which 
 was and would be the governing principle of his life — and he told 
 himself that in keeping that dark secret he had done well. 
 
 Tranquillized by this assurance he put aside the old fear as some- 
 thing to be forgotten. But there was a nearer fear, a fear which 
 had grown out of Peggy's illness and death, which no casuistry could 
 lessen or thrust aside. The fear of hereditary phthisis came upon 
 him in the dead of night, and flung its dark shadow across his path 
 by day. He had talked long with Dr. Bright after Peggy's death, 
 and the kind physician had calmly discussed the probabilities of evil;
 
 Peggy 's Chance. 227 
 
 had held nothing back. Fear there must needs De, in such a case ; 
 hut there was also ground for hope. Vansittart told the doctor of 
 Eve's buoyant spirits and energy, her long walks and untiring pleasure 
 in natural scenery. "That does not look like hereditary disease, 
 does it? " he asked, pleading for a hopeful answer. 
 
 " Those are good signs, no doubt. Your wife is of an active 
 temperament, highly nervous, but with a very happy disposition. 
 Her sister's fatal illness has tried her severely ; but we must look to 
 the arising of a new interest as the best cure for sorrow." 
 
 " Poor Peggy ! Yes, we shall brood less upon her loss when we 
 have our little one to think about." 
 
 The thought of Eve's coming happiness as a mother was his chief 
 comfort. She could not fail to be consoled by the infant whose 
 tender life would absorb her every thought, whose sleeping and 
 waking would be a source of interest and anxiety. But before the 
 consoler's coming there was a dreary interval to be bridged over, 
 and this was a cause of fear. 
 
 There was a journey to be taken, for the climate of Cannes would 
 be too hot for health, or even for endurance, before mother and 
 child could be moved. Thus it was imperative that they should 
 move without delay. Indeed, Vansittart thought they CQnld not too 
 soon leave the scene so closely associated with the image of the 
 dead— where everything recalled Peggy, and the alternating hopes 
 and fears of those gradual stages on her journey to the grave. On 
 this path her feet had tripped so lightly last February, when her 
 illness was talked of as " only a cough." Under this giant eucalyptus 
 her couch had been established in April, when walking had become 
 a painful effort, and she could only lie and absorb the beauty of her 
 surroundings, and talk of the coming days in which she would be 
 strong again, and able to go up to the Signal with Jack. 
 
 Vansittart fancied that Eve would catch eagerly at the idea of 
 leaving that haunted house ; but her grief increased at the thought 
 of going away. 
 
 " I like to be here in the place she loved. I can at least console 
 myself with remembering how happy she was with us ; and what 
 a joy Californie and the wild walks above Golfe Juan were to her. 
 Sometimes I think she is in the garden still. I lie upon the sofa 
 here and watch the window, expecting to see her come creeping in, 
 leaning upon the stick you gave her— so white and weak and thin — 
 but so bright, so patient, so lovable." 
 
 Then came the inevitable burst of tears, with the threatening of 
 hysteria, and it was all her husband could do to tranquillize her. 
 
 " The comfort you get here is a cruel comfort, dearest," he said. 
 " We shall both be ever so much better away from Cannes — at Sr. 
 Martin de Lantosque, in the cool mountain air. Our rooms are ready
 
 228 The Venetians. 
 
 for us, we shall have our own servants, and if the accommodation 
 be somewhat rough " 
 
 " Do you think I mind roughness with you ? I could be happy 
 in a hut. Oh, Jack, you are so patient with my grief! There are 
 people who would say I am foolish to grieve so much for a young 
 sister ; but it is the first time Death has touched us since mother 
 went. We were such a happy little band. I never thought that one 
 of us could die, and that one the youngest, the most loving of us all." 
 
 " Dearest, I shall never think your grief unreasonable ; but I want 
 you to grieve less, for my sake, for the sake of the future. Think, 
 Eve, only think what it will be to have that new tie between us, a 
 child, belonging equally to each, looking equally to each for all it 
 has of safety and of gladness upon this earth." 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 " FROM THE EVIL TO COME." 
 
 Vaxsittart and his wife never went to the village in the mountains, 
 where all things had been made ready for their coming. Eve spent 
 that afternoon which should have been her last at Cannes in the 
 burial-ground on the hill, now in its glory of May flowers, a para- 
 dise of roses and white marble, a place full of tenderest memorials to 
 the early dead, a spot which seemed especially dedicated to those 
 whom the gods love best, the holy ones and pure of spirit, removed 
 from the evil to come for hard middle-life and selfish old age. Eve 
 gave herself up to the luxury of grief on that last day, taking her 
 fond farewell of that quiet bed where, under a coverlet of pale roses, 
 the happy child slept the everlasting sleep. She lingered, ami 
 lingered, as the sun sloped towards the dark ridge of hills ; lingered 
 when the great flaming disc touched the rugged line, until there was 
 only the afterglow to light her back to Californie. Vansittart had 
 trusted her alone with the steady Benson, now promoted from 
 Peggy's nurse to be Eve's own maid. He had cheques to write and 
 final arrangements to make ; and he thought that there would be 
 greater tranquillity for Eve in solitude, with only an attendant. It 
 was better there should bo no one to whom she could expatiate on 
 her grief, for her talk with him had always tended to hysteria. 
 Thus convenience and prudence had both counselled his leaving 
 her to herself; and it was only when the clock on the mantelpiece 
 chimed the quarter before eight and the shadows deepened in the 
 corners of the room that he felt he had been imprudent. He went 
 hurriedly out to the terrace in front of the villa, and felt that creep- 
 ing dullness in the air which follows quickly upon sundown on this 
 southern shore. The carriage stopped at the gate as he went out,
 
 "From the Evil to come? 229 
 
 and Eve was in his aims, to be welcomed first and scolded 
 afterwards. 
 
 " It is with you I am most angry, Benson," he said to his wife's 
 attendant ; " you ought to have been wiser." 
 
 " I won't have you scold Benson," remonstrated Eve ; " it is my 
 fault. She teased me to come home ever so long ago, and I wouldn't. 
 I wanted to stay with Peggy till the last moment. It was like 
 bidding her good-bye again. And now I have left her lying in her 
 1 [iiiet grave, near the poor mother whom she hardly knew. I didn't 
 know how late it was till we were in the carriage coming home, and 
 I began to feel rather chilly." 
 
 "You are shivering now, Eve. You should have remembered 
 what Dr. Bright said about sunset." 
 
 " Ah, that was on Peggy's account. It is different for me." 
 
 "Well, I won't try to frighten you into a cold. Pun to your 
 mistress's-room, Benson, and make a good fire. I ordered tea to 
 be ready." 
 
 He almost carried Eve upstairs, and with his own hands manipu- 
 lated the olive logs, and set the merry pine cones blazing and crack- 
 ling, while she lay on the sofa in front of the fireplace and watched 
 the flames ; but the shivering continued in spite of the cheery wood 
 lire, and eiderdown coverlet, and hot tea ; so Dr. Bright was sent for 
 hurriedly, and came to find his patient with a temperature that 
 indicated grave disturbance. He came, and left only to come back 
 again, with another English doctor, who did not leave his patient all 
 night ; and between midnight and morning the young wife's existence 
 trembled in the balance, and the husband, pacing to and fro and in 
 and out on the lower floor, ground his teeth and beat his head in a 
 passion of self-reproach, hating himself for having allowed that 
 perilous visit to the cemetery, cursing himself for his folly in not 
 having gone witli her if she must needs go. 
 
 " There is a blight upon us and upon our love," he told himself in 
 his despair. "Nemesis will have her due." 
 
 His fondest hope was blighted — the hope of a living link which 
 should bind him closer to his wife and make severance impossible — 
 a child, whose innocent eyes should turn from father to mother, and 
 plead to the mother for the father's sin — the child who, in direst 
 contingency, was to be his champion and his saviour. He passed 
 through an ordeal of such agony and apprehension on his wife's 
 account as to make him for the time being comparatively indifferent 
 to the loss of his son, who came upon this mortal scene only 
 to vanish from it for ever ; but when at last, in mid-June, while 
 Californie and her fir woods were baking under a tropical sun, his 
 wife was restored to him, strong enough to travel to cooler regions
 
 230 The Venetians. 
 
 in the shadow of the great Alps, there fell upon him the sense of an 
 irreparable loss. 
 
 They went by easy stages to Courmayenr, and established them- 
 selves there for the rest of the summer, in a reposeful solitude, keep- 
 ing aloof from the climbers and explorers and the race of tourists 
 generally. They had their own rooms, in a Dependance of the 
 hotel, rooms whose windows commanded valley and mountain. Here 
 Eve first felt the tranquillizing influence of Alpine scenery, and her 
 quiet rambles with Vansittart soon brought back the bloom of her 
 girlish beauty, and restored something of the frank gladness of those 
 younger years when she and her sisters used to ramble over the un- 
 dulating ridge of Bexley Hill, and think it a mountain. 
 
 " Dear old Bexley," sighed Eve, with her eyes dreamily contem- 
 plating Mont Chetif ; " I hope I shall never begin to despise you, 
 even though you are a hill to put in one's pocket as compared with 
 these white giants." 
 
 The peaceful days, the perfect union between husband and wife, 
 revived Eve's spirits and did much to restore her health, sorely 
 shaken by the ordeal through which she had passed. Fever had 
 raged fiercely in the battle between life and death, and the long- 
 bright hair, which had made so fair a diadem in the days of her 
 poverty, had been shorn from the burning head. She looked quaintly 
 pretty now, with her boyish crop, framing the broad white forehead 
 with crisp short curls. She laughed when Vansittart talked of next 
 season, when his mother was to lend them the house in Charles 
 Street. 
 
 " You can never appear in society with a cropped head for your 
 companion," she said. "People will say you have married a lady 
 doctor, or some other learned monstrosity from Girton. I shall be 
 tabooed in the smart world where ignorance is de rigueur, and to 
 know anything about books is a sign of inferiority." 
 
 "What care I if they think my sweet love a senior wrangler 
 disguised as a tine lady? You are pretty enough to set the fashion 
 of cropped heads." 
 
 They moved slowly homeward in the late autumn, loitering beside 
 the great Swiss lakes till the October mists began to make Pilatus 
 invisible and to hang low over the steep gables of Lucerne. They 
 lingered under Mr. Hauser's hospitable roof so long that the great 
 black St. Bernard lifted his head and howled an agonizing farewell 
 when the carriage drove off to the station with Eve and her husband. 
 That leonine beast was sagacious enough to know that the trunks 
 and travelling-bags and bustle of departure meant something more 
 than the daily drive, and that he was to see these kind friends no 
 more, and eat no more sweet biscuits out of Eve's soft white hands.
 
 'From the Evil to conic!' 2\\ 
 
 o 
 
 It was late in October when they found themselves among the 
 pine woods and hillocks of Hampshire, and insignificant as the hills 
 were there was pleasure in feeling one's self at home. Eve's mother- 
 in-law was at Merewood to receive them, and to make much of her 
 son's wife, whom she found thiuner and more fragiledooking than 
 when she left for the Riviera, hut with all the beauty and brightness 
 which had captivated her lover. Mrs. Vansittart's welcome had in 
 it more of affection than she had ever given her son's wife in the 
 past. 
 
 " I think you are beginning to love me," Eve said, too sensitive 
 not to feel the change. 
 
 " My dear child, I always loved you." 
 
 "Only a very little," argued Eve. " You liked me pretty well in 
 the abstract, I dare say, but you did not care for me as Mrs. John 
 Vansittart. It was very natural. You had your own favourites, 
 any one of whom you would have liked Jack to marry ; dear, nice 
 girls who always wear tidy frocks, play the ' Licder ohne Worte,' 
 and visit the poor. I was altogether a detrimental." 
 
 " It was not you, Eve — only your people." 
 
 " My people— meaning my lather. Yes, he was a stumbling-block , 
 no doubt — a man who had gone down in the world, and about whom 
 malevolent people said cruel things. Well, he has not been 
 obtrusive, has he? He has kept himself in the background." 
 
 " My dear, he has been admirable, and your sisters, when I came 
 to know them and understand them, proved altogether unobjection- 
 able. We saw a good deal of each other while you were away." 
 
 " Sophy told me how kind you had been. Yes, they are good 
 girls. Their faults are all on the surface. But the flower of the 
 flock is gone — the brightest and the most loving. She was all love." 
 
 "Take comfort, dear; there' is deep sorrow, but there can be no 
 bitterness in the thought of a child's death." 
 
 " Ah, that is what you religious people say," cried Eve, rebcl- 
 liously, " but I have not faith enough to feel that, Why should she 
 be taken? Life was all before her, full of happiness, of beautiful 
 sights and sounds, and joys untasted. She was taken from the evil 
 to come, you will say — but there might be no evil. There has been 
 no evil in your life ! See how peacefully it has glided by." 
 
 " You forget, Eve, that I have had to sorrow for a beloved 
 husband." 
 
 "Oh, forgive me. Yes, you have felt the burden — the shadow 
 has fallen upon you too — the shadow, and the burden of death. 
 Why did the Creator make a beautiful world, and then spoil it? " 
 
 " Eve, this is blasphemy." 
 
 " The heart must rebel sometimes ; one must ask these questions. 
 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' Is it only the
 
 232 The Venetians, 
 
 fool who says that ? Is it not the bitter cry of all humanity at 
 some time or other ? " 
 
 " Eve, you are writhing under your first sorrow. Let it turn your 
 heart to God, not away from Him. Do you think the unbeliever's 
 creed will give you any comfort? " 
 
 " Comfort? No. There is no comfort in religion, or in unbelief, 
 lleligion only means obedience, and public worship, and kindness to 
 the poor, and a good orderly life. It doesn't mean the certainty of 
 getting back our dead — somewhere, somehow, and being happy 
 again as we have been." 
 
 "We can rest in the hope of that, Eve, knowing that wc arc 
 immortal." 
 
 " Knowing? But we don't know. Nobody has ever come back 
 to tell us. Oh, if but once, only once, for one moment in a year, 
 our dead could come back and look at us, and speak to us, death 
 would not be death." 
 
 Mrs. Vansittart spoke no more of comfort. It was better perhaps 
 to let the troubled heart tire itself out with grieving. Tranquillity 
 would come afterwards. 
 
 " And our son, our son who breathed only to die. He did not 
 live even long enough for baptism. He was dead when the Bishop 
 came hurriedly from his house on the hill. You think perhaps — 
 you who are a strict Anglican — that his soul is in limbo — that he 
 will never see the throne of God. We were going to be so fond of 
 him, Jack and I — and Peggy wanted to live long enough to see him 
 — but she was gone before he came, and he didn't care about living. 
 If she had been well and happy all things would have been different. 
 They would have been running about together in a year or two from 
 now. And now she would have been carrying him about in her 
 arms. He would have been beginning to notice people, and to 
 laugh and coo like that cottager's child we saw yesterday, just about 
 as old as my baby would have been now." 
 
 " My dearest, do you suppose I am not sorry for your loss and 
 for your husband's? But God never meant us to rebel, even in our 
 grief. That must not be." 
 
 "I know I am wicked," said Eve, with a long-drawn sigh. "I 
 have my fits of wickedness. In church yesterday, on my knees at 
 the altar, I thought that I was resigned I almost believed in the 
 heaven where we shall see and know our friends again." 
 
 The dark hour passed, and at sunset, when Vansittart came home 
 from a long day in the plantations, his wife received him with her 
 brightest smile. His coming back after a few hours' absence meant 
 the fulness of joy. 
 
 She had spent a day at Fernhurst, and the sight of her three 
 sisters in their somewhat ostentatious mourning had renewed her
 
 "From the Evil to come" 2\\ 
 
 grief. She had sent them money for mourning, which largesse 
 they had spent conscientiously, and so were swathed in crape and 
 distinctly funereal of aspect. 
 
 There were Peggy's sisters, whose very existence recalled her 
 image too vividly ; and there was Peggy's room, the room which 
 she had shared with Hetty ; and the little bed where she had slept 
 so peacefully, with her nose almost touching the sloping roof, before 
 the cruel cough took hold of her, and disturbed those happy, childish 
 slumbers, with their visions of fairyland, or of castles in the air 
 which seemed solid and real to the dreamer. Everything in that 
 cottage chamber suggested her who slept in a far lovelier spot. 
 
 The room remained just as the child had left it. Peggy's things 
 were sacred. There was her workbox, the substantial, old-fashioned 
 rosewood box, inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, and lined with blue silk, 
 the old, old blue, a colour such as modern taste holds up to scorn — 
 for the box was nearly half a century old, and had belonged to 
 Peggy's grandmother first and to her mother afterwards. It had 
 been given to Peggy because she was the youngest, and the little 
 stock of trinkets was exhausted l>3 r the time her four sisters had 
 each received a souvenir. The amethyst earrings, utterly un- 
 \ carable, for Eve ; the watch which had not gone for years, to 
 S iphy ; and a couple of poor little brooches for Jenny and Hetty. 
 After these jewels had been dealt out there remained only the 
 workbox for Peggy. It had been to her a source of infinite delight. 
 What treasures of doll's clothing, what varieties of fancy-work ; 
 kettle-holders, never to be polluted by a kettle ; mats, never 
 finished ; Berlin-wool cuffs, and point-lace handkerchiefs. Peggy 
 had seldom finished anything ; but the rapture of beginning things 
 had been intense, a fever of enjoyment. 
 
 There were her books upon a little carved Swiss shelf, by her 
 bed. Her lesson-books, thumbed and dog's-eared, everybody else's 
 lesson-books before they descended to her ; that " Grammaire des 
 Grammaires " over which the whole family had toiled, and the 
 Primers which make learning easy and people the world with 
 smatterers. There were gift-books, birthday presents from governess 
 or sisters; the immortal Family Robinson, Grimm, Hans Andersen, 
 Bluebeard, Cinderella. How many a summer dawn Peggy had lain 
 upon that pillow, reading the old fairy-tales before a foot was stirring 
 in the house. Her bed was there, with the prettiest of Bellaggio 
 rugs laid over it, sacred as a shrine. The little room would have 
 been far more convenient for Hetty if that bed had been taken down 
 and put away ; but no one dreamed of removing it. There would 
 have been unlovingness in the mere suggestion. 
 
 Well, they had all to do without Peggy henceforward. There 
 was one link gone from the chain of love. Vansittart looked round
 
 234 The Venetians. 
 
 at his sisters-in-law's faces with an agonized dread. Who would be 
 the next? Which among that tainted flock would be the first to 
 show the inherited poison, the first to feel the cold hand of the 
 destroyer ? 
 
 They all looked bright and healthy. They had all the fair com- 
 plexion and fine roseate bloom which mark the typical English 
 beauty, a loveliness of colour which can almost afford to dispense 
 with perfection of form. They were slenderly made. In a doctor's 
 parlance, there was not much of them to fall back upon — not much 
 in hand at the beginning of a long illness. They were tall and 
 willowy, rather narrow-chested, Vansittart noted with a pang. Yes, 
 assuredly Eve was the flower of the flock. Her chest was broader, 
 her throat fuller and more firmly moulded than the chests and 
 throats of her sisters. The poise of her head was more decided, 
 her whole bearing argued a stronger constitution. She was the off- 
 spring of her mother's youth, before any indication of disease had 
 darkened the young life. She was the offspring of her father's early 
 manhood. The doctors had augured well for her on this account. * 
 
 -*&"• 
 
 The winter was spent very quietly at Merc wood. Vansittart 
 hunted and shot, and he often went home earlier in the winter dusk 
 than became him as a sportsman, in order to take tea with Eve 
 beside the fire. His mother lingered at Merewood, so that Eve 
 should not be alone, the link between the two women strengthening 
 day by day. The sisters came over from Haslemere, and enjoyed 
 all the luxuries of a well-appointed house. Eve and her husband 
 went for two or three short visits to Redwold Towers, and Sir 
 Hubert and Lady Hartley came to Merewood ; he for the last of 
 the pheasants — having pretty nearly cleared his own woods, exten- 
 sive as they were — she for the pleasure of being with Eve, to whom 
 she was sincerely attached. 
 
 And so the winter went by, a not unhappy winter. How could 
 a young wife be unhappy, adoring and adored by her husband ? 
 Hymen's torch glowed with gentlest light beside that hearth where 
 the pine logs were heaped so liberally, pine logs from Vansittart's 
 paternal woods. 
 
 Eve was in high health at Easter, radiant, full of life and spirits, 
 albeit in no wise forgetful of that grave on the hill where the 
 Mare'chal Niel roses were growing so luxuriantly, and which was 
 being carefully tended by stranger hands. There are those at 
 Cannes who take a loving pride in that Garden of Death, whose 
 care it is that this place of rest should be for ever beautiful, a 
 paradise of peace, the very memory whereof should be sweet in the 
 thoughts of the bereaved. Eve could think now with resignation 
 of that tranquil spot, and of the young life which had come to a
 
 " So very Wilful" 235 
 
 sudden pause on earth. Was it a full atop, or only a hyphen? Was 
 it the end of the book, or only the bottom of the page, with the la I 
 word repeated over-leaf, to carry oa the story without a break V 
 
 Mrs. Vansittart insisted that her children should have the free 
 use of the house in Charles Street for the London season. She 
 wanted Eve to enjoy the privileges of her position as the wife of a 
 man of good family and good means. She had also a lingering hope 
 that in the high pressure of London society her son might awaken 
 to some worthy ambition — political or social, and might try to make 
 his mark in the world. She had always been ambitions for him— 
 had always wanted him to do something more than shoot his own 
 pheasants, improve the cottages on his estate, and live within his 
 means. For a young man of his social status, the political arena 
 offered fair scope for ambition, and Mrs. Vansittart had the common 
 idea that any man of good abilities can succeed in politics. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " SO VERY WILFUL." 
 
 Another Easter over, another season beginning, and with all the 
 usual auguries of a season of exceptional splendour — auguries to be 
 exchanged later for dismal elegies upon a season of surpassing 
 dulness and stagnation, which had disappointed everybody, and all 
 but ruined the West End tradesmen. As this jubilant vaticination 
 and these melancholy wailings are repeated year after year, they 
 have come to be of little more significance than the chirping of the 
 newly arriving swifts under the eaves, or the twittering of the 
 swallows assembled for their autumnal flight. Seasons come and 
 seasons go. People are hopeful before the fact, and disappointed 
 after the fact ; the great chorus of humanity goes on. Such is life. 
 A season of hope and disillusion. Contemplate existence from the 
 severest standpoint of the agnostic metaphysician, or from themost 
 exalted platform of the Christian saint, and the ultimate fact is the 
 same. We begin in hope to end in sorrow. 
 
 For Signora Vivanti the after-Easter season began under cheeriest 
 conditions. Her success at the Apollo had been unbroken. The 
 longer she acted a part, the more spirited her acting became. 
 Ignorant and uncultured as she was, she possessed the gift of "gag," 
 knew when and where to introduce a word or a look which delighted 
 her audience ; and the management and her brother and sister 
 artists— more especially the brothers— gave her full scope. These 
 little inspirations of hers became licensed liberties, and her rSle grew 
 and strengthened under her hands. She was the most popular actress 
 who had appeared at the Apollo since the building of the theatre.
 
 236 The Venetians. 
 
 So at Easter the impresario increased the lady's salary for the 
 fourth time since her debut. He knew what tempting offers had 
 been made to her by managers and by agents — how eager one was 
 to send her to America, what dazzling hires another held out for 
 Australasia. Happily, la Vivanti liked London — big, dirty, bustling 
 London — and was content to make her fortune within the sound of 
 Big Ben, whose mighty voice came booming along the tide to Chel- 
 sea when the wind blew from the Essex marshes and the German 
 Ocean. 
 
 Lisa was making her fortune as fast as a young woman of mode- 
 rate desires could wish to make it. To herself she appeared inordi- 
 nately rich. The collet necklace had now a fine half-hoop bracelet 
 to keep it company in the strong box under Lisa's bed, and she had 
 a number of brooches which studded her corsage like a constellation. 
 What the outside world said of Lisa's diamonds was very different 
 from the truth ; but the Venetian neither knew nor cared what the 
 outside world was saying. The people in the theatre were all very 
 kind to her. They knew that she was what Mr. Hawberk called 
 " straight," and that the gems she flashed upon the public eye were 
 honestly come by, the result of an economical existence. She and 
 la Zia were able to live upon so little. A few shreds of meat, messed 
 up in some occult manner with their perpetual pasta, sufficed for 
 dinner. A breakfast of coffee and rolls ; a supper of highly odorous 
 cheese, with sometimes for a festa a dish of cheap pastry from the 
 Swiss confectioner's in the King's Road. Such a cuisine did not 
 make much impression upon Signora Vivanti's salary. She had no 
 servant, except a slovenly female, with depressing manners, who 
 came two mornings a week to scrub floors, clean windows, and black- 
 lead grates. La Zia did all the rest, and delighted in her work. 
 To sweep and dust those palatial apartments was a perpetual joy to 
 her, second only to the delight of tramping up and down the King's 
 Road, exploring every greengrocer's shop till she secured the cheapest 
 vegetables, and lamenting the Rialto, where three lemons could be 
 had for two soldi, and where the pale, bloodless asparagus was less 
 than a quarter the London price of that luxury. Pleasant also was 
 it to la Zia to take the 'bus for Coventry Street, and to prowl about 
 the foreign settlement between the churches of St. Anne and St. 
 Giles ; but oh, what a dull and dismal aspect had the restaurants 
 and table tVlwtes in this quarter, as compared with the Capello Nero 
 and the movement and brightness of the Piazza. 
 
 La Zia was happy, but in spite of an altogether phenomenal 
 success, and of wealth that far surpassed her dreams of fortune, the 
 same could not be said of Fiordelisa. There was that lacking in 
 her young life which changed her gold to dross, her laurels to worth- 
 less weeds, She had loved, and loved passionately, with all the
 
 "So very WilfuV* 237 
 
 force of her undisciplined heart, and her love had been rejected. 
 She Lad steeped her soul in the promise of bliss, had told herself 
 again and again that the kindnesses she received from the man she 
 loved could only be given by a lover. Her notion of ethics was not 
 exalted enough to comprehend Vansittart's desire to atone for a great 
 wrong, or to understand that so much gentleness and generosity 
 could be lavished upon her by any one less than a lover. She had 
 built her soul a palace — not of art, but of love — and when the unreal 
 fabric fell her disappointment had been as crushing as it was unfore- 
 seen. 
 
 After that passionate scene with Vansittart Lisa gave herself up 
 to the luxury of grief. For days she would hardly eat enough to 
 sustain life ; for many nights she tossed sleepless on her bed, sobbing 
 over her vanished hopes, as an undisciplined child weeps for the loss 
 of a promised pleasure. It was only good little Tomaso Zinco's 
 strenuous arguments which ultimately brought her to reason. La 
 Zia could do nothing with her. She turned her face to the wall, like 
 David, and her long blue-black hair was tangled with tossing on her 
 pillow, and wet with her passionate tears. She would not get up, 
 or put on her clothes, or even wash her face. It was her way of 
 scattering ashes on her head, and rending her garments. Her grief 
 had all the fervid unreasonableness of Oriental mourning. 
 
 La Zia was obliged to take the 'cello player into the bedroom, and 
 show him this spectacle of angry despair. 
 
 " He has deserted her — the father of her child," muttered Zinco, 
 in the vestibule, as la Zia tried to explain the situation. "That is 
 bad, bad, bad. Very bad." 
 
 "No, no," said la Zia, shaking her head vehemently; "it is not 
 that. He has done no wrong. He has paid for her lessons, paid 
 her rent, he has done much for us. Only she loved him, and he did 
 not love her. She is like a child. She will not be consoled." 
 
 Zinco nodded a vague assent, but did not believe the good aunt's 
 assurance. Of course this man was the father of her child. Of 
 course she had been his mistress. He had brought her from Venice, 
 and established her in these comfortable lodgings, and now he was 
 tired of her. These things always end so. "Chi va all'acqua si 
 bagna, e chi va a cavallo cade." 
 
 The good little Zinco crept into the room as softly as a cat, and 
 seated his stout and oily person by the bed, where Lisa was lying 
 face downwards, her tearful countenance buried in the pillow, and 
 nothing but a mass of tangled black hair visible above the gaudy 
 Mexican blanket. He gently patted her shoulder, which acknow- 
 ledged the attention with an angry shrug. 
 
 " Come, come, cara mia," pleaded the singing-master. "Is not 
 this a mere childishness, to cry for the moon, when wo have good
 
 238 The Venetians. 
 
 fortune almost at our feet? To cry because just one foolish young 
 man among all the men in the world is not wise enough to know 
 that there is no more beautiful woman than us in London ! And 
 not to eat, and not to sleep, and to cry and sob all day and night. 
 Ahime, che bestia ! This is just the very way to lose our voice, to 
 become mute as one of those nightingales whose tongues were cut 
 out to flavour the pasta for Vitellius. Was there ever such foolish- 
 ness ? Were I a beautiful girl with a fine voice, I would be queen 
 of the world. If he has been cold and cruel show him what a pearl 
 he has lost. It is not by lying here and crying that you will bring 
 him to reason. Get up and dress yourself, and come to the 
 piano. I'll wager you will not be able to take the upper C in 
 ' Roberto.' " 
 
 Lisa listened in sullen silence, but she did listen, and it seemed to her 
 that the words of Zinco were the words of wisdom. To lose her voice 
 ■ — her voice which was her fortune — and to lose her good looks, which 
 alone had lifted her from the herd of peasants, living in penury, toil- 
 ing from sunrise to sunset, unknown and ill-clad, and dying uncared 
 for, save by creatures as poor and as hopeless as themselves ! Yes, 
 Zinco was right ; that would indeed be foolishness, and not the way 
 to win him whose love her sick soul longed for. Perhaps if she were 
 a public singer, and all the world admired her, he would admire her 
 too. He would see in the eyes of other men that she was handsome, 
 and worthy to be admired. He would hear on the lips of other men 
 that she was worthy of praise. 
 
 " I'll get up," she said, without lifting her tear-stained face from 
 the pillow. "Go into the sala and wait for me. I won't be long. 
 You shall see I haven't lost my voice." 
 
 " Bene, benissimo, Si'ora," cried the master, rubbing his fat little 
 hands, " now she speaks like a woman of spirit. She is not going 
 to give up the world for love, like Marc Antony at Actium." 
 
 He shufrled off to the sitting-room, seated himself at the piano, 
 and began to play the symphony of " Una Voce " with that grandly 
 decisive style of a man who has played all his life in an orchestra. 
 It was a refreshment to Lisa's weary spirit to hear that sparkling 
 music, light, gay, capricious as summer wavelets. 
 
 She joined her teacher at the piano in a much shorter time than 
 a young Englishwoman would have needed to complete her toilet, 
 yet she looked fresh enough in her southern beauty, and there were 
 glittering water-drops in her hair which gave a suggestion of a young 
 river goddess. 
 
 " Now, then, sir, play ' Roberto,' and you will see if my voice is 
 broken." 
 
 She attacked the scena with wonderful dash and spirit, and was, 
 in sporting phraseology, winning easily till she came to that C in
 
 "So very Wilful" 239 
 
 a ]t — but hero her voice snapped. She tried a second time, and a 
 third time— but the note was gone. She gave a cry of rage, and 
 then burst into tears. 
 
 "Ecco," exclaimed Zinco, with a triumphant air, "that is what 
 your love-sick nonsense has done for you. You have been singing 
 as false as a prima donna at a cafe, chantant in the Boulevard St. 
 .Michel, and your upper C is gone. It would have been worth £40 
 a week to you, but you have thrown it away." 
 
 At this, Lisa continued her lamentation, deeply sorry for herself. 
 
 ;i There's no use in crying," said Zinco ; " that only makes tilings 
 worse. Bisogna sempre aver pazienza in questo mondo. You had 
 better dry your tears and eat a beefsteak— bleeding — and drink a 
 pint of port-beer. Malibran used to drink port-beer. In one of her 
 great scenes she had her quart pot on the stage, hidden behind a set 
 piece — a rock, or what not — and after her cavatina she would fall 
 on the stage as if fainting, and drag herself to the back of the rock 
 and drink ; ah, how she would drink ! " 
 
 " I don't want to lose my voice," sobbed Lisa, to whom Malibran 
 was but an empty name. 
 
 " No. Yet you go just the right way to lose it. Come, cheer up, 
 Si'ora. Eat much steaks, drink much stout, for the next three days. 
 Andiamo adagio. Don't sing a note till I come next Saturday 
 afternoon to give you your lesson." 
 
 Zinco's policy prevailed. Lisa fretted sorely at the thought of 
 losing that voice which was to be her fortune. She had told herself 
 in her despair that fame and fortune would be useless without the 
 man she loved — that she had only wished to succeed as a singer in 
 order to please him. And now she began to see the situation in a 
 new light. She wanted to be admired and famous like the singers 
 whom she had seen at Covent Garden, curtsying behind a pile of 
 bouquets, while the house resounded with applause. She wanted 
 to be applauded like those famous singers, so that the cruel Smith 
 might see her, and be sorry that he had refused her his heart. Who 
 could tell? Perhaps seeing her so admired, hearing her voice ring 
 clear and sweet through the theatre, he might abandon his tuneless 
 English sweetheart, and come back to Lisa, come back as lover, as 
 husband. Zinco had told her that a fashionable prima donna could 
 not look too high. She would have all London at her feet. It 
 would be for her to choose. 
 
 Lisa had a strong will, and a wonderful power of self-command 
 when she really wanted to command herself; so she dried her tears, 
 ate British beef, almost raw, and drank British stout ; and under 
 this regime her nerves speedily recovered from the rude shaking 
 which passion had given them, and when the good little 'cello 
 player came to give her the Saturday lesson, her voice rang out
 
 240 The Venetians, 
 
 Bound as a bell, and B natural was produced with perfect ease — a 
 round and perfect note. 
 
 " We'll wait till next Tuesday for the C," said Zinco, " and we 
 won't try ' Roberto ' for a week or so. Stick to the Solfeggi." 
 
 " And I have not lost ray voice, caro ? " 
 
 " No more than I have lost a thousand pounds, poveretta." 
 
 After this things went smoothly. Life seemed veiy dreary to 
 Fiordelisa without the friend whose rare visits had been her delight; 
 but her mind was braced and fortified by a steady purpose. She 
 meant to win the great British public ; and behind that indefinite 
 monster there shone the image of the man she loved. He would go 
 to the theatre where she sang. He would see her, and understand 
 at last that she was beautiful and gifted, and worthy to be loved. 
 
 " And then he knows that I love him with all the strength of my 
 heart," she said to herself. " That ought to count for something. 
 Yet when I told him of my love he shrank from me, as if he hated 
 me for loving him. That is his cold English nature, perhaps. An 
 Englishman does not like unasked love." 
 
 Lisa was two years older than in that day of despair, and Zinco's 
 promises had been realized. She had the town at her feet ; and if 
 the coronet matrimonial had not yet been laid there she had received 
 plenty of that adulation and of those advances which cannot be 
 accepted without peril. All such advances Lisa had repulsed with 
 a splendid scorn. Carriages, servants, West End apartments, and 
 St. John's Wood villas had been offered her ; but she still rode in 
 penny omnibuses or twopenny steamers, or trudged valiantly in 
 cheap shoes. She might have had an open account with any silk 
 mercer in London. She might have had her frocks made by the 
 dressmaker on the crest of fashion's changeful wave — but she was 
 content to wear a black stuff gown, with a bit of bright ribbon tied 
 round her neck, and another bit twisted in her hair. When she 
 wanted to look her best she put on her bead necklace — one of those 
 necklaces which the man she loved bought for her in the Procuratie 
 Yecchie on that fatal night. The idea that he had bought the 
 murderous dagger at the same shop in no wise lessened her pleasure 
 in these gifts of his. 
 
 Among her numerous admirers one only had been received by the 
 lady and her aunt, and that was Wilfred Sefton, who had contrived 
 to establish a footing in the Signora's drawing-room before Zinco 
 could protest against his admission. He had so managed as to be 
 regarded as a friend by both aunt and niece, and the boy, whom he 
 detested, had grown odiously fond of him. He had known Lisa for 
 a year and a half, had seen her often, had spent long summer days 
 in her company, and in all that time he had never addressed her as
 
 "So very Wilful" 241 
 
 a lover. He knew, too well, from many a subtle sign and token, 
 that his going or coming affected her not at all ; that she liked him 
 and welcomed him only because his presence and his attentions 
 made a pleasant variety in the dulness of her domestic life. He 
 knew this. He knew that whatever she might have been in the 
 past, she was a virtuous woman in the present, that she courted no 
 man's admiration, and was tempted by no man's gold. Convinced 
 of this, finding her as remote in her quiet indifference as if she had 
 been some young patrician pacing her ancestral park in maiden 
 meditation, fancy free, his desire to win her intensified until she 
 seemed to him the only woman in the world worth winning. Had 
 she been easily won he might have been tired of her before now. 
 His grandes passions in the past had been of short duration. Un- 
 speakable weariness had descended upon him as a blight ; the loath- 
 ing of life and all it could yield him. Lisa's indifference gave a 
 piquancy to their relations. He told himself that he could afford 
 to bide his time. He had done a good deal of mischief in the world; 
 but he was not a vulgar profligate. His love was an unscrupulous 
 but not a vulgar love. 
 
 'b c 
 
 The white kitten, a thoroughbred Persian, and a gift from Mrs. 
 lliwberk, had grown into a great white cat, stolid, beautiful, resent- 
 ful of strange caresses, but devotedly attached to Lisa and her boy. 
 He was called Marco, after the patron saint of Venice ; and he 
 looked like the white cat of fairy tale, wbo might be transformed at 
 any moment into Prince Charming. 
 
 By the time Marco had grown up Mr. Sefton had made himself 
 accepted as a trusted and familiar friend, and in this season of 
 ripening spring, when the lilacs and laburnums filled the suburban 
 gardens with perfume and colour, and when the hawthorn bushes 
 were beginning to break into clusters of scented blossom hero and 
 there, it was bis business and his pleasure to afford some glimpses 
 of a fairer world to the little family at Chelsea. 
 
 The holiday which Fiordelisa and her belongings most enjoyed 
 was a day on the river. They would have taken boat at Chelsea, 
 if Sefton had allowed them, and would have been content to be 
 rowed to Hammersmith Bridge ; but lie insisted on introducing 
 them to Father Thames under a fairer aspect ; so they usually took 
 the train to Richmond, and from Richmond Bridge Sefton rowed 
 them to Kingston or Hampton, where they lunched at some quiet 
 inn, and sat in some rustic inn garden, or sauntered in those lovely 
 old Palace gardens by the river, till it was time to go back to the 
 boat and the train. Sefton was too punctual and business-like to 
 permit any risk of the singer's non-appearance. He took care that 
 Lisa should always be at the Apollo in time for her work.
 
 242 The Venetians. 
 
 These days were very delightful to him, even in spite of Paolo, 
 whose attentions were sometimes boring. Happily, Paolo loved 
 the water with an instinctive hereditary passion, the instinct of 
 amphibious ancestors, born and bred on a level with the lagunes — 
 reared half on sea and half on land. It was amusement enough for 
 him to sit in the stern of the skiff and dabble a bare arm in the 
 stream, or to watch the little paper boats which la Zia made for him, 
 or the great white swans which hissed menaces at him with hori- 
 zontal necks as they paddled slowly by, sacrificing grace and state- 
 liness to unreasoning anger. Sefton put up with Paolo, and was 
 happy in the society of two ignorant women, delighting in Lisa's 
 naivete,, finding a delicious originality in all her remarks upon life 
 and the world she lived in, her stories of green-room quarrels and 
 side-scene flirtations. Talk which might have sounded silly and 
 vulgar in English was fascinating in Italian — all the more fascinating 
 in that Venetian dialect which so languidly slurred the syllables, 
 lazily dropping the consonants, and which had in its soft elisions 
 something childlike that touched Sefton's fancy. He took pleasure 
 in Lisa's talk almost as if she had been a child, while those sudden 
 flashes of shrewdness, natural to the peasant of all countries, assured 
 him that she was no fool. 
 
 He thought of Emma Hamilton, and wondered whether the charm 
 which held Nelson till the hour of death, and made his Emma the 
 last thought when life grew dim, were some such childlike spon- 
 taneous charm as this of Lisa's, the charm of unsophisticated woman- 
 hood, adapted to no universal pattern, cut and polished in no social 
 diamond-mill. 
 
 Yes, she had charmed him in their first interview, sitting out in 
 the chilly tent, amidst the glimmer of fairy lamps. She charmed 
 him still, after a year and a half of familiar friendship. She, the 
 ignorant and low-born ; he, the modern worldling, who had touched 
 the highest culture at every point, strained his intellect to reach 
 every goal, measured himself against every theory of life here and 
 hereafter, and found happiness nowhere. She pleased him all the 
 more because she was not a lady, and made none of the demands 
 which the modern lady makes over-strenuously — the demand to be 
 treated as a boon companion and yet worshipped as a goddess ; the 
 demand of your money, your mind, your time, your wit, your trouble. 
 Lisa had no idea of women's rights, and she was grateful for the 
 simplest festa which her admirer offered her. Never had a grande 
 passion cost him so little. This girl, who had -worked in the lace 
 factory at Burano for a few pence per day, and had lived mostly on 
 polenta, sternly refused anything in the shape of a gift, even to a 
 bunch of flowers, if she thought they were costly. 
 
 " I like the cheap flowers best," she said, "the blue and yellow
 
 "So very Wilful." 243 
 
 ones that they sell in the streets, or the great red poppies la Zia buys, 
 which flame in the fireplace, ever so much brighter than a real fire." 
 
 Often, in a casual way, he had tried to make her talk of Vansittart, 
 but in vain. She would say nothing about him, yet she was curious 
 to know all that Sefton could tell her about the man with whom he 
 had seen her talking. Sefton took his revenge by a studious 
 reticence. 
 
 " Yes, I know the man," he said, when the subject was mooted 
 in the early days of their acquaintance. 
 
 " Do you know him intimately ? Is he your friend ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " You look and speak as if you did not like him." 
 
 " I look and speak as I feel." 
 
 " Why don't you like him? " urged Lisa. 
 
 " Who knows? We all have our likings and our antipathies." 
 
 " But if he has never injured you " 
 
 "That is a negative merit. I dislike a good many people who 
 have never done me any harm." 
 
 " He is going to be married, I hear." 
 
 " He is married. He was married last summer." 
 
 " Do you know his wife ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Is she beautiful ? " 
 
 " Not so beautiful as you ; but she has a complexion like the inside 
 of a sea-shell. You know those pale shells, almost transparent, with 
 a rosy flush that is less a colour than a light. She has pale gold 
 hair, which shines round her low, broad forehead like a nimbus in 
 one of Fra Angelico's pictures of Virgins and angels. She is rather 
 like an old Italian picture, of that early school which chose a golden- 
 haired ideal and left your glowing Southern beauty out in the cold. 
 She is not so handsome as you, belissima." 
 
 " Yet he liked her better than he liked me. What is the good 
 of my being handsome? He did not care," said Lisa, passionately. 
 
 It was the first time she had betrayed herself to Sefton. He 
 smiled, and glanced from the mother's angry face to the boy, who 
 was hanging about her knee, unconsciously reproducing the attitude 
 of many an infant St. John. 
 
 " Yes, there can be no doubt," he told himself, " Vansittart is 
 the man she loved, and this brat must be Vansittart's offspring." 
 
 Lady Hartley had told him that her brother had been a rambler 
 in Italy and the Tyrol for years before her marriage.
 
 244 The Venetians. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE LITTLE RIFT. 
 
 It was summer-time in London ; the butterfly season, in which 
 the metropolis of the world puts on such a splendour of gaiety and 
 luxury that it is hard to remember the fog and damp and dreari- 
 ness of a long winter ; hard to believe that this Stately West End 
 London can ever be otherwise than beautiful. Are not her hotels 
 palaces, and her parks paradises of foliage and flowers, fashion and 
 beauty — with only an occasional incursion from the Processional 
 Proletariat ? Country cousins seeing the great city in this joyous 
 season may be excused for thinking that life in London is always 
 delectable ; and, bored to death in their country quarters in the dull 
 depth of an agricultural winter, or suffering under the discomforts 
 of a ten-mile journey behind a pair of " boilers," on a snow-bound 
 road, to a third-rate ball, may not unnaturally envy the children of 
 the city their January and February dances, and dinners, and 
 theatres, all, as these rustics imagine, within a quarter of an hour's 
 drive. 
 
 Eve Vansittart thoroughly enjoyed the pleasures of a London 
 season ; the jaunts and excitements by day ; Hurlingham, Sandown, 
 Ascot, Henley, Lord's, Barn Elms ; the ever-delightful morning 
 ride, the evening drive in the Park, with its smiling flower-beds, 
 ablaze with gaudy colour that rivalled the scarlet plumes and 
 shining breast-plates flashing past now and again between the 
 close ranks of carriages. Yes, London was brilliant, vivid, noisy, 
 full of startling sights and sounds by day ; and by night a city of 
 enchantment, where one might wander from house to house to 
 mingle in a mob of more or less beautiful women, and beautiful 
 gowns, and diamonds that took one's breath away by their magnifi- 
 cence. A city of fairyland, with awnings over stately doorways, 
 and gardens and balconies aglitter with coloured lamps ; and gor- 
 geous reception-rooms where one heard all that there is of the most 
 exquisite in modern music — violin and 'cello, tenor and soprano — 
 the stars of opera and concert-hall, breathing their finer strains for 
 the delight of these choicer assemblies. 
 
 There are circles and circles in London, as many as in the pro- 
 gressive After-life of Esoteric Buddhism, and it is not to be sup- 
 posed that a small Hampshire squire, with a paltry three thousand 
 a year, was in the uppermost and most sacred heaven ; but the 
 circles touch and mingle very often in the larger gatherings of the 
 season, and though Eve Vansittart was not on intimate terms with 
 duchesses, she often rubbed shoulders with them 3 and for an evening
 
 The Littte Rift. 245 
 
 lived the life they lived, and thrilled to the same melodious strains, 
 and melted almost to tears to the same music of Wolff or Holl- 
 mann, till pleasure verged upon pain, and borne upon the long- 
 drawn notes of violin or 'cello, came sad, sweet memories of the 
 years that were gone. Vansittart knew plenty of people who were 
 decidedly " nice," and these included a sprinkling of the nobility, 
 and a good many givers of fine parties. His wife's beauty and 
 charm of manner ensured her a prompt acceptance among people 
 outside that circle of old friends who would have accepted her as 
 a duty, even had she been neither lovely nor amiable. 
 
 The most enjoyable parties must at last produce satiety, if they 
 come every night, and sometimes two or three in a night; and 
 there came a time when Eve's strength began to hag, and her 
 spirits to droop a little in the midst of these pleasures, this paradise 
 of music and Parisian comedy, of dances after midnight, and 
 coaching meets at noon. 
 
 Vansittart noticed the pallid morning face and purple shadows 
 under the dark grey eyes. 
 
 " We are doing too much, Eve," he said anxiously. " I am 
 letting you kill yourself." 
 
 "It is a very pleasant kind of death," answered Eve, smiling at 
 him across the small breakfast-table, where a grilled chicken for him, 
 a dish of strawberries for her, comprised the simple repast, a repast 
 over which they always lingered as long as their engagements 
 allowed, since it was the only confidential hour in the day. At 
 luncheon people were always running in ; or there was a snug little 
 party invited for that friendly meal. Dinner was rarely eaten at 
 home, except when they had a dinner-party. " It is a very delicious 
 death, and I shall take a long time killing. Perhaps when I am 
 as old as Honoria, Duchess of Boscastle, I shall begin to feel I have 
 had enough." 
 
 " My dearest, I love to see you happy and amused, but I mustn't 
 let you wear yourself out. We must have a quiet day now and 
 then." 
 
 " As many quiet days as you like, as long as they are spent with 
 you. Shall we go to Haslemere and take the girls for a picnic — 
 this very day ? No, there is Maud's dinner-party to-night. Fern- 
 hurst would be too far. We could not get home to dress, without 
 a rush, if we took a really long day on Bexley Hill." 
 
 " Fernhurst and the sisters will keep till the autumn, especially 
 as you will be having Sophy here to-morrow." 
 
 " Yes, I shall be having Sophy " — with a faint sigh. " We shall 
 have no more cosy little breakfasts like this for a whole week." 
 
 " Nonsense. We can send Sophy's breakfast up to her room, 
 with strict injunctions not to get up till eleven. People who ain't
 
 246 The Venetians. 
 
 used to parties always want a lot of sleep in the morning. Sophy 
 shall he made to sleep. But, for to-day, now? What should you 
 say to a long, lazy day on the river ? We can take the train to 
 Moulsey, and row down to Richmond." 
 
 " Too delicious for words. But there is a tea-party in Berkeley 
 Square, and another at Hyde Park Gardens. I promised to go to 
 both." 
 
 " Then you will go to neither. You can send telegrams from 
 Moulsey to say you are seedy, and your doctor ordered a quiet day 
 in the country — I being your doctor for the nonce. We'll steep 
 ourselves in the mild beauty of Old Father Thames, a poor little 
 river when one remembers Danube and Rhine ; but he will serve 
 for our holiday." 
 
 He rang for a time-table, found a train that was to leave Waterloo 
 at eleven, and ordered the victoria to take them to the station. 
 
 " Now, Eve, your coolest frock, and your favourite poet to read 
 in your luxurious seat in the stern, while I toil at the oar. Be sure 
 you will not read a page during the whole afternoon ! The willows 
 and rushes, the villa gardens dipping to the water's edge, the people 
 in the passing boats, the patient horses on the tow-path — those will 
 be your books, living, moving, changing things, compared witli 
 which Keats and Musset are trash, Endymion colourless, La Car- 
 mago a phantom." 
 
 " I'll take Musset," said Eve, pouncing upon a vellum-bound 
 duodecimo — a chef dfoeuvre of Zaehnsdorf's, which was one of 
 Vansittart's latest gifts. " He has opened a new world to me." 
 
 " A very wicked world for your young innocence to explore ; a 
 world of midnight rendezvous and early morning assassinations ; a 
 world of unholy loves and savage revenges — the dagger, the bowl, 
 the suicide's despair, the satiated worldling's vacuity. Yet he is a 
 poet — ain't he, Eve ? — the greatest France ever produced. Com- 
 pared with that fiery genius Hugo is but a rhetorician." 
 
 They were at Hampton before noon, and on the river in the 
 fierce golden sunlight, when Hampton Church clock struck the hour, 
 Eve leaning back in her cushioned seat, gazing dreamily at the lazy 
 rower midships. They had the current to help them, so there was 
 no need for strenuous toil. The oars dipped gently ; the church 
 and village, Garrick's Temple, the gaily decked house-boats with 
 gardens on their roofs and bright striped awnings, barracks, bridge, 
 old Tudor Palace, drifted by like shadows in a dream. Eve did 
 not open De Musset, though the ribbon marked a page where 
 passion hung suspended in tragic possibilities ; a crisis which might 
 well have stimulated curiosity. She was too happy to be curious 
 about anything. It was her first holiday on the river, they two alone. 
 
 " If this is your idea of resting let us rest very often," said Eve.
 
 The Little Rift. 247 
 
 She would not hear of landing at Kingston for luncheon. She 
 wanted nothing but the river, and the sunshine, and his company, 
 all to herself. She would have some tea, if he liked, later; and 
 seeing an open-air tea-house a little lower down the river, and a 
 garden where at this early hour there were no visitors, Vansittart 
 pushed the nozzle of his skiff in among the reeds, and they landed, 
 and ordered tea and eggs and bread and butter to be served in a 
 rustic arbour close by the glancing tide. 
 
 " I dare say there are water-rats about," said Eve, gathering her 
 pale pink frock daintily round her ankles, "but I feel as if I should 
 hardly mind one to-day." 
 
 They both enjoyed this humble substitute for their customary 
 luncheon. It was a relief to escape the conventional menu — the 
 everlasting mayonnaise, the cutlets hot or cold, the too familiar 
 chicken and lamb. The tea and eggs in this vine-curtained bower 
 had the most exquisite of all flavours — novelty. 
 
 " I am so happy," cried Eve, " that I think, like Miss de Bourgh 
 in ' Pride and Prejudice,' I could sing — if I had learnt." 
 
 " Your face is my music," said her husband, his face reflecting 
 her happy smile ; " your laughter is better than singing." 
 
 " Oh, you mustn't, you really mustn't talk like that ; at least, not 
 till our silver wedding," protested Eve. " You will have to make 
 a speech, perhaps, on that anniversary, and you might incorporate 
 that idea in it. ' What, ladies and gentlemen, in returning thanks 
 for your kind compliments and this truly magnificent epergne, can 
 I say of my wife of five and twenty blissful years, except that I 
 love her, I love her, I love her? Her face is my music; her laughter 
 is better than singing.' How would that do, Jack? " 
 
 Her clear laugh rang out in the still summer air. No female of 
 the great Bounder tribe could have enjoyed herself more frankly. 
 Vansittart would hardly have been surprised if she had offered to 
 exchange hats with him. 
 
 " Five and twenty years ! A quarter of a century," she said 
 musingly. "I wonder what we shall be like, three and twenty 
 years hence — what the world will be like — what kind of frocks will 
 he worn? " 
 
 " Will the cylinder hat be abolished? " 
 
 ' : Shall we still travel by steam, or only by electricity ? " 
 
 " What gun-maker will be in vogue? " 
 
 " What kind of lap-dog will be the rage ? " 
 
 In this wise they dawdled an hour away, having garden and 
 arbour all to themselves, till after three o'clock, when a couple of 
 Bounder-laden boats came noisily to the reedy bank, and their 
 human cargo landed, scrambling upon shore, hilarious, exploding 
 into joyous cockney jests, with the true South London twang.
 
 248 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 " Come," said Vansittart, " it is time we were off." 
 
 " Are you sure you have rested? " 
 
 " From my Herculean labours ? Yes." 
 
 They drifted down the river, praising or dispraising tli 2 villas on 
 the Middlesex shore, inhaling the sweetness of flowering clover from 
 the Surrey fields ; he leaning lazily on his sculls, she prattling to him, 
 as much lovers as in the outset of their wooing ; and so to Tedding- 
 ton Lock, where they had to wait for a boat to come out, before 
 their boat went in. 
 
 It was the laziest hour of the day, and scarcely a leaf stirred 
 among the willows on the eyot hard by. There was only the sound 
 of the water, and the voices of the rowers, muffled by the heavy 
 wooden gates and high walls of the smaller lock. Suddenly the doors 
 opened. A skiff with lour passengers slowly emerged from the yawn- 
 ing darkness, and a voice, strong, yet silvery sweet, broke upon the 
 quiet of the scene, a voice at whose first word Vansittart started as 
 if he had been shot. 
 
 The speaker started too, and gave a cry of surprise that was almost 
 rapture. A girl, hatless, with dark hair heaped carelessly on the top 
 of her small head, a girl with the loveliest Italian eyes Eve had ever 
 seen, leaned forward over the gunwale, stretching out both her 
 gloveless hands to Vansittart. 
 
 " It is } T ou," she cried in Italian ; " I thought I should never see 
 you again ; " and then, with a quick glance at Eve, and in almost a 
 whisper, " Is that vour wife ? " 
 
 " Si, Si'ora.*' 
 
 The girl looked at Eve with bold unfriendlv eves, and from her 
 looked back again to Vansittart, as his boat passed into the lock. 
 Her manner had been so absorbing, her beauty was so startling, that 
 it was only in this last moment that Eve recognized the man rowing 
 as Sefton, and saw that the other two passengers were a stout middle- 
 aged woman and a little boy, both of them dark eyed and foreign 
 looking, like the girl. 
 
 When Eve and Vansittart looked at each other in the gloom of 
 the lock both were deadly pale. 
 
 " Who is that girl? " she asked huskilv. 
 
 " An Italian singer — Signora Vivanti. You must have heard of 
 her ; she is the rage at the Apollo." 
 
 " But she knows you — intimately. She was enraptured at seeing 
 you. Her whole face lighted up." 
 
 " That is the southern manner; an organ-grinder will do as much 
 for you if you fling him a penny." 
 
 " How did you come to know her? " 
 
 " In Italy, years ago, before she began to be famous." 
 
 They were out of the lock by this time, and in the broad sunshine.
 
 The Little Rift. 249 
 
 Eve could see that her husband's pallor was not an illusive effect of 
 the green gloom in that deep well they had just left. 
 
 He was white to the lips. 
 
 Sefton ! Sefton and Fiordelisa hand in glove with each other ! 
 That was a perilous alliance. And Lisa's manner, claiming him so 
 impulsively, darting that evil look at his wife! He saw himself 
 hemmed round with dangers, saw the menace of his domestic peace 
 from two most formidable influences : on the one hand Lisa's slighted 
 love ; on the other Sefton's hatred of a successful rival. The fear 
 of untoward complications, coming suddenly upon the happy security 
 of his wedded life, was so absorbing that he was unconscious of 
 Eve's pallor and of her suppressed agitation while questioning him. 
 
 " You knew her in Italy," said Eve, her head bent a little, one 
 listless hand dabbling in the sunlit water that reflected the vivid 
 colouring of the boat in gleams of lapis and malachite. " In what part 
 of Italy ? Tell me all about her. I am dying of curiosity. There 
 was such odious familiarity in her manner." 
 
 " Again I must refer you to any organ-grinder as an example of 
 southern exuberance." 
 
 " Yes, yes, that is all very fine, but Signora Vivanti must belong 
 to a higher grade than the organ-grinder. She is not to be judged 
 by his standard." 
 
 " There you are wrong. She is of peasant birth." 
 
 "Indeed. She certainly looks common; beautiful, but essentially 
 common. Well, Jack, where and when did you meet her ? " 
 
 " Years ago, as I told you. Where ? " hesitatingly, as if trying 
 to fix a vague memory, while lurid before his mental vision there 
 rose the scene at Florian's, the lights, the crowd, the Babel of music 
 from brass and strings, mandoline and ilute, every stone of the citv 
 resonant with varied melodies. " Where ? " he repeated, seeing her 
 looking at him impatiently. " Why, I think it was in Verona." 
 
 " You think. She had a very distinct memory of meeting you, 
 at any rate " — with a little scornful laugh. " If you were her bosom 
 friend her greeting could not have been warmer." 
 
 " Mere Celtic impulsiveness. One meets with as much warmth 
 in the south of Ireland. Hotel waiters have the air of clansmen, who 
 would shed their blood for us. Hotel acquaintances seem as old 
 friends." 
 
 " How did you come to know this girl— peasant born, as you say ? " 
 
 " She was in a factory, and Iwas going over the factory, and I talked 
 
 to her, and she told me her troubles, and I was interested and 
 
 The same sort of thing happens a dozen times on a Continental tour. 
 You don't want chapter and verse, I hope. That memory is im- 
 meshed in a tangle of other memories. 1 should only deceive you 
 if I went into particulars."
 
 250 The Venetians. 
 
 He had recovered himself by this time, and the colour had come 
 slowly back to his face. Eve sat dumbly watching him as he bent 
 over the sculls, rowing faster than he need have clone, much faster 
 than on the other side of the lock. He was ready to lie with an appal- 
 ling recklessness if he could by so doing set up a barrier of falsehood 
 between his wife and the true story of that night in Venice. He 
 looked at her presently, and saw that she was troubled. He smiled, 
 but there was no answering smile. 
 
 " My darling, you are not by way of being jealous, I hope," he 
 said gaily. " You are not unhappy because a peasant girl held out 
 her hands to me." 
 
 " Siguora Yivanti has been long enough in England to know that 
 a woman does not behave in that way to an almost stranger," said 
 Eve. '• Why did you look frightened at the sound of her voice when 
 the boat came out of the lock ? Why did you turn pale when she 
 spoke to you ? " 
 
 " Did I really turn pale? I suppose I was a little scared at her 
 demonstrative address, fearing lest it should offend you. One has 
 time to think of so many contingencies in a few moments. But I 
 did not imagine you would take the matter so very seriously. Come, 
 dearest, I think you know I have but one divinity below the stars, 
 and worship at only one shrine." 
 
 " Now, perhaps — but what do I know of the past ? " 
 
 "If in the past I have admired and even fancied I loved women 
 less admirable than yourself, be sure this woman was not one of them. 
 No ghost of a dead love looks out of her eyes, beautiful as they are." 
 
 '• 1 must believe you," sighed Eve. "I want to believe you, and 
 to be happy again." 
 
 " Foolish Eve. Can it be that an irrepressible young woman's 
 greeting could interfere with your happiness ? " 
 
 " It was foolish, no doubt. Women are very foolish when they 
 love their husbands as I love you. There are scores of women I meet 
 who think of their husbands as lightly as of their dressmakers. 
 Would you like me to be that kind of wife— to be lunching and gad- 
 ding, and driving and dancing in one direction, while you are betting 
 and dining and card-playing somewhere else ? I should be nearer 
 being a woman of fashion than I am now." 
 
 (i Be ever what you are now. Be jealous, even, if jealousy be a 
 proof of love." 
 
 ,; There was a child in the boat — a handsome black-eyed boy. 
 Is he her child, do you think ? " 
 
 Having affected ignorance at the outset, Yansittart was forced to 
 maintain his attitude. 
 
 '•Chi lo sa? " he said, with a careless shrug. 
 
 '• Was it not odd that Mr. Sefton should be escorting her? "
 
 The Little Rift. 251 
 
 "Not especially odd. She is a public character, and has troops 
 of admirers, no doubt. Why should not Sefton be among them ? " 
 
 " I never heard him mention her when he was talking of the 
 theatres." 
 
 " Men seldom speak of the woman they admire — especially if 
 the lady is not in society — and Sefton is reticent about a good many 
 things." 
 
 After this they talked of trifles, lightly, but with a somewhat studied 
 lightness. Eve seemed again content; but her gaiety was gone, as 
 if her spirits had drooped with the vanishing of the sun, which now 
 at five o'clock was hidden by threatening clouds. 
 
 At Richmond Bridge they left their boat, to be taken back by a 
 waterman, and walked through the busy town to the station. An 
 express took them to London in good time for dressing and dining 
 at Lady Hartley's state dinner. She had a large house in Hill Street 
 this year, and was entertaining a good deal. 
 
 " My dear Eve, you are looking utterly washed out," she said to 
 her sister-in-law in the drawing-room after dinner. " You must come 
 to us at Redwold directly after Goodwood — you could come straight 
 from Goodwood, don't you know — and let me nurse you." 
 
 " You are too kind. I think, though, it would be a greater rest 
 if I were to go to Fernhurst for a few days, and let the sisters and 
 Nancy take care of me. A taste of the old poverty, the whitewashed 
 attics, and the tea-dinners would act as a tonic. I am debilitated 
 by pleasures and luxuries." 
 
 "You were looking bright enough last night at Mrs. Cameron's 
 French play." 
 
 " Was I ? Perhaps I laughed too much at Coquelin cadet, or eat 
 too many strawberries." 
 
 Lady Hartle} r had an evening party after the dinner, and it was a 
 shock for Vansittart on coming into the drawing-room at half-past 
 ten, after a long-drawn-out political discussion with a big-wig of Sir 
 Hubert's party, to find Sefton and Eve sitting side by side in a flowery 
 nook near the piano, where at this moment Oscar do Lampion, the 
 Belgian tenor, was casting his fine eyes up towards the ceiling, pre- 
 paratory to the melting strains of his favourite serenade — 
 
 "And thou canst sleep, while from the rain-washed lawn 
 
 Thy lover watches for thy passing shade 
 Across the blind, and sobs and sighs till dawn 
 
 Glows o'er the vale and creeps along the glade. 
 And thou canst sleep — thou heedest not his sighing; 
 And thou canst sleep — thou wouldst if he were dying ; 
 Yes, thou canst sleep — canst sleep — sleep." 
 
 There was a second verse to the same effect, exquisitely sung, but
 
 i'5 2 The Venetians. 
 
 worn threadbare by familiarity, which Vansittart heard impatiently, 
 watching Eve and her companion, and longing to break in upon their 
 seclusion. They were silent now, since they could not with decency 
 talk while De Lampion was singing. 
 
 There were only two verses. De Lampion was too much an artist 
 to sing lengthy songs, although too lazy to extend his repertoire. 
 He liked people to be sorry when he left off. 
 
 Vansittart dropped into a chair near his wife. The rooms had 
 not filled yet, so there was a possibility of sitting down, and this 
 quiet corner, screened by an arrangement of palms and tall golden 
 lilies, was a pleasant haven for conversation in the brief intervals 
 between the music, which was of that superior order which is heard 
 in respectful silence by everybody within earshot, though the people 
 outside the room talk to their hearts' content, a buzz of multitudinous 
 voices breaking in upon the silence whenever a door is opened. 
 
 Sefton and Vansittart shook hands directly the song was over. 
 
 " I was told you were to dine here," said Vansittart, as an obvious 
 opening. 
 
 " Lady Hartley was kind enough to ask me, but I had an earlier 
 engagement in Chelsea. I have been dining with the Hawberks — 
 the composer, don't you know. Sweet little woman, Mrs. Hawberk 
 — so sympathetic. You know them, of course." 
 
 " Only from meeting them at other people's houses." 
 
 " Ah, you should know Hawberk. He's a glorious fellow. You 
 must spare me an hour or two to meet him at breakfast some 
 Sunday morning, when Mrs. Vansittart doesn't want you to go to 
 church with her." 
 
 " I always want him," said P>e, with a decisive air. 
 
 " And does he always go? " 
 
 " Always." 
 
 " A model husband. I put down the husbands who attend the 
 morning service among the great army of hen-pecked, together 
 with the husbands who belong to only one rather fogeyish club. 
 But that comes of my demoralized attitude towards the respect- 
 abilities. Well, it shall not be a Sunday, but you must meet 
 Hawberk en petit comite before the season is over. He is a very 
 remarkable man. It was he who invented Signora Vivanti, the 
 lady who claimed your acquaintance so effusively to day." 
 
 '■ Indeed ! " said Vansittart, with a scowl which did not invite 
 further comment ; but Sefton was not to be silenced by black looks. 
 
 "Did Mr. Hawberk bring Signora Vivanti from Italy?" asked 
 Eve ; and Sefton could see that she paled at the mere mention of 
 the singer's name. 
 
 " I think not. She was established in very comfortable quarters 
 at Chelsea when Hawberk first heard of her. Some good friend
 
 The Little Rift. 253 
 
 brought her to London and paid for her training. The rest of her 
 career is history. Hawberk finished her artistic education, and had 
 the courage to trust the fate of a new opera to an untried singer. 
 The result justified his audacity, and the Vivanti is the rage. She 
 is original, you see ; and a grain of originality is worth a bushel of 
 imitative excellence ! " 
 
 " I should like to hear her sing," said Eve. 
 
 " Then you are in a fair way of being gratified. She is to sing 
 to-night. Lady Hartley has engaged her." 
 
 " Really ! How odd that Lady Hartley never mentioned her 
 when she was telling me about her programme." 
 
 "The engagement was made only two or three days ago, after I 
 met Lady Hartley at Lady Belle Teddington's evening party. It 
 was my suggestion. Musical evenings are apt to be so dismal — 
 Mendelssohn, de Beriot, Spohr, relieved by a portentous Scotch 
 ballad of nine and twenty verses by a fashionable baritone. Vivanti 
 lias sentiment and humour, chic and fire. She will be the bouquet, 
 and send people away in good spirits." 
 
 A duet for violin and 'cello began at this stage of conversation, 
 and when it was over Vansittart moved away to another part of the 
 room, and talked to other people. It was past eleven. He knew 
 not how soon the Venetian might appear upon the scene ; but he 
 was determined to keep out of her way. He would not risk another 
 effusive greeting ; and with a woman of her type there was no 
 reliance upon the restraints of society. She might be as demonstra- 
 tive in a crowded drawing-room as on the river Thames. Of all 
 irritating chances what could be more exasperating than this young 
 woman's appearance at his sister's house, even as a paid enter- 
 tainer? And it was Sefton's doing; Sefton, who had seen him with 
 Fiordelisa two years ago on the Embankment, and who doubtless 
 remembered that meeting; Sefton, who had admired Eve and had 
 been scorned by her, and who doubtless hated Eve's husband. 
 
 Nothing could be more disquieting for Vansittart than that Seftun 
 should have made himself the friend and patron of Fiordelisa — even 
 if he were no more than friend or patron. If he were pursuing the 
 Venetian girl with evil meaning it would be Vansittart's duty to 
 warn her. He had urged her to lead a good life — to redeem the 
 error of her girlhood by a virtuous and reputable womanhood. It 
 would be the act of a coward to stand aside and keep silence, while 
 her reputation was being blighted by Sefton's patronage. True 
 that her aunt and son had been the companions of to-day's river 
 excursion ; true that their presence had given respectability to the 
 jaunt; yet with his knowledge of Sefton's character Vansittart 
 could hardly believe that his intentions towards this daughter of 
 the people could be altogether free from guile. He hated the idea
 
 254 The Venetians, 
 
 of an interview with Lisa ; but he told himself that it was his duty 
 to give her fair warning of Sefton's character. She might have 
 been Harold Merchant's wife, perhaps, with a legitimate protector, 
 but for his — Vansittart's — evil passions. This gave her an indis- 
 putable claim upon his care and kindness — a claim not to be ignored 
 because it involved unpleasantness or risk for himself. 
 
 He went back to Eve presently, and asked her to come into the 
 inner drawing-room, where there were people who wanted to see 
 her ; an excuse for getting her away from Sefton, who still held his 
 ground by her chair. 
 
 " I shall lose my place if I stir," she said ; " and I want to hear 
 Signora Vivanti." 
 
 " I'll bring you back." 
 
 " There'll be no getting back through the crowd. Please let mo 
 stay till she has sung." 
 
 "As you please." 
 
 He turned and left her, offended that she should refuse him ; 
 vexed at her desire to hear the woman who had already been a 
 bone of contention between them. He went back to the inner 
 drawing-room, as far as possible from the piano and the clever 
 German pianist who had arranged the programme for Lady Hartley, 
 and who was to accompany — somewhat reluctantly — the lady from 
 the Apollo, whose performance might pass the boundary line of the 
 comme ilfaut, he thought. 
 
 Vansittart stood where he could just see Lisa, by looking over 
 the heads of the crowd. She took her stand a little way from the 
 piano, with admirable aplomb, though this was her first society 
 performance. She was in yellow — a yellow crape gown, very 
 simply made, with a baby bodice and short puffed sleeves ; and on 
 the clear olive of her finely moulded neck there flashed the collet 
 necklace which represented the firstfruits of her success. Vansittart 
 shuddered as he noted the jewels, for he had the accepted idea of 
 actress's diamonds, and he began to fear that Lisa had already 
 taken the wrong road. 
 
 She sang a ballad from the new serio-comic opera. Haroun 
 Alrasckid, a ballad which all the street organs and all the smart 
 bands were playing, and which was as familiar in the remotest 
 slums of the east as in the gardens of the west. 
 
 " I am jiot fair, I am not wise, 
 
 But I would die for thee ; 
 My only merit in thine eyes 
 
 Is my fidelity. 
 Oh, couldst thou kill me with Ihy frown, 
 
 That death I'd meekly meet, 
 For it were joy to lay me down 
 
 And perish at thy feet."
 
 The Little Rift. 255 
 
 It was the song of a slave to her Sultan, and glanced from the 
 supreme of sentiment to the absurdity of burlesque. The song was 
 the rage, but it was the power and passion of the singer that made 
 it so. The sudden silvery laugh with which she finished the second 
 verse, changing instantaneously from pathos to mocking gaiety — 
 with a sudden change of metre — was a touch of originality that 
 delighted her audience, and the song was applauded to the echo. 
 Vansittart had moved into the music-room while she sang, as if 
 drawn irresistibly by the power of song, and he was near enough 
 to see his wife and Sefton talking to the singer ; praising her, no 
 doubt ; uttering only the idle nothings which are spoken upon such 
 occasions ; but the idea that Eve should get to know this woman's 
 name, that they should talk together familiarly, and above all, that 
 Lisa should know his name, and be able to approach wife or 
 husband whenever some wild impulse urged her attack, was 
 dreadful to him. How could he be sure henceforward that his 
 secret would remain a secret? Was the Venetian a person to be 
 trusted with the power of life or death ? 
 
 He went back to the inner room, and was speedily absorbed in 
 the duty of attending two colossal dowagers with monumental 
 necks and shoulders, and diamonds as large as chandelier drops, to 
 steer whom down a London staircase, past a stream of people who 
 were ascending, was no trifling work. In the dining-room tin; 
 debris of dessert and the ashes of cigarettes had given place to old 
 Derby china, peaches, grapes, and strawberries, chicken salad, and 
 foie gras sandwiches, and to this light refreshment people were 
 crowding as eagerly as if dinner were an obsolete custom among 
 the upper classes. Blocked in between two great ladies, pouring 
 out champagne for one, and peeling a peach for another, Vansittait 
 was secure from being pounced upon by Fiordelisa. He saw Sefton 
 sitting with her at a little table in a corner, as he piloted his 
 aristocratic three-deckers to the door. Sefton was plying her with 
 champagne and lobster salad, and her joyous laugh rang out above 
 society's languid jabber. 
 
 He hated Sefton with all his heart that night; and he was (no 
 angry with Eve to speak to her, either as they waited in the hall 
 for their carnage, or during the short drive home. 
 
 Never before had lie treated her with this sullen rudeness. She 
 followed him into his den, where he went for a final smoke before 
 going upstairs. She stood by his chair for a few minutes in silence, 
 watching him as he lighted his cigar, and then she said gently — 
 
 " What is the matter with you to-night, Jack ? Have I vexed 
 you?" 
 
 "I don't know that you have vexed me — but I know that I am 
 vexed."
 
 256 The Venetians. 
 
 " About what ? " 
 
 "I didn't like to see you so civil to Signora Vivanti. It is all 
 very well for dowagers and fussy matrons to take notice of a public 
 singer, but it is a new departure for you." 
 
 "I could hardly help myself. She sang so delightfully, and I 
 was pleased with her, and then Mr. Sefton introduced her to me. 
 What could I do but praise her, when I really admired her?" 
 
 " No, you were blameless. It was Sefton's fault. He had no 
 right to introduce her to you." 
 
 " But is she not respectable ? " 
 
 " I cannot answer for her respectability. I know nothing of 
 what kind of life she has led since she made her debut. She wears 
 diamonds, and that is not a good sign." 
 
 " She does not look like a disreputable person," said Eve, very 
 thoughtfully. " There is something frank and simple about her. 
 That boy must be hers, he is so like her. Do you know if she was 
 ever married — if the boy's father was her husband?" 
 
 " I know very little about her, as I told you to-day ; but I should 
 say not." 
 
 " Poor thing! I am very sorry for her." 
 
 " Don't waste your pity upon her. She seems perfectly happy. 
 A peasant girl, reared upon polenta, does not consider these things 
 so tragically as they are considered in Mayfair." 
 
 " How scornfully you speak of her. I am sure she is a good girl 
 at heart. She remembered seeing me in the boat to-day, and she 
 asked me if I was your wife. She repeated my name curiously, as 
 if she had never heard it before. Did not she know your name 
 when you met her in Verona, or wherever it was ? " 
 
 " Very likely not. I was an Englishman. That might have been 
 a sufficient distinction in her mind." 
 
 " I hope she is not leading a wicked life," said Eve, with a sigh. 
 " She has a good face." 
 
 "Do not let us trouble about her any more," said Vansittart, 
 looking earnestly up at the thoughtful face that was looking down 
 at him. " She has almost brought dissension between us — for the 
 first time." 
 
 " Only almost. We could not be angry with each other long, 
 could we, Jack? But you must own it was enough to take any 
 wife by surprise. A beautiful Italian girl stretching out both her 
 hands in eager greeting, almost throwing herself out of her boat into 
 ours. Any wife caring very much for her husband would have felt 
 as I did — a sudden pang of jealousy." 
 
 " Any wife must be a foolish wife if she felt that pang, knowing 
 herself beloved as you do." 
 
 " Yes ; I think that now you are honestly fond of me. Ah, how
 
 "Poor Kind Wild Eyes" 257 
 
 can I think otherwise when you have been so indulgent, so dear ? 
 Yet in the past you might have loved that dark-eyed girl. You 
 never pretended I was your first love. And if you did care for her, 
 do please be candid and tell me. I should be happier if I knew the 
 worst. It could not matter much to me, you sec, Jack, that you 
 should have been fond of her — once. Dearest, dearest," she re- 
 peated coaxingly, with her head bent down till her soft cheek leaned 
 against his own, " tell me the worst." 
 
 " Eve, how often must I protest that I never cared fur this girl- 
 that she was never anything to me but a friendless woman — friend- 
 less except for an aunt as poor and as ignorant as herself. She was 
 never anything to me — never. Are you satisfied now ? As far as 
 Fiordelisa is concerned you know the worst." 
 
 " I am satisfied. But if you did not care for her she cared for 
 you. She could not have looked as she looked to-day — her whole 
 face lighting up with rapture — if she had not loved you. Only love 
 can smile like that. But I won't tease you. The thought of her 
 shall never again come between us." 
 
 " So be it, Eve. We have had our much ado about nothing. 
 We will give Signora Vivanti a holiday. Sophy will be with you to- 
 morrow, and will want no end of amusement — exhibitions all day 
 aid a theatre every night, with an evening party afterwards. I 
 know what country cousins — or country sisters are. Besides, it 
 will be Sophy's debut, and she will expect to make an impression." 
 
 " I hope she will not be too fine," said Eve, remembering Sophy's 
 strivings to be smart under difficulties. 
 
 " She will be as fine as the finest, be sure of that. She will ex- 
 pect matrimonial offers — to be a success in her first season. Why 
 don't you marry her to Sefton ? " 
 
 " I don't like Mr. Sefton." 
 
 " But Sophy might like him, and he is rich and well born. If he is 
 not a gentleman that is his own fault— not any flaw in his pedigree." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 "TOOK KIND WILD EYES SO DASHED WITH LIGHT QUICK TEARS." 
 
 Sophy arrived next day with portentous punctuality, in time for 
 luncheon, intent on pleasure, and dressed in a style which she 
 believed in [as the very latest Parisian fashion; for this damsel 
 credited herself with an occult power of knowing what was "in " 
 and what was " out," and, with no larger horizon than a country 
 church and an occasional rustic garden-party, set up as an authority 
 upon dress, and gave her instructions to the village dressmaker, who 
 made up ladies' own materials, and worked at ladies' houses, with 
 the air of a Kate Reilly directing an apprentice. 
 
 8
 
 2 5 8 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 Eve had been very generous, and Sophy's costume was 'a great 
 advance upon those days when Lady Hartley had talked of the 
 sisters as Colonel Marchant's burlesque troupe. Eve had sent down 
 a big parcel of materials from a West End draper's, the newest and 
 the best, and Sophy had exercised her fingers and her taste in the 
 confection of stylish garments ; yet it must be owned there was an 
 unmistakable air of home dress-making — of fabrications suggested 
 by answers to correspondents in a ladies' newspaper — about those 
 smart gowns, jackets, capes, and fichus which Sophy wore with 
 such satisfaction. This showed itself most in an unconscious ex- 
 aggeration of every fashion ; just as a woman who rouges exceeds 
 the bloom of natural carnations. Sophy's Medici collars were higher 
 than anybody else's. The military collar of Sophy's home-made 
 tailor gown was an instrument of torture. Sophy's waistcoats and 
 sleeves were more mannish and sporting than anything the West 
 End tailors had produced for Eve. In a word, there was a touch of 
 Sophy's personality about every garment ; just as in every picture 
 there is the individuality of the painter. 
 
 But Sophy, flushed with the delights of a London season, was 
 quite pretty enough to be forgiven a little provincialism in her dress 
 and manners, and she was well received by Eve's friends. 
 
 It was good for Eve that she should be obliged to exert herself in 
 order to amuse Sophy, and that the sweet solitude of two was no 
 longer possible for her and Vansittart. 
 
 lie said nothing further about his wife's need of repose. He was 
 glad to see her occupied from morning till long past midnight, 
 showing Sophy what our ancestors used to call " the town ; " but 
 which now includes a wide range of the suburbs, and occasional 
 garden-parties as far off as Mario w or Hatfield. He was glad of 
 anything which could distract his wife's thoughts from too deep a 
 consideration of his relations with Signora Vivanti, and he en- 
 ' couraged Sophy in every form of dissipation, until he found, to his 
 annoyance, that an evening had been allotted to the Apollo. 
 
 The fame of Haroun Alrascldd and of Signora Vivanti's beauty 
 and talent had penetrated beyond Haslemere, and Sophy had written 
 to her sister imploring her to secure places for an evening during 
 her visit. A box had been taken six weeks in advance, and Eve, 
 who was always indulged in every theatrical fancy, had not thought 
 it necessary to inform her husband of the fact. 
 
 To forbid the occupation of that box would have been too marked 
 an exercise of authority ; to absent himself from the party would 
 have made Eve uneasy ; so he went with his wife and sister-in-law, 
 and saw Lisa on the stage for the first time since he had watched 
 her in the chorus at Covent Garden. 
 
 The box was one of the best in the house, and very near the
 
 "Poor Kind Wild Eyes!* 259 
 
 stage. Vansittart felt assured that Lisa would recognize his wife 
 and would see him standing behind her chair ; and with a young 
 woman of Lisa's temperament he knew not what form that recog- 
 nition might assume. j 
 
 Fortunately Lisa had now become too much of an artist to do any-' 
 thing which would take her " out of the picture." She gave Van- 
 sittart one little look which told him he was seen in the shadow 
 where he stood ; and for the rest she was no longer Lisa, the Vene- 
 tian, but Haroun's devoted slave-girl, bought from a cruel master, 
 during one of Haroun's nocturnal explorations" of the city, and 
 following him ever after with a devoted love, watchful, ubiquitous, 
 his guardian angel in every danger, his resource and protection in 
 every serio-comic dilemma. Her singing, her acting, were alike 
 instinct with passion and genius, a genius unspoiled by that higher 
 culture which is too apt to bring self-consciousness and over-elabora- 
 tion in its train, and so to miss all broad and spontaneous effects. 
 Fiordelisa flung herself into her role with a daring energy which 
 always hit the mark. i 
 
 Sefton was in the stalls, attentive, but not applauding. He left 
 all noisy demonstration to the British public. It was enough for 
 him to know that Lisa liked to see him there, tranquil and interested. 
 The highest reward she had ever given him for his devotion was 
 the confession that she missed him when he was absent, and found 
 something wanting in her audience when his stall was empty. For 
 the most part he went as regularly to hear Lisa sing as he took his 
 coffee after dinner. The dinner-party must be something very much 
 out of the common run of dinners which could draw him from his place 
 at the Apollo ; and people remarked that for the last two seasons 
 Mr. Sefton was seldom to be met in society until late in the evening. 
 
 He went to Mrs. Vansittart's box between the acts, and made 
 himself particularly agreeable to Sophy, whom he had not seen since 
 her sister's marriage. ! 
 
 " This is your first season, ain't it, Miss Marchant ? " he said. 
 " What a large reserve fund of enjoyment you must have to spend ! " 
 
 Sophy was not going to accept compliments upon her ignorance. 
 
 " Fernhurst is so near town," she said. " One sees everybody, 
 and one breathes the town atmosphere." 
 
 " Ah, but you only see people on their rustic side. They wear 
 tailor gowns and talk about fox-hunting' and sick cottagers. They 
 leave their London intellect in Mayfair, like the table-knives rolled 
 up in mutton fat, to come out sharp and bright next season. You 
 don't know what we are like in town if you see us only in the 
 country." 
 
 " I don't find a remarkable difference in you," said Sophy, pertly. 
 " You always try to be epigrammatic."
 
 260 The Venetians. 
 
 " Oh, I am no one — a poor follower of the fashion of the hour, 
 whatever it may be. How do you like the music ? " 
 
 " For music to hear and forget I think it is absolutely delightful." 
 
 " There are some numbers which the piano-organs and the fashion- 
 able bands won't allow you to forget — Zuleika's song, for instance, 
 and the quartette." 
 
 " I rather hate all but classical music," replied Sophy, with her 
 fine air, " and I find your famous Signora Vivanti odiously vulgar." 
 
 " Deliciously vulgar, you should have said. Her vulgarity is one 
 of her attractions. To be so pretty, and so graceful, and so clever, 
 and at the same time a peasant to the tips of her fingers— there is 
 the charm." 
 
 " I hate peasants, "even when they are as clever as Thomas 
 Carlyle." 
 
 Sefton looked at the pert little face meditatively. She was like 
 p]ve, but without Eve's exceptional loveliness — the loveliness that 
 consists chiefly in delicacy and refinement, an ethereal beauty which 
 makes a woman like a flower. She had Eve's transparent com- 
 plexion and changeful colouring. There was the same type, but less 
 beautifully developed. She was quite pretty enough for Sefton to 
 find amusement in teasing her, although all his stronger feelings were 
 given to Signora Vivanti. He called in Charles Street on the following 
 afternoon. It was Mrs. Vansittart's afternoon at home ; and she 
 could not shut her door even against her worst enemy. 
 
 Sefton found the usual feminine gossips — mothers and daughters, 
 maiden aunts, and cousins from the country, with fresh-coloured 
 cheeks, and unremarkable faces — the usual sprinkling of well-dressed 
 young men. Among so many people he could secure a few con- 
 fidential words with Eve, while she poured out the tea, a duty she 
 always performed with her own hands. It was the one thing that 
 reminded her of the old life at Fernhurst, and those jovial teas which 
 had stood in the place of dinner. 
 
 She spoke frankly enough of the performance at the Apollo, praised 
 the music and the libretto, declared she had enjoyed it more than 
 any serio-comic opera she had heard during the season ; yet Sefton 
 detected a certain constraint when she spoke of Signora Vivanti, 
 which told him that the meeting of the two boats was not forgotten, 
 and that the little scene had left almost as angry a spot upon her 
 memory as that which burnt in his. 
 
 " And had you really never seen her on the stage before last 
 night ? " he asked. 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 "How very odd. I think you and Vansittart must have been 
 about the only people at the West End who have not seen Earoun 
 Alraschid — and yet you are playgoers."
 
 "Poor Kind Wild Eyes" 261 
 
 " I was saving the Apollo for ray sister," she answered, perfectly 
 understanding his drift. 
 
 She knew that he was trying to give her pain, that he wanted to 
 make her distrust her husband. Lisa's conduct had impressed him 
 as it had impressed her, and now he was gloating over her jealous 
 agony. 
 
 She turned from him to talk to an aristocratic matron, a large and 
 grand-looking woman, who would have looked better in peplum and 
 chiton than in a flimsy pongee confection which she called her 
 "frock." The matron had heard the word Apollo, and had a good 
 deal to say about Signora Vivanti, whose performance she depre- 
 cated as too realistic. 
 
 " Dramatic passion is all very well in a classic opera like Gluck's 
 Orphee" she said authoritatively, "but that mixture of passion with 
 broad comedy is too bizarre for my taste." 
 
 " My dear Lady Oriphane, that is just what we want nowadays. 
 We all languish for the bizarre. If we travel we want Africa and 
 pigmy blackamoors. If we go to the play we want to be startled by 
 the outrageous, rather that awed by the sublime. The stories we 
 read must have some strange background, or be dotted about with 
 1 nknown tongues. An author can interest us in a footman if he 
 will only call him a Kitmutghar. With us the worship of the bizarre 
 marks the highest point of culture." 
 
 Mr. Tivett was there, and chimed in at this stage of the conversa- 
 tion with his pretty little lady-like voice. 
 
 " It all means the same thing," he said ; " Neo-paganism. We are 
 the children of a decadent age. AVe have come to the top of the 
 ladder of life — life meaning civilization and culture — and there is 
 nothing left for us but to climb down again. All the strongest spirits 
 are harking back to the uncivilized. That is at the bottom of the 
 strong man's passion for Africa. The strong men will all go to 
 Africa, and in a few generations Europe will be peopled by weaklings 
 and hereditary imbeciles. Then the strong men will come back and 
 pour themselves over the civilized world, as the Vandals poured 
 themselves over Italy, and London and Paris will be the spoil of the 
 Anglo- African." 
 
 " AVhy not the Dutch- African, or the Portuguese-African ? " asked 
 Sefton, when everybody had laughed at little Mr. Tivett's gloomy 
 outlook. 
 
 " Oli, the Anglo-Saxon race will prevail on the Dark Continent, 
 just as they have prevailed in the East. Our future kings will style 
 themselves Emperor of India and Africa. No other race can stand 
 against us in the game of colonization. We have the courage which 
 conquers, and the dogged patience which can keep what boldness 
 has won."
 
 262 The Venetians. 
 
 Mr. Tivett was not allowed to indulge in any further prophecies, 
 for Sophy absorbed him in a discussion about the plays she ought 
 to see, and the music she ought to hear while she was in town. 
 
 " You are too late for Sarasate," he said tragically. " Last Satur- 
 day was his final performance. He leaves us in the flood-tide of the 
 season, leaves us lamenting. But there are plenty of good things left. 
 Clifford Harrison gives some of his delicious recitations next Saturday. 
 Be sure you hear him. Hollmann and Wolff are to be heard almost 
 daily. And then there is the opera three nights a week. I hope you 
 have no horrid dinner-parties to prevent your enjoying yourself." 
 
 " Only one this week, I am thankful to say," said Sophy, who was 
 dying to see what London dinners were like, and was deeply grateful 
 to that one generous hostess who, hearing of her expected visit, had 
 sent her a card for the stately feast to which the Vansittarts were 
 bidden. 
 
 Eve had refused other dinner invitations during her sister's visit. 
 She made all engagements subservient to Sophy's pleasure. Vau- 
 sittart was not rich enough to give his wife an opera-box for the 
 season, but he had taken a box for four evenings in the fortnight that 
 Sophy was to spend in Charles Street, and four operas, with different 
 sets of artists, for a young woman who had never heard an opera in 
 her life, was an almost overpowering prospect. It needed all Sophy's 
 aplomb to talk of operas of which she only knew the overtures, and 
 an occasional hackneyed scena, as if every page of the score were 
 familiar to her ; but Sophy was equal to the occasion, and discussed 
 the merits of sopranos, tenors, and baritones with as critical an air 
 as if her opinions were the growth of years of experience, rather 
 than the result of a careful study of Truth and Tlie World, sent her 
 regularly by Eve, so soon as they had been read in Charles Street. 
 
 Sefton joined in the conversation between Sophy and Mr. Tivett, 
 and had a good deal of advice to offer as to the things that were 
 worthy of the young lady's attention ; the result of which advice 
 appeared to be that there was really very little to be heard worth 
 hearing, or to be seen worth seeing. 
 
 While tea and gossip occupied Eve and her friends in Charles 
 Street, Vansittart had taken advantage of his wife's "afternoon," 
 an occasion which he rarely honoured with his presence, and had 
 driven to Chelsea to see Lisa and her aunt, and to impart that 
 warning which he had resolved upon giving, at any hazard to him- 
 self. It was dangerous perhaps, in his position, to renew any rela- 
 tions with the Venetian ; yet on the other hand it might be needful 
 to assure himself of her loyaltj', now that she had been brought 
 suddenly into the foreground of his life, and might, at any hour, reveal 
 his fatal secret to her from whom he would have it for ever hidden.
 
 "Poor Kind Wild Eyes!' 263 
 
 All things considered, after two days and nights of anxious thought, 
 it seemed to him best, for his own sake, as well as for Lisa's, that 
 he should have some serious talk with her. 
 
 He heard the prattle of the child as la Zia opened the door to him, 
 and the mother's voice telling him to he quiet. La Zia received him 
 with open arms, and praised his kindness in coming to see them after 
 such a long absence. 
 
 " If it had not been for the discovery that the rent was paid when 
 we took our money to the agent on Our Lady's Day, we should have 
 thought you had forgotten us," said la Zia. 
 
 She had her bonnet on, ready to take Paolo to Battersea Park, 
 where she took him nearly every afternoon, while Lisa practised, or 
 slept, or yawned over an English story-book. She would read 
 nothing but English, in her determination to master that language ; 
 but history was too dull, novels were too long, and she cared only 
 for short stories in which there was much sentimental love-making, 
 generally by lords and ladies with high-sounding titles. These she 
 read with rapture, picturing herself as the heroine, Vansittart as the 
 high-born lover. She could not understand how so grand a gentle- 
 man could have missed a title. In Italy he would have been a 
 Marquis or a Prince, she told herself. 
 
 She started up at the sound of his voice, and welcomed him 
 joyously, pale but radiant. 
 
 " Why would you not come near me the other night? " she asked. 
 "I was in your sister's house — Mr. Sefton told me that the gracious 
 lady is your sister — and you were there, and you hid vourself from 
 me." 
 
 " I was afraid, Si'ora," he answered, coming to the point at once. 
 " You know what lies between you and me — a secret the telling of 
 which would blight my life — and you are so reckless, so impetuous. 
 How could I tell what you might say ? " 
 
 She looked at him with mournful reproachfulness. 
 
 "Do you know me so little as that?" she said. "Don't you 
 know that I would cut my tongue out — that I would die on the rack, 
 as tortured prisoners died in Venice hundreds of years ago — rather 
 than I would speak one word that could hurt you ? " 
 
 "Forgive me, Si'ora. Yes, yes, I know that you would not 
 willingly injure me — but you might ruin my life by a careless speech. 
 You have aroused my wife's suspicions already — suspicions of she 
 knows not what — vague jealousies that have made her unhappy. 
 She could not understand your impulsive greeting ; and I could not 
 tell her how much you were my friend, without telling her the why 
 and the wherefore. I am hemmed round with difficulty when I am 
 questioned about you. If you were old and ugly it would be different 
 — but I dare not avow my interest in a young and beautiful woman
 
 264 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 without revealing the claim she has upon my friendship— aud in 
 that claim lies the secret of my crime. Do you understand, Lisa ? " 
 
 " Yes, I understand," she answered moodily. 
 
 Her aunt lingered on the threshold of the door, the boy tugging 
 at her skirts, and urging her to go out. Battersea Park was his 
 favourite playground. He carried a wooden horse with a fine 
 development of head, but with only a stick and a wheel to 
 represent his body, which equine compromise he bestrode and 
 galloped upon in the course of his airing. La Zia carried his pail 
 and the shovel with which he was wont to scrape up the loose 
 gravel in the roadway as blissfully as if he had been disporting 
 himself beside the waves that roll gaily in to splash the children at 
 play on the sands. 
 
 La Zia looked at her niece interrogatively, and the niece nodded 
 " go," whereupon aunt and boy vanished. She was always bidden 
 to stop when Sefton was the visitor. 
 
 " You need not be frightened," said Lisa. " We are not likely 
 to meet again, as we met on the river. It was so long since I had 
 seen you ! I was taken by surprise, and forgot everything except 
 that it was you, whom I thought I should never see again. I shall 
 be wiser in future, now that I know more about you, and now that 
 I have seen your wife." 
 
 "That is my own good Lisa! She is a sweet wife, is she not? 
 Worthy that a man should love her ? " 
 
 " Yes, she is worthy ; and she is fair and beautiful, like the 
 Mary-lilies. I don't wonder that you love her. And she has never 
 done any evil thing in her life, has she ? If a young man had said 
 to her, ' Come with me to Venice, and be my little wife,' she would 
 not have believed him, as I did. She would have said, ' You must 
 marry me first in the church.' She would have believed in nothing 
 but the church and the priest. She was not ignorant and poor, like 
 me." 
 
 " Lisa, do you suppose that I was making any unkind com- 
 parisons ? I said only that she is worthy to be loved — that all 
 men and women must love and honour her, and that her husband 
 must needs adore her. And now, Si'ora, promise me that you will 
 respect her jealousy, which is only the shadow cast by her love, and 
 that you will do or say nothing that can make her unhappy." 
 
 " I will do or say nothing to hurt you," Lisa answered, somewhat 
 sullenly. " She has little need to be unhappy, having all your love. 
 But she is very sweet, as you say. She spoke to me graciously the 
 other night, although she had a curious look, as if she were half 
 afraid of me. Yes, she is beautiful. Did you know her and love 
 her long before that day on the Lido, when you were so friendly 
 with mv aunt and me 5 "
 
 "Poor Kind Wild Eyes" 265 
 
 " No, Si'ora." 
 
 "What ! your heart was free then?" 
 " Free as air." 
 
 " And afterwards— when I saw you at the opera ? When you 
 came to our lodgings ? " 
 
 •• Ah, then I had seen her, I was captive. I loved her at first 
 sight, but went about foolishly hiding my chains, trying not to love 
 her. And now that we understand each other fully upon one point 
 — now that I can trust my happiness in your hands, I want to talk to 
 you about yourself, Lisa. I am not over-fond of that Mr. Sefton 
 with whom you are so friendly." 
 
 " No more am I over-fond of him. lie is kind to us. He brings 
 toys for Paolo ; and he takes us on the river. He is the only friend 
 little Zinco has allowed me to have." 
 
 " He gives Paolo toys ? And he gave you that diamond necklace, 
 did he not?" 
 
 " Gave me my necklace ! I should think not ! Do you suppose 
 I would be beholden to him, or to any one ? Do you know how 
 many bracelets and brooches I have sent back to the fools who 
 bought them for me? Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires — all 
 the colours of the rainbow. I just look at them and laugh, and 
 carry them off to little Zinco, and he packs them up and sends 
 them back to the giver, with his compliments, and his assurance 
 that Signora Vivanti is not in the habit of accepting gifts. Mr. 
 Sefton give me my necklace ! Why, my necklace is my fortune ! " 
 And then she told him how she and la Zia had scraped and saved, 
 and lived upon pasta and Swiss cheese, in order to buy that necklace 
 from Mr. Attenborough, who had allowed her to pay a considerable 
 part of the price by weekly instalments. It was a bankrupt Contessa's 
 necklace — a Contessa who had run away from her husband. 
 
 "lam very glad to hear that," said Vansittart. "I was afraid 
 all was not well when I saw my little Si'ora blazing in diamonds." 
 
 "Did they blaze?" she cried, delighted. "You thought fiat I 
 was like some of the singers who spend all their salary on a carriage, 
 and grand dinners, and fine silk gowns — a hundred pounds for a 
 single gown ! I wanted to buy something that would last, some- 
 thing that I could turn into money whenever I liked." 
 
 " But your diamonds yield no interest, Si'ora, so they are hardly 
 a wise investment." 
 
 " I don't want interest ; I want something that is pretty to look 
 at. Did my diamonds blaze ? Your sister's is the only grand house I 
 have sung at. I sing for Mrs. Hawberk. but her house is not grand, 
 and I take no money for singing at her parties. But I had ten guineas 
 for singing at Lady Hartley's — ten guineas for two little songs." 
 "Bravissima, Si'ora! There are plenty of drawing-rooms in
 
 266 The Venetians. 
 
 London where you may pick up gold and silver. There is a freshness 
 about you and your singing that people will like, as a pleasant relief, 
 after a grand opera. But now, Cara, I would earnestly warn you to 
 have very little to do with Mr. Sefton, to keep him at the furthest 
 possible distance. Believe me, he is a dangerous acquaintance." 
 
 " Not to me," said Lisa, snapping her fingers. " He is nothing 
 to me, niente, niente, niente ! My heart has never beat any faster 
 for his coming. I am never sorry when he goes. He is kind to 
 Paolo, and my aunt thinks him a delightful gentleman. He tells 
 us stories about the lords and ladies he knows, and he helps me 
 with my English. He makes me read to him. He tells me the 
 meaning of words, and teaches me how to pronounce them. I 
 should not have got on nearly so fast without his help." 
 
 "Dangerous help, Si'ora. You are encouraging a traitor. Bo 
 sure his kindness springs from no good motive. He doesn't want 
 to marry you." 
 
 " Do you think I want him for a husband ? " exclaimed Lisa, with 
 supreme contempt. " I shall never marry. No one will ever have 
 the right to question me about Paolo's father." 
 
 There was a dignity in this assertion which showed that !he un- 
 sophisticated daughter of the Isles had made some progress in social 
 science. She knew at least that a husband was a person who might 
 call her to account for her past life. 
 
 " I tell you that I don't care for Mr. Sefton ; bnt he amuses la 
 Zia and me, and our lives would be very dull without him." 
 
 "Better dulness than danger. The man is bad, Lisa, bad to the 
 core. Some men are made so. In the county where he was born, 
 among the neighbours who respected his father and mother, and 
 who tolerate him for his name's sake, he is neither trusted nor 
 liked. Before he left the University, when he had only just come 
 of age, there was a village tragedy in which he was known to be 
 implicated, a tenant-farmer's pretty daughter drowned in the mill- 
 dam with her nameless child. The girl's father was a tenant on 
 the Sefton estate, as his father and grandfather had been before 
 him. A connection of that kind with most young men would be 
 sacred — but Wilfrid Sefton had no compunction. He was saved 
 from exposure, for the love that the sufferers bore to his people ; 
 but the scandal became pretty well known in the neighbourhood, 
 and the friends of his family who might have pitied him for the 
 awful consequences of his sin, were disgusted by the indifference 
 with which he treated the tragedy — living it down with a brazen 
 front, and later, when he was owner of the estate, turning the girl's 
 father out of his holding, on the flimsiest excuse. Do you think 
 euch a man as that is worthy to he admitted to the home of an 
 unprotected woman on a footing of friendship ? "
 
 "Poor Kind Wild Eyes!' 267 
 
 "No, no, he is not worthy. If yovi tell me to shut my door 
 against him, the door shall be shut. But is it true ? Did this poor 
 girl really drown herself because she could not bear to live dis- 
 graced? Are there women in England like that? " 
 
 " Yes, Lisa. There have been many such women. This girl 
 belonged to the yeoman class — her forefathers had been settled in 
 the land for two hundred years, sons of the soil, respected by their 
 neighbours, and as proud of their good name as if it had been a 
 patent of nobility ; and this girl was young and sensitive. I have 
 heard her story from those who saw her grow up from infancy to 
 womanhood — gentle, yielding, guileless — -an easy prey for an un- 
 scrupulous young man with a handsome face and a winning manner. 
 He won her, blighted her, murdered her. Yes, Lisa, his crime came 
 nearer murder than that dagger-thrust at Florian's." 
 
 " Don't speak of that," she cried, putting her fingers on his lips. 
 " We must forget it. There never was such a thing — or at least 
 you had nothing to do with it. It was Fate, not your will, that he 
 should die like that. It was to be. Non si muove foglia che Iddio 
 non voglia. I am glad you have told me about that girl. I never 
 liked Mr. Sefton — never really liked him. However pleasant he 
 was I had always a feeling that he was hiding something. There 
 is a light in his eyes as if he were laughing at one. He is like 
 Mephistopheles in the opera. It is not in his nature to be sorry for 
 any one." 
 
 " And you will give him his conge t " 
 
 "Yes; he shall come here no more. I shall not let him know 
 that you have told me that poor girl's story. He might want to 
 fight a duel with you, if he knew what you have said of him." 
 
 " I don't think he would, Lisa ; but it is wiser to tell him nothing. 
 You can say you have been told you are compromising yourself by 
 receiving his visits." 
 
 " Little Zinco does not love him," said Lisa ; " he will be pleased 
 to see him dismissed. He says I should have no friend but him and 
 my piano." 
 
 " Zinco is a worthy soul." 
 
 " Is he not? He pretends to be very proud of my success. For 
 the first year of my engagement at the Apollo I used to give him a 
 quarter of my salary ; but now I only pay him for my lessons. He 
 goes on teaching me grand opera. It broadens and refines my style, 
 he tells me — but Mr. Hawberk implores me never to leave off being 
 vulgar. It would be my ruin, he says." 
 
 " Be yourself, Lisa — bright, candid, and original. Your trans- 
 parent nature will always pass for genius, from its rarity. And now 
 good-bye. I must not come here any more. I came to-day because 
 I felt I had a duty to do as your friend, but my wife would not like
 
 268 The Venetians. 
 
 to hear of me as your visitor. She and I love each other too well 
 not to be easily jealous." 
 
 "It has been sweet to see you," answered Lisa, gravely, " but I 
 will not ask you to come again. Yes, yes," she added musingly. 
 " I understand ! Love is always jealous." 
 
 She gave him her hand, and bade him good-bye, with a gentle 
 resignation which touched him more deeply than her passionate 
 moods had ever done. The beautiful dark eyes looked into his, and 
 said, "I love you still — shall love you always," in language which 
 a man need not be a coxcomb to understand. And so they parted, 
 each believing that this might be a final parting. 
 
 Vansittart looked at his watch as he ran downstairs. It was nearly 
 six o'clock. At the bottom of the last flight he met Sefton, who 
 was entering with an easy air and self-satisfied smile, which changed 
 to a frown as he recognized Lisa's departing visitor. 
 
 " I have just come from Charles Street," he said, recovering himself 
 instantly, " where I expected to find you. But I dare say you have 
 been more amused here than you would have been there. The narrow 
 footpaths and shady woodland walks are generally pleasanter than 
 the broad high-road." 
 
 " Is that a truism, or an allegory ? If the latter, it bears no 
 application to my visit here." 
 
 " Doesn't it really ? You don't mean that you, Mrs. Vansittart's 
 husband, call upon Signora Yivanti in the beaten way of friendship? " 
 
 " In friendship, at least, if not in the beaten way ; but whatever 
 my motive in visiting that lady, I don't admit your right to question 
 me about it ; or " — with a laugh — " to resort to allegory. Good 
 day to you." 
 
 He ran down the steps to his hansom, and Sefton went slowly 
 up the three flights of stone stairs which led to Signora Vivanti's 
 bower, brooding angrily upon his encounter with Vansittart. He 
 had never been able to extort any admissions from Lisa about this 
 man. She had been secret as the grave ; yet he was convinced that 
 her past history was the history of an intrigue with Vansittart ; and 
 after that effusive greeting from the boat, and remembering the 
 expression of her face more than two years ago, as she hung upon his 
 arm on the Embankment, he was convinced that she loved him still, 
 and that this passion was the cause of her coldness to him, Wilfred 
 Sefton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 " AND EVERY GENTLE PASSION SICK TO DEATH." 
 
 Although in his leisurely ascent to the third story Mr. Sefton had 
 time to recover the appearance of serenity, he was by no means 
 master of himself as he waited for Lisa's door to be opened. Still
 
 "Every Gentle Passion Sick to Death!' 269 
 
 less was he master of himself when the door was opened by Lisa 
 herself, looking Hushed and excited, her eyes brilliant with newly 
 shed tears. 
 
 He went through the little vestibule and into the sunlit drawing- 
 room with the air of a man who had the right to enter unbidden, and 
 flung himself sullenly into one of Lisa's basket chairs, which creaked 
 under his weight. 
 
 " It is very late," said Lisa, evidently fluttered and uneasy. " I 
 ought to be starting for the theatre." 
 
 "You needn't hurry," Sefton answered coolly. "It isn't six 
 o'clock ; and you don't come on the stage till half-past eight. You'd 
 better sit down and take things easily. You don't look much like 
 going into the street, with that crying face. You'd better get over 
 your scene with your lover before you go out of doors." 
 
 " I have no lover," Lisa answered indignantly, tossing up her head. 
 
 In Sefton's eyes she had never looked lovelier than at that 
 moment ; every feature instinct with passion ; red lips and delicate 
 nostrils faintly quivering ; a rich carmine flushing the pale olive of 
 her cheeks ; the great dark eyes brightened by tears ; the haughty 
 pose of the head giving something of aristocracy to that uncultured 
 beauty. He loved her with a passion which every fresh indication 
 c f her cold indifference had stimulated to increasing warmth. He 
 loved her first because she was lovely and fascinating in her childish 
 simplicity. He loved her next and best because she, who by every 
 common rule of life should have been so easily won, had proved 
 invincible. The greatest princess in the land — the woman most 
 hedged round by conventionalities — could not have held herself more 
 aloof than Lisa had done, even while condescending to accept his 
 friendship. She had held herself aloof; and she had shown him 
 that she was not afraid of him. 
 
 lie saw her now under a new aspect, saw her deeply moved, with 
 all the potentialities of tragedy in those tremulous lips and shining 
 eyes. He saw now in all its reality the passion which informed her 
 acting, and gave pathetic reality to all that there was of sentiment 
 in her role. He saw the moving spring which had made it so easy for 
 her to represent in all its touching details the passion of hopeless love. 
 
 "You have no lover? You are an audacious woman to make 
 that assertion to me when I have seen you in his company, after an 
 interval of years, and when each time I saw you, your face has been 
 a declaration of love. I met the man on your staircase just now ; 
 and I can read the history of his visit in your eyes. Do you mean 
 to tell me that he is anything less than your lover ? " 
 
 " I mean to tell you nothing. Che diavolo ! What are you to 
 me that you should call me to account? Signor Zinco said I was 
 very foolish to let you come here. It was only because my aunt and
 
 270 The Venetians. 
 
 the boy liked you that I let you come. And you took us on the 
 river, which was pleasant. One must have some one." 
 
 " You will have me no more until we understand each other," cried 
 Sefton, furiously. " Voglio "finirla. I will not be fooled. I will not 
 be duped. I will not be your abject slave as I have been, going night 
 after night to feast upon your beauty, to drink the music of your 
 voice, giving you my whole mind and heart, and getting nothing for 
 my pains, not even the assurance that you are growing fonder of me, 
 that love will come in good time. Do you think I am the man to 
 endure that sort of torture tor ever? " 
 
 " I do not think at all about you. Voglio finirla, io ! I have made 
 up my mind that it will be better for you not to come here any more. 
 We shall miss you and your clever talk, and the days on the river — 
 but we can live without you — and as for love, that is over and done 
 with. I shall never love anybody but Paolo and la Zia. I have cared 
 for two people in this world — and my love ended badly with both. 
 The one who loved me died. The one I loved the most never loved 
 me. There, you have my confession without questioning. Are you 
 satisfied now?" 
 
 " Not quite. The man you love is the man who left you just now 
 —Paolo's father?" 
 
 He came nearer to her as he asked this daring question ; the question 
 he had been longing to ask from the beginning of things. He took 
 hold of her arm almost roughly, and drew her towards him, scrutinizing 
 her face, and trying to read her secret in her eyes. 
 She answered him with a mocking laugh. 
 
 '•You are very clever at guessing riddles," she said, "lhave 
 made my confession. You will get no more out of me. And now, 
 with your permission, I will put on my hat. It takes me a long time 
 to get to the theatre — I always go by the steamboat on fine evenings 
 — and it takes me a still longer time to dress for the stage." 
 
 She went to the door and opened it for him, waiting with a courteous 
 air for him to go out ; but he took hold of her again, even more 
 roughly than before, shut the door violently, and drew her back into 
 the room. 
 
 " There is time enough for you to talk to me," he said. " I will 
 answer for your being at the theatre — but you must hear me out. 
 We must have an explanation. I never knew how fond I was of you 
 till just now, when I met that man leaving your house. I was satisfied 
 to go dangling on — playing with fire — so long as I was the only one. 
 But now that he is hanging about you, there must be no more un- 
 certainty. I must know my fate. Lisa, you know how I love you. 
 There is no use in talking of that. If I were to talk for an hour I 
 could say no more than every word I have spoken for the last year 
 and a half — ever since we sat together in the tent that Sunday night
 
 "Every Gentle Passion Sick to Death." 271 
 
 at Hawberk's — has been telling you. I love you. I love you, Lisa : 
 with a love that fuses my life into yours, which makes life useless, 
 purposeless, hopeless without you." 
 
 He had not loosened his hold. That strong, sinewy hand of his 
 was grasping her firm, round arm, his other hand and arm drawing 
 her against his heart. She could feel how furiously that heart was 
 beating ; she could see his finely cut face whitening as it looked into 
 hers ; his eyes with a wild light in them. He stood silent, holding 
 her thus, like a bird caught in a springe, while she struggled to release 
 herself from him. He stood thinking out his fate, with the woman 
 he loved in his arms. 
 
 In those few moments he was asking himself the crucial question, 
 Could he five without this woman ? Passion — a passion of slow and 
 silent growth — answered no. Then came another question, Would 
 she be his mistress ? Was it any use to sing the old song, to offer 
 her the market price for her charms — a house at the West End, a 
 carriage, a settlement ; all except his name and the world's esteem ? 
 Common sense answered him sternly no. This woman, struggling 
 to escape from an unwelcome caress, was not the, woman to accept 
 dishonourable proposals. She had been showing him for the last 
 year and a half, in the plainest manner, that he was positively in- 
 different to her. She was no fonder of him now than at the beginning 
 of their acquaintance. Love could not tempt her. Wealth could 
 hardly tempt her, since she could earn an income which was more 
 than sufficient for her needs. To such a woman as this, peasant born 
 as she was, uncultivated, friendless, he must offer the highest price- 
 that price which he had told himself he would offer to no woman 
 living. He must offer his name, and he must enter upon that solemn 
 contract between man and woman which had always seemed to him 
 an anomaly in the legislature of a civilized people — a contract which 
 only death or dishonour could break. 
 
 "Lisa," he said, " I am not the enemy you think me. There is 
 no sacrifice I would not make for you. You know so little of the world 
 that perhaps you hardly knowhow much a man of good birth sacrifices 
 when he takes a wife who can bring him nothing but his heart's 
 desire. Try and understand that, Lisa. I love you too well to count 
 the cost — too well to care that marriage with you cuts me off from 
 all chance of marrying a woman whose money would quadruple my 
 fortune and buy me a peerage. I could make such a marriage as 
 that to-morrow if I choose, Lisa. It has been made very plain to 
 me that I should be accepted by a lady who will carry a million 
 sterling to the husband of her choice. Don't think me a snob for 
 telling you this. I want you to understand that I am worth some- 
 thing in the world's market. Be my wife, Lisa. I am a rich man. 
 I can take you to a fine old country house, as large as one of the
 
 272 The Venetians. 
 
 palaces on the Canal Grande. I can give you all things women 
 value — horses and carriages, fine rooms, pictures, silver, jewels — 
 and I give you with them the devotion of a man who has loved 
 many women with a light and passing love, hut who never knew 
 what the reality of love meant till he knew you, who never until 
 now has asked a woman to be his wife." 
 
 He released her with those last words, and they stood looking at 
 each other, she breathless with surprise. 
 
 " Do you really mean that ? " she asked. 
 
 " Really, really, really. Say yes, Lisa. Kiss me, my beloved, 
 kiss me the kiss of betrothal " — holding out his arms to her plead- 
 ingly. "We can be married two or three days hence, before the 
 registrar, and afterwards in any church you like. You will throw 
 up your engagement at once. We will go to the Tyrol, bury our- 
 selves in the hills and the woods, and in November I will take you 
 home, and let all the county envy me my lovely wife." 
 
 " You would marry me- — me, the lace-girl of Burano ; common, 
 oh, so common ! And so poor ; brought up among ragged children, 
 earning seven soldi a day, living on polenta. You would marry 
 Paolo's mother ? " 
 
 " Yes, I would marry Paolo's mother, without even knowing the 
 secret of Paolo's parentage. I would marry you because I love 
 you, Lisa — madly, foolishly, obstinately, with a love that does not 
 count the cost." 
 
 " And I should be a great lady ? I should drive about in a 
 grand carriage, and have footmen — powdered footmen like Lady 
 Hartley's — to wait upon me ? " 
 
 " Yes, child, yes — frivolous, foolish child. Come ! Come to my 
 heart, Lisa ! Non posso stare senza te ! " 
 
 He would have taken her to his heart triumphantly, believing 
 himself accepted ; but she stretched out her two hands with a 
 repelling gesture as he approached her, and held him at arm's 
 length. 
 
 " Not if you could make me a queen," she said. " You do not 
 know Fiordelisa, when you try to tempt her with house and land. 
 Your English ladies marry like that, I have heard, for houses and 
 jewels and horses, to be called Principessa or Contessa — but I will 
 never belong to a man I don't love. I have belonged to one man, 
 and he was a hard master, and I felt like a slave with a chain. 
 My life was not my own. I know what it is to belong to a man. 
 It doesn't mean paradise. But I loved him dearly at the first, 
 when he was kind to me, and took me away from work and 
 poverty. I loved him a little to the last even, though he was a 
 hard master." 
 
 " I would never be hard with you, Lisa. I could never be
 
 "Every Gentle Passion Sick to Death!' 273 
 
 your master. Love lias made me your slave. Carissima mia, bo 
 not so foolish as to deny me. Think how gay, how luxurious, how 
 happy your life may he." 
 
 I He was pleading to her in her own dulcet, language, the soff 
 Italian, softened to even more liquid utterance by those elisions he 
 had caught from her Venetian tongue. 
 
 I She stood a few paces from him, her arms folded tightly across 
 her breast, defying him. Marco, the cat, had awakened from his 
 long afternoon sleep in a luxurious basket — Sefton's offering — and 
 was arching his back and rubbing his soft white fur against his 
 mistress's black gown. She looked like a witch, Sefton thought, 
 standing there in her defiant beauty, shabbily clad in rusty black, 
 and with the white cat protecting her, glaring and spitting at him 
 in unreasoning anger. 
 
 " My life could never be happy with a man I did not love," she 
 said resolutely. " Even if I believed in your promises I would not 
 marry you. I would not accept your generous sacrifice. But I 
 don't believe in your grand offers. I have been warned. I know 
 your character better than you think. You are trying to deceive 
 me with promises that you don't mean to keep, as you deceived 
 the farmer's daughter, who drowned herself because of your lies." 
 
 ' Ah!" he cried furiously. "You have heard that village 
 slander. It could only reach you from one source — the lips of the 
 man who left you just now. Don't you know that when a poor 
 man's daughter goes wrong it is always the richest man in the 
 neighbourhood who is accused of seducing her? I dare say that 
 rule holds good in Italy as well as in England. I am in earnest, 
 Lisa. I mean no less than I say. Meet me next Monday at the 
 registrar's office, with your aunt, and with Signor Zinco if you like, 
 to see that the marriage is a good marriage, and we will leave that 
 office as man and wife." 
 
 "No," she answered doggedly. "Even if you are in earnest it 
 can make no difference to me. I don't want to be a great lady. 
 People would laugh at me, and I should be miserable. You 
 wouldn't like la Zia to live in your fine house, would you now ? " 
 
 " We could make her happy in a house of her own, or send her 
 back to Venice with a comfortable income." 
 
 "Just so. You would want to get rid of la Zia. That would 
 not do for me. She and I have never been parted. And Paolo; 
 you would marry Paolo's mother; but you would want to send him 
 back to Venice with la Zia, I dare say." 
 
 "It would be the simplest way of solving a difficulty; but if he 
 wei - e necessary to your happiness he should stay with us, Lisa. I 
 would do anything to make you happy." 
 
 She looked at him with a touch of sadness, and shook her head. 
 
 't
 
 274 The Venetians. 
 
 " You are a generous lover," she said, " if you mean what you 
 say ; but it is all useless. You could not make me happy ; and I 
 could not make you happy. You would very soon be sorry for 
 your sacrifice. You would regret the English lady and her million. 
 I am content as I am — content if not happy. I have as much 
 money as I want, and this room is fine enough for me. If you 
 saw the hovel in which I was reared you would think me a lucky 
 woman to have such a beautiful home. In ten years I shall have 
 saved a fortune, and la Zia and I can go back to Venice and live 
 like ladies on the Canal Grande ; or I can go on singing if I'm not 
 tired, and then I shall grow richer every day." 
 
 "Lisa, Lisa, how cold and how cruel you are — cruel to a poor 
 wretch who adores you. To me you are ice, but to Vansittart you 
 are fire. Your face lighted, your whole being awoke to new life, at 
 sight of him." 
 
 Lisa shrugged her shoulders, irritated by his persistency, and 
 provoked into candour. 
 
 " Suppose I like him and don't like you, can I help it ? God 
 has made me so," she said carelessly. " Ah, here is la Zia — la Zia 
 whom you would banish," she cried, clapping her hands as a key 
 turned in the vestibule door. 
 
 "It looked like rain," said la Zia, as she came in, " so Paolo and 
 I made haste home." 
 
 Lisa caught the boy up in her arms, and kissed him passionately. 
 Never had she felt so glad to see him. Her active imagination had 
 pictured herself separated for ever from her son, living in an atmo- 
 sphere of pomp and powdered footmen, learning to forget her 
 fatherless boy. 
 
 He had thriven on English fare, and the mild breezes of Battersea 
 Park, and frequent airings upon the Citizen steamers. He was a 
 great lump of a boy, with large black eyes, and long brown hair, 
 and his mother's Murillo colouring. The only traces of the other 
 parentage were in the square Saxon brow and the firm aquiline of 
 the nose. He was a magnificent outcome of a mixed race, and a 
 fine example of what a boy of four years old ought to be. Lisa 
 dropped into a chair with her burden, still hugging him, but borne 
 down by his weight. 
 
 '• Santo e santissimo ! " exclaimed la Zia. "You will be late at 
 the theatre. You must take a cab, quanto che costa." 
 
 The Venetians had a horror of cabs, which were not alone costly, 
 but fraught with the hazard of vituperation from fiery-faced cab- 
 men. They delighted in the penny distances of road cars and 
 other public conveyances. To exceed the limit of a penny ride 
 was to la Zia's mind culpable extravagance. A cab was only to be 
 thought of in emergencies.
 
 "Every Gentle Passion Sick to Death" 275 
 
 "Pardon, Signor } " she said, "the pleasure of your most desired 
 company has made my niece forget her duties." 
 
 She bustled into the adjoining room, and returned with Lisa's 
 black lace hat and little merino cape. There was no chorus girl 
 at the Apollo who dressed as shabbily as the Venetian prima 
 donna. La Zia bundled on the hat and tied on the cape, and 
 dismissed her niece with a kiss. 
 
 " Zinco will bring you home, as always," she said. 
 
 The 'cello lived in a shabby old street hard by, and was Lisa's 
 nightly escort from the Apollo to Chelsea. On fine nights they 
 walked all the way, hugging the river, and praising the Embank- 
 ment, which Zinco declared to be as much finer than the Lung 
 'Arno, as London was in his opinion superior to Florence. 
 
 Lisa and Sefton went downstairs together, both silent. He hailed 
 a crawling hansom a few paces from the house-door, and put her 
 into it, without a word. When she was seated he lifted his hat, 
 and bado her good night; and it seemed to her that there was 
 deadly hatred in the face which had looked at her a little while ago 
 transfigured by passionate love. 
 
 Hatred of some one ; herself, perhaps ; or it might be of a 
 fancied rival. Her heart grew cold as she thought of Vansittart. 
 U ireasoning jealousy on her account had cost one man his life, and 
 had burdened the life of another man with inextinguishable re- 
 morse. Would Sefton, whose love expressed itself with appalling 
 vehemence, try to injure the one man she cared for, the man for 
 whose sake she would give her life ? It would be well to warn 
 him, perhaps. To warn him? But how? She did not even 
 know where he lived; but she knew his sister's house, and his 
 sister's servants would be able to tell her his address. She knew 
 his real name now — Vansittart, a grandly sounding name. She 
 repeated it to herself with a kind of rapture as the cab rattled along 
 the King's Road, taking her to the Apollo. 
 
 She wrote to Vansittart next day, telling him that Sefton had 
 offered to marry her, and that she had refused him. 
 
 "He is jealous and angry about you," she told him, in conclusion. 
 " He fancies because I was so pleased to see you that day on the 
 river that it is my love for you that made me refuse him, and I 
 think he would like to kill you. His face looked like murder as he 
 bade me good-bye — and I'm afraid it is you he wants to murder, not 
 me. Pray be on your guard about him. He may hire some one 
 to stab you in the street, after dark. Please don't go out at night 
 except in your carriage. Forgive me for writing to you ; but when I 
 think that your life may be in danger, I cannot refrain from sending 
 you this warning. You warned me of my danger, which was no 
 danger, because I never cared for the man. I warn you of yours."
 
 276 The Venetians. 
 
 With this letter in her pocket, Lisa put herself into one of her 
 favourite omnibuses, which took her to Albert Gate, and from Albert 
 Gate she found her way across the Park to Hill Street. She 
 remembered the number, though she would hardly have known the 
 house in its morning brightness of yellow marguerites and pale blue 
 silk blinds. 
 
 The haughtiest of footmen opened the door, and looked at her 
 from head to foot with the deliberate eye of scorn. Her beauty 
 made not the faintest impression upon his rhinoceros hide. She was 
 on foot, and shabbily clad, and he took her for a work-girl. 
 
 " I have a letter for Mr. Vansittart," she began timidly. 
 
 The footman interrupted her with stern decisiveness. " This is 
 not Mr. Vansittart's 'ouse. This is Lady 'Artley's." 
 
 "I want to know where Mr. Vansittart lives." 
 
 " Charles Street. Number 99a." 
 
 " Please tell me the way." 
 
 The magnificent creature stalked slowly to the doorstep, moving 
 with the languid hauteur which befitted one whose noble height and 
 well-grown legs gave him first rank in the army of London footmen. 
 He was not ill-natured, but he took what he called a proper prids 
 in himself, conscious that his livery was made by one of the most 
 expensive tailors in the West End, and that his shoes came from 
 Bond Street. 
 
 Lifting his arm with a haughty grace, he indicated the turning 
 which would be Lisa's nearest way to Charles Street. 
 
 She thanked him and tripped lightly away, he watching her with 
 a languid gaze, too obtuse to recognize the brilliant Venetian prima 
 donna — whose eyes, and shoulders, and diamonds he had approved 
 the other night, when he hung over her with peaches and champagne 
 — in the young person in rusty black. 
 
 Lisa found 99a, again a house with flowers in all the windows, 
 and dainty silken blinds — a house of brighter and fresher aspect than 
 the houses of Venice, where the effects of form and colour are broader, 
 bolder, and more paintable, but lack that finish and neatness which 
 distinguish a well-kept house at the West End of London : a house 
 where no expenditure is spared in the struggle between the love of 
 beauty and colour, and the curse of coal fires and gloomy skies. 
 Another footman looked at Lisa with the cold eye of indifference, less 
 haughty than Lady Hartley's superb menial only because Vansittart's 
 smaller means did not afford prize specimens of the footman genus. 
 
 " Any answer? " asked the youth, as Lisa delivered her letter. 
 
 No, there was no answer required — but would he be sure to give 
 the letter to Mr. Vansittart ? 
 
 There was a rustle of silken skirts on the stairs as she spoke, and 
 two ladies came tripping down, talking as they came.
 
 "Every Gentle Passion Sick to Death!' 277 
 
 "The carriage is not there yet," cried Sophy, glancing at the open 
 doorway. "I'm afraid we shall be late for luncheon." 
 
 Eve followed her, and was in the hall in time to see Lisa as she 
 turned from the door — to sec her and to recognize her as the woman 
 who had brought perplexity and apprehension into the clear heaven 
 of her life. 
 
 The victoria came to the door. The footman stood ready to hand 
 his mistress to her carriage and to take his place beside the coachman. 
 
 " What did that person want? " asked Eve, sharply. 
 
 "She brought a letter for my master, ma'am." 
 
 " Where is it ? Give it to me." 
 
 She took the letter, and looked at it frowningly. 
 
 "Mr. Vansetart!" The woman could not even spell his name, 
 and yet was able to darken his wife's existence. 
 
 " What a shabby letter ! " cried Sophy, struggling with the top 
 button of a tight glove. " It must be a begging letter, I should think. 
 But what a pretty dark-eyed woman that was. I seem to remember 
 her face. Really, really, Eve, we shall be late ! Mrs. Mont-ford 
 told us her luncheons are always punctual. She wouldn't wait for 
 a Bishop." 
 
 Eve was staring at the letter. Vansittart was out, or she would 
 haye gone to him with it. She wanted to put it into his hands, and 
 to see how he took its contents ; but she did not even venture to 
 keep the letter in her possession till they met. She ran into her 
 husband's study, and put the odious letter on the mantelpiece, in a 
 spot where he might overlook it. If it were overlooked until the 
 afternoon she might be with him when he opened it. 
 
 She went into society with her heart aching. Whatever her 
 husband's feelings might be, this shameless Italian was running after 
 him. What insolence! What consummate audacity! To come 
 to his house, to pursue him with letters, even in his wife's presence ! 
 And Sefton had introduced this brazen creature to her; and she — 
 Vansittart's wife — had been weak enough to be civil. 
 
 Sophy's perpetual prattle agonized her all the way to Grosvenor 
 Gardens; nor was the smart luncheon which awaited them there 
 less agonizing. She had to brace herself for the ordeal, to smile 
 and talk, and laugh at good stories, pretending to see the point of 
 them ; laughing when other people laughed ; pretending to enjoy 
 that happy mixture of society to be met at some hospitable tables — 
 a dash of literature and art, a fashionable priest and a fashionable 
 actor, an archaeological Dean from a grave old Midland city, a young 
 married beauty, a Primrose League enthusiast, a foreign diplomatist, 
 and a sporting peer owning a handsome slice of the shires. 
 
 Mr. Sefton came in after they were seated, and dropped into the 
 one vacant chair beside Sophy.
 
 278 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 "You are always kte," Mrs. Montford said reproachfully. "I 
 suppose that is because you are the idlest man I know." 
 
 He was a favourite of Mrs. Montford's — Vami de la maison — and 
 allowed to come and go as he pleased. When he gave a tea-party 
 it was generally Mrs. Montford who invited half the company, helped 
 him to choose the flowers and to receive the guests. 
 
 " You have hit the mark," he said. " A man who has no specific 
 occupation never has time to be punctual. Nobody respects him. 
 He can't look at his watch in the middle of a friend's prosing and 
 pretend important business. I think I shall article myself to a civil 
 engineer ; and then when people are boring I can say I am waited 
 for about the caissons for the new bridge. What bridge ? My dear 
 fellow, no time to explain ! One springs into a hansom, and is gone. 
 Your idler can't extricate himself from the Arachne web of boredom. 
 His time is everybody's property." 
 
 " Elaborate, but not convincing," said Mrs. Montford, smiling at 
 hina, as he helped himself with a leisurely air to a cutlet en papillote. 
 " I would wager all the gloves that I shall wear at Etretat that you 
 were lying in your easiest chair, with your feet on that high fender 
 of yours, reading Maupassant's new story." 
 
 " For once in your life you have succeeded as a reader of character 
 — or no character. I was reading ' Le Pas Perdu.' Don't you see 
 how red my eyelids are? " 
 
 " Exactly. You are the kind of man who can weep over a book 
 and refuse a sovereign to a poor relation." 
 
 "That," said Sefton, "Avas almost unkind." 
 
 Sophy now claimed her right of being talked to. 
 
 " Why were you not at Lady Dalborough's last night ? " she asked. 
 
 "My dear Miss Marchant, you can't expect to see me at all the 
 stupidest parties in London." 
 
 "The party was rather dull," assented Sophy, who until this 
 moment had thought it brilliant, " but there was some good music." 
 
 " One can have that for filthy lucre at the St. James's Hall. I 
 adore Oscar de Lampion's love ditties, but not at the price of 
 perspiring in a mob of second-best people." 
 
 "It was my fault that we went to Lady Dalborough's," said 
 Sophy, remorsefully. 
 
 " Oh, I forgive anybody for going there — once. You will be wiser 
 next year." 
 
 His eyes were watching Eve across the table, while he talked 
 with Sophy. She was very pale, and instead of the delicate blush 
 rose of her complexion there were hectic spots under the eyes, which 
 accentuated her pallor. He who once cared for her almost to the 
 point of passion, felt a thrill of pain at seeing in a face a hint of the 
 consumptive tendency which he had heard of about Peggy. " Those
 
 "Every Gentle Passion Sick to Death." 279 
 
 girls are all consumptive," some village gossip had said to him, with 
 the morbid relish of gloomy possibilities which is an outcome of 
 village monotony. He was shocked to think that she, too, perhaps, 
 was doomed; but the thought suggested no pity for her husband — 
 not even that pity which would have prevented him striking at his 
 enemy through her. The rage that consumed him knew no restrain- 
 ing power. If he had lived in the Middle Ages that rage would 
 have meant murder — but bloodshed in the nineteenth century 
 involves too many inconvenient possibilities to be thought of lightly 
 1))' a man of landed estate. It means throwing up everything for 
 the rapture of gratified revenge — melting all the pearls of life into 
 one fiery draught. 
 
 "Why is not Vansittart with you? " he asked Sophy, still looking 
 at Eve. 
 
 " He had business in the City this morning." 
 
 " Business — in the City ? What could take Vansittart to the 
 City ? That seems quite out of his line." 
 
 "Yes, it does, don't it," said Sophy, impressed by the significance 
 of his tone, which seemed to veil a deeper meaning. " What should 
 a Hampshire squire have to do in the City? " 
 
 Sefton did not dwell upon the question. He saw that he had 
 ; wakened vague suspicions in Sophy's mind, the first faint hint of a 
 domestic mystery. He talked of other things — of people— lightly, 
 delightfully, Sophy thought. He told her of two marriages which 
 had just occurred, on the summit of the fashionable mountain — took 
 her behind the scenes, as it were, and introduced her to the inner 
 life of the chief actors in those elegant ceremonials — the impecunious 
 father of one bride selling his daughter to a man she hated, the 
 angry mother of the bridegroom in the other marriage raging against 
 the girl her son had chosen. 
 
 "You don't know the bad blood which was hidden among the 
 champagne bottles on the buffet," he said. 
 
 Sophy was charmed to hear about these smart people — charmed 
 most of all at the idea that they were miserable — that the women 
 whose toilettes her soid sickened for often wore the hair-shirt of the 
 penitent under a gown which Society papers extolled. 
 
 Sefton was very attentive to Sophy, albeit his furtive glances 
 were always returning to the lovely face on the other side of the 
 table. Poor Sophy thrilled at startling possibilities. He had admired 
 Eve in the past, had seemed devoted almost to the point of proposing. 
 And she, Sophy, had been told she was growing daily more like Eve. 
 More wonderful things had happened than that he should fall in 
 love with her — the old fancy for Eve reviving for Eve's younger 
 sister. Now that the detrimental father had taken Tip his abode 
 permanently on the Continent, his domestic responsibilities much
 
 280 The Venetians. 
 
 lightened by Eve's liberality to her sisters, there could be less 
 objection to an alliance with the house of Marchant, Mr. Sefton 
 was his own master. He had lost Eve by his hesitancy and hanging 
 back. Might he not act more nobly in his dealings with Eve's sister ? 
 That low, thrilling note which he knew how to put into his voice, 
 which was a mere mechanism of the man, touched Sophy's senses 
 like exquisite music. Her eyelids sank, her cheek kindled, though 
 he talked only of common things. 
 
 He had seen enough of Eve, while thus entertaining Sophy, to be 
 assured that she had lately suffered some painful experience — a 
 quarrel with Vansittart, perhaps. Or it might be that silent jealousy 
 had been gnawing at her heart since that day on the river. No 
 woman could see Lisa's behaviour and not be jealous. The husband 
 would explain, no doubt, but explanations go for very little in such 
 a case. They are accepted for the moment; wife and husband 
 '• kiss again with tears ; " and the next morning at the breakfast- 
 table the husband sees brooding brows, and knows that there is a 
 scorpion coiled in his wife's heart. Her faith in him has been 
 shaken. He may scotch the snake, but he cannot kill it. 
 
 Eve was glad when Mrs. Montford gave the signal for a move to 
 the drawing-room. The men stayed behind to smoke, all but Sefton, 
 who followed the ladies, a proceeding which Sophy ascribed to his 
 interest in her conversation. At the luncheon-table Eve had been 
 all talk and gaiety, deceiving every one except the man who watched 
 her face in its occasional moments of repose. In the drawing-room 
 she abandoned all effort, sank into a chair near the window, evi- 
 dently sick at heart, glancing first at the clock on the chimney-piece 
 and then at the street to see if her carriage were approaching. She 
 had ordered it for a quarter past three. She started up the instant 
 it was announced, and went over to Mrs. Montford to make her 
 adieux, that lady being deep in a murmured discussion of the latest 
 Mayfair scandal with a brace of matrons, while Sophy was being 
 taken round the rooms by Sefton, to look at the pictures and curios. 
 
 " You needn't have been in such an absurd hurry to come away," 
 remonstrated this young lady in a lugubrious tone, as they drove 
 homeward. "Nobody else was moving." 
 
 " They will be gone in a quarter of an hour. Only the bores ever 
 linger after a London luncheon. Everybody has something to do." 
 
 " We have nothing to do till five o'clock ; unless you go to Lady 
 Thornton's at home before five. The card says four till seven." 
 
 " Then we can go at six. That will be quite early enough." 
 
 " And what are wo to do in the interval ? It isn't half-past 
 three yet." 
 
 " Rest, Sophy ; sleep if you can. We are going to a theatre 
 to-night, and a dance afterwards."
 
 ''Every Gentle Passion Sick to Death." 281 
 
 " It is so near the end of the season," sighed Sophy. " People 
 are all rushing off to Germany for their cures. One feels quite out 
 of it when one has no complaint to talk about." 
 
 Vansittart was at home. Eve went straight to his den, sure to 
 find him there, smoking over a hook or a newspaper. 
 
 He looked up at her smilingly, but she thought he looked weary 
 and worn out, and when the smile was gone there was a troubled 
 expression. 
 
 " Was it a lively luncheon, Eve? " he asked, giving her his hand 
 as she took up her favourite position behind his high-backed chair. 
 
 It was a colossal chair, with cushioned arms, upon one of which 
 she sometimes seated herself, liking to nestle against him, yet not 
 so loquacious as to interrupt his reading; sometimes reading with 
 him ; dipping into some French novel which he read from sheer 
 idleness, not because he had any taste for the thinly beaten gold- 
 leaf of Maupassant or Bourget. 
 
 To-day she stood behind his chair, silent, meditative, while he 
 read and smoked. 
 
 "Was it pleasant — your party? "he asked presently, repeating 
 the question she had left unanswered. 
 
 "Oh, it was pleasant enough. Sophy will tell you that it was 
 delightful. I leave her to expatiate upon the people and the dishes 
 and the talk. I was not in a very pleasant mood. There is a letter 
 for you on the mantelpiece. You have not seen it, perhaps? " 
 
 " No," he said, startled by the angry agitation in her tone. " Is 
 there anything particular about the letter? " 
 
 He put down his pipe and stood up, looking at her inquiringly. 
 She was very pale, always with the exception of that hectic spot 
 which Sefton had noticed, and which burned more fiercely now. 
 
 He stretched out his hand to take the letter, half hidden by a 
 little bronze Buddha with malevolent onyx eyes. 
 
 He recognized Lisa's unformed scrawl at the first glance. 
 
 " What is the matter with the letter ? " he asked coldly. 
 
 " She brought it here herself, Jack, — that Italian woman — Signora 
 Vivanti. I was coming downstairs while she was at the door. I 
 saw her give the letter to James. What can she have to write to 
 you about? Why should she bring the letter with her own hand? 
 How could she dare come to the house where your wife lives ? " 
 She flamed up at the last question, and her voice trembled at the 
 word wife. 
 
 " I don't see why my wife's presence should alarm her, if she 
 had need of immediate help from me." 
 
 " What should she want? Why should she come to you for 
 help V Because you helped her once, in Italy, when she was poor
 
 282 The Venetians. 
 
 and friendless? Is that a reason why she should pester you 
 now?" 
 
 " If you will let me read her letter I may be able to tell you," 
 he answered gravely. 
 
 It was a long letter, for in writing to the man she adored, Lisa let 
 her pen run away with her. Nothing would ever induce her to 
 marry Sefton, she told him ; her heart was given to another ; he 
 knew who that other was, and that she could never change. Then 
 came the warning of his danger. Sefton's savage hatred. It was 
 a letter he could under no circumstances show to his wife. And 
 there she stood waiting for the letter to be shown her, raging with 
 jealousy, the love which had made her so angelic in her self-abne- 
 gation now transformed into a fire that made her almost diabolical. 
 
 " Well ! May I see her letter ? " 
 
 " No, Eve. The letter is confidential. She asks nothing from 
 me — except perhaps approval of the course she has taken. She has 
 had an offer of marriage — an offer that most young women in her 
 position would accept without a second thought." 
 
 " And she has refused ? " cried Eve, breathlessly. 
 
 " She has refused." 
 
 " Because she loves some one else — some one who can't marry 
 her — but who can carry on an intrigue with her — an old intrigue 
 ■ — begun years ago. Some one whom she is trying to get into her 
 net again. The net is spread — before my very eyes. That letter 
 is to make an appointment." 
 
 lie tore the letter across and across, and dropped the pieces into 
 his waste-paper basket. 
 
 " Your thought is as far from the truth as it is unworthy of you, 
 Eve," he said, with grave displeasure. " This young woman has 
 never been more to me than I have told you. A Avoman in whom 
 I was interested, chiefly because she was friendless." 
 
 "Chiefly," she cried, catching at the qualifying word; "and the 
 other reason?" 
 
 " If there was another reason, it had nothing to do with love. 
 Does that satisfy you ? " 
 
 " No,'' she answered gloomily. " Nothing you can say will prevent 
 m v being'miserable. That woman has come into my life and spoilt it." 
 
 " Only because you are unreasonably and absurdly jealous. You 
 are miserable of your own choice. You have me here, your faithful 
 husband, unchanged in thought, act, or feeling since the day we 
 rowed down the river ; and yet you choose to torture yourself with 
 vile suspicions, unworthy of a lady, unworthy of a wife." 
 
 "I cannot help it," she said. " We all have some latent sin, I 
 suppose. Perhaps jealousy is mine. I never knew what it was to 
 feel wicked before. Forgive me, Jack, if you can."
 
 "Every Gentle Passion Sick to Death." 28 
 
 
 
 She took up his hand, kissed it, and then sank sighing into her 
 chair, the chair she had christened Joan, while his, the colossal 
 armchair, was Darby. 
 
 "I forgive you with all my heart, Eve, on condition that this 
 little storm is the last outbreak. I should be sorry to think our 
 married life was to be a succession of tempests in teacups." 
 
 " I promise to behave better in future. I hate myself for my folly." 
 
 Vansittart resumed his newspaper, too much disturbed to court 
 conversation. He felt himself living upon the crust of a volcano. 
 This ceaseless jealousy was a matter of trivial moment in itself. He 
 could have laughed it off, as too absurd for serious argument ; but 
 this jealousy brought Eve to the brink of that revelation which might 
 wreck two lives. The horror in front of him was a horror that 
 meant doom. 
 
 Eve bore with the silence for a few minutes, took off her bonnet, 
 and carefully adjusted the petals of an artificial rose, studied the 
 little fantasy of lace and flowers as if it were the gravest thing in 
 the world, then flung it impatiently on a chair, and began to smooth 
 out her long suede gloves on her soft, silken knee. Her nerves were 
 strung to torhire. She had pretended to be satisfied, while the 
 tc mpest in her heart was still raging. She looked at her husband 
 as if she hated him. Yes ; it was hateful to see him sitting there, 
 silent, imperturbable, reading his newspaper, while she was in the 
 depths of despair. The fact that he had refused to show her that 
 letter seemed almost an admission of guilt. If the thing which he 
 had told her was true, the letter would have borne witness to his 
 truth. He would have been eager to show it to her. " Here," he 
 would have said, " under the woman's own hand, you will see that 
 she is nothing to me." 
 
 She brooded thus for about ten minutes, and then her irritation 
 could submit to silence no longer. 
 
 "What was the City doing?" she asked. "The City which 
 deprived me o'f your company at Mrs. Montford's luncheon." 
 
 "It was not the City's fault. I surrendered my place to Sophy." 
 
 " Oh, that's nonsense. There is always room enough and a 
 welcome at Mrs. Montford's luncheons ; but no doubt on a warm 
 July morning the City is more attractive than Mayfair." 
 
 " Certainly, for those who are making or losing money," he an- 
 swered, throwing down his paper and preparing to be sociable, though 
 there was that in his wife's tone which told him her heart was not 
 at ease. " What was the City doing ? " he repeated. " Buying and 
 selling, getting and losing. It is not half a bad place on a summer 
 morning, though you speak of it with the voice of the scorner. I 
 walked across St. Paul's Churchyard. They have turned an old 
 burial-ground into a flower-garden ; and there were nurses and chil-
 
 284 The Venetians. 
 
 dren, and homeless ragamuffins lying asleep in the sun, and pigeons 
 — tame pigeons — that fed out of the children's hands. It might have 
 been Venice." 
 
 He started and turned deadly pale. It was the first time he had 
 ever pronounced the name of the fatal city, voluntarily, in his wife's 
 hearing. His nerves were overstrained — as much as hers, perhaps 
 — and the mere name took his breath away. 
 
 Eve saw the startled look, the sudden pallor. 
 
 " I understand ! " she cried passionately. " It was at Venice you 
 met that woman. Venice, not Verona. The very name of the place 
 agitates you ! The very name of the place where you knew her and 
 loved her moves you more than all I have said to you — than all my 
 pain ! " 
 
 "You are a fool," he said roughly, "like Fatima, the type of all 
 woman-fools." 
 
 " It was Venice." 
 
 " It may have been Venice. Who cares ; or what does it matter ? " 
 
 " It may have been ! What hypocrisy ! Do you think I am a 
 child, to be hoodwinked by your feeble prevarications ? Every look, 
 every word, tells me that you have loved that woman better than 
 you ever loved me — that you are still in her net." 
 
 " It was at Venice, then, if you will have it," he answered, beside 
 himself. " At Venice, on a Shrove Tuesday, in Carnival time, five 
 years ago. Are vou satisfied now ? That is the first half of the 
 riddle."' 
 
 His pale cheek grew whiter, his head fell back upon the velvet 
 cushion, his whole frame collapsed. He was as near fainting as a 
 strong man could be. 
 
 Eve rushed to a little table, where she was privileged to write her 
 letters now and then — business letters, she called them, chiefly re- 
 lating to spending money. Here, among silver ornaments and fanciful 
 cutlery, there was a big bottle of eau de Cologne, which she half 
 emptied over her husband's temples. 
 
 " Thanks," he murmured. " You meant it kindly ; but you've 
 almost blinded me. I'm all right now. It was only a touch of 
 vertigo. I've had no luncheon ; and a man can't live upon tobacco 
 and emotional arguments." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 " CLOSER AND CLOSER SWAM THE THUNDER-CLOUD." 
 
 Eve was very sorry for her husband after that tragical scene in the 
 study ; but what profiteth a jealous wife's sorrow if she is uncon- 
 vinced ; if heart and brain are still racked with doubts and angry
 
 "Closer swam the Thunder-cloud" 285 
 
 questionings, while her calmness, her submission are only on the 
 surface, the subterranean tires still burning ? 
 
 Vansittart took a high hand with the woman he loved. There 
 must be no more quarrels, he told himself. He could not control his 
 tongue even in his own interests, if she were to goad him any further. 
 In their next encounter the secret would explode. He could not live 
 this slave's life for ever. It was not in him to go on prevaricating 
 and fencing with the truth. 
 
 He told her, gently but firmly, that she must torment him no more 
 with false imaginings. If she could not believe in his fidelity it would 
 be wiser for them to part. Better to be miserable asunder, than to 
 live together in an atmosphere of distrust. 
 
 At this hint of parting she flamed up, her doubt changed for a 
 moment to conviction. 
 
 " Part ! " she cried. " Perhaps that is what you would like ? " 
 
 " I would like anything better than this madness, Eve," he answered 
 wearily. " We cannot be worse than utterly wretched, and we are 
 that now, and shall be as long as you harbour unworthy suspicions." 
 
 His face looked like truth, his voice rang true. She flung herself 
 on her knees beside his chair, and clasped and cried over his 
 hand. 
 
 " I will not torment you. I will not plague and torture myself any 
 more," she sobbed. " It is only because I love you too much, and a 
 breath makes me fear I may lose you. I will trust you, Jack, in spite 
 of your mysteriousness, in spite of your refusing to show me that letter, 
 which I had a right to see, a right as your wife. No husband should 
 receive a letter from any woman which he dare not show his wife." 
 
 " I did not choose to show you that letter." 
 
 " Well, you did not choose, perhaps. It was temper, I dare say. 
 I was like the children who are refused a thing because they don't ask 
 properly. I did not ask properly, and you snubbed me, and treated 
 me as a child. But I won't be Fatima again, Jac"k. If there is a 
 blue chamber in your life, I won't tease you for the key." 
 
 " That's my own good wife. Remember how happy we were at 
 Bexley Hill, Eve, in our courting days, when you knew me so little 
 and trusted me so much. Surely after two years of wedlock you 
 should trust me more and not less— two years in which you and I 
 have been all the world to each other." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I was foolish. I hate myself for my mad jealousy. 
 You have found the ugly spot in my character, Jack. I did not know 
 it was there." 
 
 "Shall I be angry with my love for loving me too well?" he 
 said, as he folded the slender form to his heart. 
 
 How slender, how ethereal she was, the tall slip of a girl whose 
 graceful shape had never developed matronly solidity. A thrill of
 
 286 The Venetians., 
 
 fear ran through him at the thought of her fragility, too frail a sapling 
 to stand firm against the storms of life. 
 
 " God keep her from knowing the truth," he prayed dumbly, as 
 she hung upon his breast. " It would break her heart." 
 
 After this there came a halcyon interval. Eve was convinced that 
 she was beloved, and what more could a woman want in this world ? 
 There was only one thing that stood in the way of perfect peace. 
 Vansittart had business in the City on two other mornings, and those 
 disappearances Citywards worried her. The City, as Sefton had 
 said, was not in her husband's line. 
 
 When she questioned him about the business that drew him east- 
 ward he answered lightly that he went to his stockbroker's to make 
 some small changes in his investments. That very lightness of his, 
 which was meant to spare her a serious anxiety, awakened her sus- 
 picions. The actual cause of Vansittart's unusual interest in the 
 money market was sufficiently serious. A panic had occurred in some 
 South American liailway Stock from which some part of his income 
 was derived, and he was watching the market and the tide of affairs 
 in Brazil, waiting the hour when it might be needful to sell out and 
 snatch the remnant of his capital, or the .turn of the tide which should 
 justify his holding on and hoping for a renewal of the good days gone. 
 
 To this end he went to his stockbroker's every day, and heard the 
 latest news, the last opinions, dawdling in the office, hearing the wise 
 men of the East and their counsel. The hazards, the suspense, ex- 
 cited him. He grew interested in the money market, and felt all the 
 gambler's keenness. The City drew him like the loadstone rock that 
 took the nails out of Sinbad's ship. It was better than Monte Carlo. 
 A third of his fortune trembled in the balance. 
 
 He would not tell Eve the whole truth, believing that it would 
 worry her into a fever. She would exaggerate this fear as she had 
 exaggerated her jealous doubts. She would foresee beggary, and 
 dream of houselessness and starvation. He did not know that to a 
 woman money-troubles are the lightest of all woes. A husband 
 suspected of infidelity, a child down with measles, will afflict the 
 average woman more than the loss of a fortune. 
 
 Sophy was enjoying herself to her uttermost capacity of enjoy- 
 ment. This was life indeed. It was the last week of the season, 
 the week before Goodwood, and there was a sense of the end of all 
 things in the air. A good many of the people who were not going 
 to Goodwood were going away, starting for Homburg, Marienbad, 
 Wildbad, Auvergne, or the Pyrenees, in advance of the universal 
 rush which would make sleeping-cars impossible, and travelling 
 odious. It annoyed Sophy to hear people talk of getting away ; as 
 if London were worn out and done with, London which she was
 
 " 'Closer swam the Thunder-cloud." 287 
 
 enjoying so intensely. This was the fly in the ointment for Soph}-. 
 She felt aggrieved that her sister should have invited her at the end 
 of the season. Yet there was one compensating delight. The sales 
 were on : those delicious drapery sales, which had always been 
 Sophy's highest ideal of earthly happiness, even when her strained 
 resources had compelled her to turn with unsatisfied longing from a 
 counter where odd lengths of silk and velvet were being all but given 
 away. She had lain broad awake in her attic chamber at Fernhurst 
 regretting those bargains, which would have made her a richly 
 dressed woman at the most moderate cost. The counters of Mar- 
 shall, and Debenham, and Robinson, and Lewis, at the end of the 
 season, were to Sophy as the board of green cloth to the gambler. 
 She felt that fortunes were to be won for those who had money to 
 stake, fifteen guinea frocks for three pounds, two guinea parasols at 
 nine and eleven-pence. 
 
 Eve took her sister to the sales, and financed the situation. With 
 a judicious expenditure of twenty pounds Sophy secured treasures 
 that would last her through the coming autumn and winter, and, 
 with Eve at her elbow, resisted the allurements of unsuitable finery. 
 These shopping mornings were rapture to Sophy, and not without 
 pleasure to Eve. It was pleasant to see Sophy's joyous excitement, 
 a \ she hung tremulously between two fabrics which the shopman 
 exhibited for her choice— a bengaline at three and ninepenee, which 
 had been seven shillings — a watered silk at two and eleven-pence, 
 which had been eight and sixpence. After intense consideration 
 Sophy settled on the watered silk, not because she liked it best, but 
 because of the " had been." The original price decided her — not 
 taking into account that the price was reduced in the exact ratio of 
 the material's unfashionableness, and that she might find herself next 
 winter the only young woman in watered silk. There was for Eve 
 also the pleasure of buying presents for Jenny and Hetty, the two 
 sisters who were pining in their rustic bower, while Sophy was 
 draining the wine-cup of London gaieties. It was delightful to Eve 
 to feel that a few pounds could buy them happiness : and she brought 
 all her knowledge of good and evil to bear upon her selections for 
 those absent ones. 
 
 " You have such a very quiet taste," said Sophy, rather regret- 
 fully. " I call those cottons and foulards you have chosen almost 
 dowdy." 
 
 " You won't think so when you see them made up. I'm afraid 
 your scarlet pongee will look rather too showy for country lanes." 
 
 " My dear Eve, I shall keep it for garden-parties till it begins to get 
 shabby. Scarlet gives just the right touch of colour in a landscape." 
 
 " Yes, but I think one would always rather that somebody else 
 should give the touch."
 
 288 The Venetians. 
 
 1 Mr. Sefton said yesterday that fair-haired women should wear 
 scarlet." 
 
 Sefton was Sophy's great authority. He had been very polite to 
 her, very pleasant, very confidential, talking to her about London 
 society as if she were to the manner born, andjdiad been brought 
 up in the very midst of these people whom she saw to-day for the 
 first time. This flattered her ; indeed, his whole speech was made 
 up of flattery, that subtle adulation which did not express itself in 
 mere words, but which was indicated rather by a deference to her 
 opinion, a quickness in laughing at her little jokes, an acceptance 
 of her as on his own intellectual level. " You and I know better 
 than the common herd," was expressed in all his conversation 
 with her. 
 
 When they met in the evening ii was only natural she should tell 
 him her sister's plans for the next day, whether they were going to 
 spend the morning in the Park or at the picture-galleries. Sophy 
 was eager for picture-seeing when there was nothing better to be 
 done. Those galleries would give her so much to talk about at 
 autumn tea-parties, such a superior air among women who thought 
 they did a great deal for art when they fatigued themselves at the 
 Eoyal Academy. 
 
 If they sat in the Park for an hour or so before luncheon Sefton 
 contrived to find them there — if they were picture-seeing he 
 (hopped into the gallery, and criticized the pictures in technical 
 phraseology which provided Sophy with a treasury of art talk 
 especially adapted for country use. If they were at a theatre in 
 the evening he was there too. Eve warned Sophy that he was 
 only a philanderer. 
 
 " You remember how disagreeably attentive he was to me," she 
 said, reddening at the recollection, " and yet, you see, he never 
 meant anything." 
 
 " We were worse detrimentals then than we are now," argued 
 Sophy. " Your marriage has altered our position, and now that 
 the father lives abroad a man need not be afraid of marrying one 
 of us. I don't mean to say that Mr. Sefton is going to make me 
 an offer ; but he is certainly very attentive." 
 
 " Yes, he is very attentive, I admit. He likes being attentive to 
 girls. Nothing pleases him better than to try the effect of that 
 musical voice of his, and Ids nicely chosen phrases, upon any girl 
 who will listen to him — like Orpheus leading the brute beasts with 
 his lyre. I doubt if he cares any more for the girls than Orpheus 
 cared for the beasts. He is false for falsehood's sake." 
 
 " You are very bitter against him, Eve," retorted Sophy. " Yet 
 I dare say you woidd have married him if he had asked you." 
 
 " I think not."
 
 'Closer swam the Thunder-cloud? 289 
 
 " Oh, nonsense. You would not have refused to be mistress of 
 the Manor. Merewood is a hovel in comparison." 
 
 " Merewood has the man I love for master. If Jack had been 
 the lodge-keeper I would have married him, and washed and 
 cooked and mended for him, and opened the gate and curtsied to 
 the gentry, and been happy." 
 
 "Bosh!" said Sophy, very angry. "That's the way girls talk 
 when they are first engaged. It sounds ridiculously sentimental 
 from an old married woman like you. You are absurdly prejudiced 
 against Mr. Sefton." 
 
 "Call it prejudice, if you like. I call it instinct. Birds are 
 prejudiced against cats. I look upon Mr. Sefton as my natural 
 enemy." 
 
 " And I suppose, if he should call, you will be uncivil, and spoil 
 
 my chances ? " 
 
 " No, I will not spoil your chances — such as they are." 
 
 " How disagreeably you say that. One would think you were 
 jealous of an old admirer." 
 
 " No, I am not jealous ; only I don't like to see you duped by 
 meaningless attentions. I have no doubt Mr. Sefton does admire 
 y 0U — I only fear his admiration is worthless — but I will do every- 
 thing that a sister can do to encourage him." 
 
 After this conversation Eve was particularly polite to Mr. Sefton. 
 Poor Sophy was so terribly in earnest in her desire to make a good 
 marriage. The elder sister's success had been so startling, so easy 
 a conquest, so delightful a settlement in life, that it was natural 
 the younger sister should cherish hopes on her own account. 
 People told Sophy that she was growing more and more like Eve. 
 Hope's flattering tale told her that she was quite as pretty, while 
 vanity suggested that she had more savoir faire. Poor Sophy had 
 always prided herself upon her savoir /aire, though how a quality 
 which is, as it were, the final polish produced by society friction, 
 could have been acquired by a young lady in a cottage at Fernhurst, 
 must needs remain a mystery. Eve looked at her sister, and saw 
 that she was prettier than the ruck of girls to be met in a London 
 season. Her beauty had the dewy freshness that comes of a rustic 
 rearing ; her eyes were brighter than the eyes of the hardened 
 fashionable belle. Her complexion had the delicacy of colouring 
 which was characteristic of Colonel Marchant's daughters — which 
 had been, alas ! Peggy's chief beauty. 
 
 Sophy, dressed as Eve had dressed her, and with her somewhat 
 rebellious hair treated artistically by the skilful Benson, was certainly 
 a very attractive young woman ; and it seemed to Eve not im- 
 possible that Sefton, beginning the flirtation without any serious 
 aim, might end by asking Sophy to be his wife. He was entirely 
 
 U
 
 290 The Venetians. 
 
 his own master, could marry to please himself, without consideration 
 of worldly advantage ; only, unhappily, those are just the men who 
 many for self-aggrandizement rather than for simple inclination. 
 It is not as if all heiresses were hideous or disagreeable, ignorant or 
 underbred. Even England can furnish richly dowered young 
 women who are both handsome and amiable ; so why, asks the 
 youthful peer or landowner, should I marry some portionless beauty, 
 when I may as easily add to my revenue or treble my acreage ? 
 The original possessor considers his estate as the nucleus of a great 
 property, which he and each successive holder should increase by 
 judicious alliances; until the rolling mass swells into a territory 
 "like the duchy of Cleveland, and its acres are reckoned by thousands. 
 Eve had heard the mothers and fathers talk of their sons 1 views 
 and duties, even if the sons themselves did not openly avow their 
 intention of marrying to better themselves. 
 
 The only hope in Sophy's case lay in a certain eccentricity of 
 temper in Wilfred Sefton which might show itself in a dis- 
 advantageous marriage. The very fact that he had remained sc 
 long a bachelor indicated that he was not eager for a prize in the 
 matrimonial market. He had been content to stand by and see 
 many prizes carried off by men who were personally and socially 
 his inferiors. 
 
 He had been a frequent visitor in Charles Street since Sophy's 
 arrival. Her liveliness evidently pleased him ; they were always 
 talking and laughing in corners wherever they met, and seemed to 
 have worlds to say to each other. 
 
 " It is delightful to meet any one so fresh as your sister at the 
 end of the season," he explained to Eve, "just when most of us 
 are feeling dull and jaded, and almost ready to yawn in each other's 
 faces, like my lord and my lady in the ' Marriage a la Mode." 1 " 
 
 He invited Mrs. Vansittart and her sister to a tea-party, given 
 in honour of Sophy, who had expressed an ardent desire to see the 
 house in Tite Street — the bachelor den which little Mr. Tivett had 
 described to her in glowing colours. Eve hesitated about accepting 
 the invitation, knowing that her husband disliked Sefton as much 
 as she did herself; but the hesitation was overcome by Sophy's 
 arguments. 
 
 " He is giving the party on purpose for me," she pleaded. " The 
 invitation ai-ose out of my wish to see his library, which Mr. Tivett 
 had been praising. He could not pay me a more marked attention, 
 could he now?" 
 
 "It is certainly an attention," assented Eve, distressed by 
 Sophy's sanguine hopes, so likely to end in disappointment. 
 
 "Don't spoil all my chances by refusing," urged Sophy. "He 
 would be offended — and men are so easily choked off."
 
 "Closer swam the Thunder-cloud" 291 
 
 "Not a man who is really in earnest." 
 
 " Perhaps not — but he may not be quite in earnest yet. He 
 may not have made up his mind. Of course I should be a very 
 bad match. He cannot forget that all at once. There is a stage 
 in which a man who is inclined to fall in love lets himself drift, 
 don't you know, Eve ? He may be drifting — and it would be a 
 pity to discourage him." 
 
 Every woman is at heart a matchmaker. Eve yielded, and 
 accepted Sefton's invitation for five o'clock tea and a little music. 
 
 " Shall you have any singing? " she asked, with a sudden fear of 
 meeting Signora Vivanti. 
 
 No — there would be no singing. 
 
 " I only asked the American banjo man to amuse" you," said Air. 
 Sefton. " He is a capital fellow, and he does the most wonderful 
 things with his banjo. He is a Paganini among banjoists. That, 
 with the inevitable piano, will be more than enough music." 
 
 The afternoon, at the end of a brilliant July, was delightful, and 
 the Embankment, with its red-brick palaces and its little bit of old 
 Chelsea, looked just the one perfect place in which to live ; to live 
 an idle, artistic life, bien intendu, and bask in sunshine reflected 
 from blue water. The tide was at the flood, the gardens were full 
 ( f gaudy July flowers. 
 
 " How horrid Fernhurst will be after this ! " sighed Sophy. 
 "What a lucky man Mr. Sefton is to have a house in Tite Street, 
 as well as the Manor! " 
 
 " Ah, but it is only a bachelor den, remember," said Eve. " Pie 
 will do away with it when he marries." 
 
 " Not if his wife has any sense — unless she makes him change it 
 for a larger house facing the river." 
 
 Mr. Sefton's house was near the corner, and commanded a side- 
 long view of the Thames from all the front windows, and a still 
 better view from an oriel in the library, which projected so as to 
 rake the street. Sophy thought this small house in Tite Street, 
 with its rich and sombre furniture and subdued colouring, one of 
 the most enchanting houses she had ever entered, second only to 
 the Manor House, which she had seen some years before on the 
 never-to-be-forgotten occasion of a Primrose League garden-party 
 given by Mr. Sefton in the interests of the cause. The Manor 
 House and its splendours of art, its old gardens, and antique 
 furniture, were the growth of centuries, and owed their existence to 
 Seftons who were dust. This twelve-roomed house in Tite Street 
 was an emanation of the man himself. His temperament, his 
 education, his tastes were all embodied here. This was the pleasure 
 dome which he had built for himself — this was his palace of art. 
 
 She went about peeping and peering at everything, escorted by
 
 292 The Venetians. 
 
 Mr. Tivett, who expatiated and explained to his heart's content, 
 pointing out the workmanship which made a mahogany table as 
 precious as jasper or ivory ; the artistic form of those high-backed 
 chairs, copied from an old French model ; the Gobelin tapestry, 
 which had neither the glow nor sheen of silken fabrics, and yet was 
 six times as costly. 
 
 " This house of Sefton's just serves to remind one of what a 
 parvenu's house is not," said little Tivett, sententiously. 
 
 Sophy looked at the titles of the books. How ignorant they 
 made her feel ! There was hardly one that she had ever seen before ; 
 and yet no doubt they were the very cream of classic and modern 
 literature, not to have read which stamped one as illiterate. 
 
 "I have been looking at your books," she said, when Sefton came 
 in with Eve. " They are too lovely." 
 
 " Rather nicely bound, aren't they ? " he said, smiling gently at 
 her enthusiasm. " They are a somewhat scratch collection, not 
 quite family literature ; but those vellum bindings with the blue 
 labels give a nice tone of colour against the prevailing brown." 
 
 " That is so like Sefton," said Mr. Tivett. " He values his books 
 from an {esthetic standpoint. Thinks of the effect of their bindings, 
 not of the literature inside." 
 
 " As one gets older reading becomes more and more impossible. 
 There is a satisfaction in possessing books, but one's chief pleasure 
 is in their outsides. I sit here sometimes after midnight, smoking 
 the pipe of the lotus-eater and looking at my bindings, and I feel 
 as if that were enough for culture." 
 
 " I dare say that is quite the pleasantest way of enjoying a library," 
 said Mr. Tivett, as if he saw the matter in a new light. 
 
 " Of course it is. There's no use in thinking of the lifetime it 
 would need to read all the great books. That way madness lies. 
 De Quincey went into the question once arithmetically, and to read 
 his bare statement is distraction. I think it was that calculation 
 of his which first put me off reading." 
 
 " Then your books are only ornaments? " said Sophy, disappointed. 
 
 " My books are a dado by Riviere and Zaehnsdorf. There are a 
 great many of them with the leaves unopened. I takeout a volume 
 now and then, and peep between the pages. One gets the best of 
 a book that way — the flavour without the substance of the author. 
 But I came to take you down to tea, Miss Marchant. My banjoist 
 has arrived, and Lady Hartley and Mrs. Montford are doing all they 
 can to spoil him." 
 
 "Is Lady Hartley here? How nice!" exclaimed Sophy, to 
 whom Lady Hartley's dress, manners, and way of thinking were a 
 continual study. 
 
 Eve's sister-in-law was Sophy's ideal fine lady.
 
 "Closer swam the Thunder- cloud!' 293 
 
 " Lady Hartley is always nice to me," replied Sefton. " She 
 never misses one of my afternoons if she is in town. She would 
 sacrifice the Marlborough House garden-party for my tea and 
 muffins." 
 
 "Ah, but I dare say you contrive to make your tea-parties ex- 
 ceptional. This banjoist, now. Everybody is dying to hear him." 
 
 They went down to tea, which was served in a little bit of a 
 room at the back of the dining-room, from which it was divided 
 only by a curtain of old Italian tapestry ; a mere alcove in which 
 eight or ten people made a mob. Flowers, ices, tea, chocolate, 
 cakes, china, silver, damask embroidered by industrious Bavarians, 
 everything was the choicest of its kind ; and Mr. Sefton's valet, 
 with a footman and a smart parlour-maid, waited admirably. The 
 squeeziness of the room made the entertainment all the more enjoy- 
 able. The banjoist stood in the centre of the crowd, talking in the 
 true American style, with an incisive cleverness, and a clear metallic 
 enunciation which made everybody else's speech sound slipshod and 
 slovenly. 
 
 People were amused and delighted. He told anecdotes, firing 
 them off as fast as the crackers which demon boys explode on the 
 pavement. The admiring circle forgot that his distinction was the 
 banjo, and began to accept him as a wit. Mrs. Montford asked 
 him to lunch ; Lady Hartley booked him for her next cosy little 
 dinner. 
 
 After tea they all trooped up the narrow staircase to the library 
 which had to serve Mr. Sefton for a drawing-room. More people 
 dropped in— neighbours, most of them, including Mervyn Hawberk 
 and his wife — and the room filled before the banjoist began to play. 
 
 He played wonderfully, surprising the metallic instrument into 
 melodious utterances. He sang and accompanied himself; he 
 played in a concertante duet for banjo and piano— a delightful 
 arrangement of the serenade from Don Giovanni, in which the banjo 
 was now the melody, and now the accompaniment ; he played on 
 his banjo with a bow, as if it had been a violin, and produced an 
 effect which was remarkable, although somewhat distressing. His 
 banjo laughed ; his banjo cried ; and with those wailing notes there 
 stole over the senses of his audience a dream of weary Ethiopians 
 resting from their labours amidst the sunlit verdure beside some 
 broad Virginian river. 
 
 Mr. Sefton's visitors, who were chiefly feminine, flocked rouijd 
 the American, praising and descanting upon his talent. Little 
 Tivett went about explaining, after his wont. He talked as if he 
 had invented the banjoist. 
 
 " Did you really know him in America ? " inquired Mrs. Montford, 
 deluded by this little way of Mr. Tivett's.
 
 294 The Venetians. 
 
 '• No, no ; I was never in America in my life ; but I knew him 
 when first he came to London, before people began to talk about 
 him. I told him what a hit he was going to make." 
 
 While Society was prostrating itself before a novel entertainer, 
 Mr. Sefton and Sophy had drifted through the curtained archway 
 to the little back room, which seemed, from its smallness, a kind of 
 inner temple, where the treasures of the house might be found ; as 
 in the smallest rooms in old Italian palaces one looks for the choicest 
 gems in the princely collection. 
 
 Sophy was talking and laughing with her host, radiant and happy. 
 This tea-party seemed to her full of meaning. It was assuredly 
 given for her pleasure. Mr. Sefton had said so. She had expressed 
 a curiosity about his small house in Chelsea, and he had said 
 instantly, " You must come and see it. I will ask some people to 
 tea." What more could a man do for the woman he meant to 
 many ? Sophy was intoxicated with this delicate token of subjuga- 
 tion. She imagined herself looked at and talked about as the future 
 Mrs. Sefton. Unconsciously she gave herself some small airs of an 
 affianced wife; chiding him; making little jokes at his expense; 
 pretending to underrate his surroundings — the pretty childish graces 
 and little pettish tricks which come naturally to the weaker sex 
 before marriage, as if they were recompensing themselves in advance 
 for the iron heel under which they are to exist afterwards. 
 
 They sauntered into the inner room, brushing against the tapestry 
 curtains, and one glance at the sanctuary sent the blood to Sophy's 
 cheeks in a hot, angry blush. 
 
 The most prominent position in the room was 'filled by an easel 
 draped with orange and sold brocade, and on the easel appeared a 
 full-length portrait of Signora Vivanti in her character of " Fan- 
 chonette." 
 
 It was a bold sketch in water-colours, suggested by a photograph, 
 but with all the grace and power of a picture painted from the living 
 model. The painter had caught the fire and sparkle of the Italian 
 face, the richness of colouring, the wealth of a somewhat vulgar 
 beauty. The photographer had seized a happy moment of graceful 
 abandon — not a photographer's pose. 
 
 She was half reclining in her chair, with averted shoulder, and 
 looking backward out of the picture with a most provoking smile — 
 Fanchonette's audacious smile, which had taken the town by storm. 
 The velvet bodice set off the bust and shoulders in all their beauty, 
 the blue and white striped petticoat was short enough to show the 
 well-shaped leg and large useful foot in scarlet stocking and neat 
 buckled shoe. A grisette's little white muslin cap sat airily upon 
 the splendid coils of blue-black hair. Beauty of the plebeian type 
 could go no further. Eyes, hair, complexion, figure, all were perfect ;
 
 "Closer swam the Thunder- cloud? 295 
 
 and over and above all there was the charm of mutinous lip and 
 flashing smile, a look that was bold without immodesty, the frank 
 outlook of a nature unacquainted with guile. 
 
 Sefton watched Sophy's face as she stared at the portrait, and her 
 pinched lips, her sickly pallor, smote him with a sudden remorse. 
 He had been fooling this rustic for his own purposes, making her an 
 instrument in his scheme of evil. He felt that he had gone too far. 
 Poor simpleton ! What had she done that he should give her pain ? 
 Eve had slighted him ; Eve's husband had come between him and 
 the woman who was his passion ; but this simpering, chattering, 
 giggling girl had done him no wrong ; and it was a base treachery 
 to have deluded her with flattering speeches and meaningless atten- 
 tions. However, the harm was done, done with deliberate purpose ; 
 and he had only to carry out his plan to the end. He meant Sophy 
 to be his means of communication with Eve. He meant to reach 
 the wife's ear through the sister. 
 
 " I'll make his life as miserable as he has made mine, if I can," 
 he said to himself. 
 
 Sophy stood before the portrait, dumb with misery. What did 
 he mean— what could he mean by placing the singer's portrait there, 
 the crowning gem of his luxurious rooms, a portrait which even her 
 ignorant eye told her must be by the brush of a master, so bold and 
 brilliant was the handling ? Even the easel, with its costly draping 
 of orange and gold, was a work of art. What right had he to 
 exhibit such a portrait ; the portrait of an improper young woman, 
 in all probability ? 
 
 She felt sorry that she had accepted his invitation. She felt as 
 if she had been brought to a house which was hardly fit for her to 
 enter. And yet there Avere the Montfords and Lady Hartley chatter- 
 ing at their ease in the next room ; so it could hardly be " bad 
 form " to come here. 
 
 "What do you think of the likeness?" asked Sefton, lolling 
 against a tall Versailles chair, and contemplating the brilliant face 
 in the picture with a smile. 
 
 " I suppose it is a very good likeness," said Sophy, " but of a 
 vulgar face — very handsome, no doubt; nobody can deny that — 
 but quite peuple." 
 
 '• Yes, it is 2)euple. That is one of its charms. It has all the lire 
 and freshness of an unsophisticated race, generations of fishermen, 
 sailors, gondoliers, all that there is of a frank free life between sea 
 and sky. You can't get such beauty as that from a race reared 
 indoors. It is an open-air loveliness, as rich in grace and colouring 
 as one of those sea-flowers that unfold their living petals under the 
 clear bright water." 
 
 " You admire her very much? " faltered Sophy.
 
 296 The Venetians. 
 
 " Yes, I admire her very much. You and I have got on so well 
 together, Miss Marchant, that I feel I may talk to you with all the 
 freedom of friendship— and confide in you as I have confided in no 
 one else. I do admire that woman, have admired her ever since 
 she made her first appearance at the Apollo. I began by liking to 
 hear her sing, liking to watch her bright spontaneous acting, like 
 the acting of a clever child in its naturalness. Even her beauty 
 charmed me less than that delicious spontaneity which struck a new 
 chord in the genius of the stage. I went night after night to sec 
 her and hear her, without fear of danger; and one day I awoke and 
 found myself her slave. I love her as I never loved before— not 
 even when I used to fancy myself in love with your charming sister. 
 Against every other love, a" selfish desire to retain my liberty, a 
 vacillating temper, which made the desire of to-morrow unlike the 
 desire of yesterday, have prevailed ; but against the love I bear that 
 woman," pointing to the laughing face in that picture, " reason has 
 been powerless. Another man in my position might have tried to 
 do what other men have been doing, ever since the first girl-Desde- 
 mona disgusted John Evelyn and began the long line of actresses who 
 have charmed the civilized world. Another man might have tried to 
 win her by dishonourable means. I was not base enough for that." 
 
 Sophy crimsoned, remembering that dark story of the farmer's 
 daughter, which Nancy had related to her, that well-meaning woman 
 not being over scrupulous in her communications to the ear of 
 girlhood. 
 
 She waited silently, and Sefton went on, looking at the portrait, 
 not at the woman to whom he was talking. An angry glow was on 
 his cheek. An angry light was in his eyes. The thought of the 
 social sacrifice he had been prepared to make and the futility of his 
 offer lashed him to fury. 
 
 "I would not degrade her by a dishonourable proposal. No — 
 though I knew she was not spotless — though I knew her as the 
 mother of a nameless child. She was all the world to me, and what 
 social consideration should a man set against that which is his all of 
 happiness or hope ? I asked her to be my wife, offered her my 
 place in society, my passionate love, a life's devotion; and she 
 refused me — refused me after more than a year of friendship, a 
 friendship which had seemingly brought us very near to each other." 
 
 " She refused you ? " exclaimed Sophy, beholding in one compre- 
 hensive glance this charming house in Tite Street, the Manor, and 
 all its belongings dead and alive, together with this remarkably 
 handsome and agreeable man to whom these things belonged 1 " She 
 refused you ! Why, what a preposterous minx she must be ! " 
 
 " Yes, that's the word, Miss Marchant, It seems preposterous, 
 doesn't it, that a Venetian peasant, with only her voice and good looks
 
 " Closer swam the Thunder-cloud." 297 
 
 — and the hazardous fortunes of an opera singer — should refuse an 
 English gentleman with a handsome rent-roll. But the thing is true 
 all the same. She refused me. Can you guess why ? " 
 
 " I can only imagine that she is a brainless idiot," said Sophy, 
 feeling that she might be tempted to take out her bonnet pin and run 
 it into that vivid face, if it were not for the glass which protected the 
 picture. 
 
 She was too angry with Signora Vivanti for having won Mr. 
 Sefton's affections to be grateful to her for having refused his hand. 
 
 " There is always a reason for everything," said Sefton, after a 
 backward glance at the other room, which showed him that there 
 was no one near enough or unoccupied enough to overhear^ or 
 observe him ; the banjoist being still the centre of attraction, 
 and everybody grouped about him in the neighbourhood of the 
 piano. " There is always a reason if one will only look for it. 
 Si°nora Vivanti refused me because she was in love with another 
 man, the man she knew and loved in Venice, the man who brought 
 her to London and established her in the house she occupies, and 
 had her trained for the stage. Forgive me, Miss Marchant, if I go 
 a step further and say the man who is the father of her son ! " 
 
 Sophy drew herself up with an offended air, and flashed an angry 
 look at him. 
 
 " You have no right to talk to me in this way, Mr. Sefton. I 
 don't understand why you should select me for your confidante,' 1 sho 
 said icily, moving towards the next room. 
 
 " Pray forgive me. You are clever and sympathetic. I have no 
 sister, and in certain crises of life a man feels the need of a woman's 
 sympathy. And then there were other reasons ; or at least there 
 was another reason." 
 
 He stopped, embarrassed, looking at her with a curious hesitation ; 
 looking from her to the group by the piano, where Eve's face shone 
 out among the rest, smiling at the American's last ebullition. 
 
 "You are hinting at something dreadful," Sophy said, with a 
 scared look. " Do you mean that the man is — is some one I know ? " 
 
 " Don't tell her, Miss Marchant. I would not for worlds have her 
 know. It would do no good. It might make her miserable. Women 
 are so sensitive, even about the past, and I fear this affair is going 
 on in the present." 
 
 " Don't tell her ! " echoed Sophy. " You mean my sister ! And 
 the man is — Jack! Oh, what a wretch he must be ! " 
 
 " Weak rather than wicked, perhaps. Don't be too hard upon 
 him in your innocence of life. When a man has forged fetters of 
 that kind it ain't easy to break them." 
 
 " A man so fettered has no right to marry. It would break her 
 heart if she knew."
 
 298 The Venetians. 
 
 " She need not know. You won't tell her ; and you may be sure 
 I shan't. But you are a girl with strong sense ; aud you love your 
 sister. I thought it only right that you should know." 
 
 " You may be mistaken." 
 
 " Hardly likely. It is an open secret that he established her in 
 lodgings and paid for her education. And over and above that 
 evidence there is the fact that he still visits her. I met him leaving 
 her rooms only a few days ago." 
 
 " The wretch ! The hypocrite ! He seems to idolize Eve ! " 
 
 " And your sister is happy in that idolatry. For pity's sake, Miss 
 Marchant, don't let her see the seamy side of a husband's character." 
 
 Eve came towards the archway at this moment. 
 
 "You have lost ever so many amusing stories," she said to 
 Sophy. " Your banjoist is the most [entertaining person I have 
 met this season, Mr. Sefton, and he has made us all oblivious of 
 time. I have just discovered that it is ever so much past six." 
 
 " ' Ever so much ' meaning a quarter of an hour," retorted Sefton, 
 laughing. 
 
 He dropped a fold of the brocade drapery as Eve drew near, and the 
 portrait was hidden before her face appeared in the curtained arch. 
 
 He looked at her, trying to recall his feelings of a time gone by, 
 when he had been — or had fancied himself — in love with her. Oh, 
 what a weak, hesitating love that had been, as measured against- his 
 devotion to this scum of the lagunes — this gutter-bred minx who had 
 scorned him ! 
 
 " A preposterous minx ! " he repeated to himself by-and-by, when 
 he was alone. "I thank thee, child, for teaching me that word. 
 Well, I have sown the wind ; I wonder whether I shall have a pros- 
 perous harvest, and reap the whirlwind?" 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 "THOU MAYST BE FALSE AND YET I KNOW IT NOT." 
 
 Before addressing his confidences to Sophy Marchant, Mr. Sefton 
 had assured himself that she did not belong to that exceptional 
 order of womankind who, in honour and discretion, are on a level 
 with wise aud honourable men. He had known the young lady 
 quite long enough to know that, although sharp and clever, she was 
 shallow-brained, impulsive, and emotional. He was very sure that 
 with every desire to spare her sister pain she would end by telling 
 Eve of her husband's infidelity. The secret would be kept for some 
 days, perhaps, or even for some weeks ; but it would be as a con- 
 suming fire, and would ultimately burst into flame — a flame that 
 would devastate his rival's home.
 
 <( 
 
 Thoit mayst be False? 299 
 
 The more scathing that whirlwind which was to come from the 
 wind of his sowing, the happier the result for Sefton. It was in vain 
 that Lisa had denied her son's paternity. In Sefton's mind there 
 was no shadow of douht that Vansittart had been, and even now 
 was her lover — and it was for love of Vansittart that his, Sefton's, 
 honourable attachment had been scorned by her. King Cophetna 
 had offered himself to the beggar-maid, and the beggar-maid had 
 refused him. Was that a humiliation for a man to forgive? Was 
 that, a disappointment to go unavenged? All the latent malignity 
 of Sefton's nature was aroused into active life by that fierce passion 
 of jealousy. 
 
 He had not misinterpreted Sophy's character. She was very 
 silent during the homeward drive with her sister, lolling back in the 
 victoria, looking vacantly at the carriages and the people as they 
 passed. 
 
 " How tired you look, Sophy ! " Eve said, as they crossed the 
 path, where the carriages and riders and loungers had dwindled 
 considerably within the past week. " I fancy even you begin to 
 feel you have had enough of gadding about ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have had enough, more than enough," Sophy answered, 
 with a little choking sob. 
 
 She could no more suppress her own feelings, bear her own troubles, 
 ami be dumb, than a child can. It was quite as much as she could 
 do to keep herself from crying, in the broad light of summer evening 
 and Hyde Park. 
 
 " My poor Sophy, what has happened to distress you ? " Eve asked 
 affectionately. " You and Mr. Sefton had such a long confabulation 
 in that inner room. I really thought the crisis had come." 
 
 " There was no crisis ; there never will be. You were right, He 
 was only fooling me. All his fine speeches, his sentimental talk — his 
 way of holding one's hand as if he would like to squeeze it, and was 
 only prevented by his deep respect for one — he did squeeze it at the 
 carriage door that night when we stayed so late at Mrs. Macpherson's 
 dance — it all meant nothing — less than nothing." 
 
 , " 
 
 b 
 
 ; But how do you know, Sophy? " Eve asked earnestly. " He 
 can't have told you that he doesn't care for you? " 
 
 " No ; but he can have told me that he is in love with another 
 woman — a low-born, ignorant creature, who can do nothing but sing 
 and strut about the stage in the boldest, horridest way, showing her 
 lace petticoats and her legs," said Sophy, disgustedly, forgetting how 
 she had admired Signora Vivanti. 
 
 " Do you mean the singer at the Apollo ? " asked Eve. 
 
 " Yes! Signora Vivanti. He is in love with her, if you please, 
 and she has refused him." 
 
 Eve remembered her husband's explanation of Lisa's letter.
 
 300 The Venetians. 
 
 " He told you this — chose you for his confidante. How odd ! " 
 
 " Rather bad form, wasn't it ? I fear I had been too — what young 
 Theobald calls — coming on. I thought he liked me, and I encouraged 
 him, and he rewards me by confiding his attachment to that creature." 
 
 "And she has refused to marry him. Why?" asked Eve, very pale. 
 
 " Who knows ? Mere airs and graces, I dare say. She thinks 
 she has all London at her feet, and that she can pick and choose. 
 How I wish I were on the stage ! I can sing pretty well, can't I, 
 Eve ? And I have often been told that I am like Ellen Terry." 
 
 In her angry excitement, Sophy saw a vision of herself as the queen 
 of a theatre, all the town rushing to see her act, as they went to see 
 this Venetian peasant. Surely a young lady with good blood in her 
 veins must be better than a girl bred in a hovel. Sophy did not pause 
 to consider that it was the rough freshness, the primitive vigour of 
 the peasant which constituted Signora Vivanti's chief claim to notice. 
 
 Sophy had exercised no small amount of self-control in restraining 
 her tears during the homeward drive ; but once safe in the sanctuary 
 of her bedroom she let loose the flood of her emotions, with its cross- 
 currents of anger and sorrow, disappointed ambition, and disappointed 
 love. Yes, love. Considering Mr. Sefton, in the first instance, only 
 from the social point of view, with the mercenaiy feelings engendered 
 by a youth of poverty, she had allowed herself to be beguiled by his 
 attentions, and had entered at the golden gate of that fool's paradise 
 which first love creates for its victim — a world of fevered dreams, 
 where nothing is but what is not. Walking in the enchanted groves 
 of that paradise, she had seen Wilfred Sefton in the light that never 
 was on land or sea — the light that beautifies all waking dreams — and 
 she had interpreted every speech of his after her own fashion. Words 
 lightly spoken took the deepest meaning — not his meaning, but hers. 
 She told herself again and again that, if he had not actually asked her 
 to be his wife, he had spoken words which a man only speaks to the 
 woman whose life is to be interwoven with his own. 
 
 Eve came to her sister's door and insisted upon being admitted. 
 
 " Oh, what streaming eyes ! Sophy, dearest, I am so sorry you 
 have allowed yourself to care for him. I warned you, dear; I 
 warned you." 
 
 " Yes," retorted Soph}', irritated beyond measure at a form of speech 
 which is always irritating, " but you didn't warn me of anything like 
 the truth. You didn't tell me that he was passionately, ridiculously, 
 degradingly in love with that Venetian girl." 
 
 " My dearest, how could I warn you of what I did not know ? " 
 
 " Don't dearest me. I am almost out of my mind — indeed, I should 
 not be surprised if I were to have brain fever, or something. When 
 I remember how I have lowered myself — letting him see that I cared 
 for him ; for I have no doubt he did see, and that was why he made
 
 "T/wu mayst be False" 301 
 
 me his confidante this afternoon, and told me about that creature — 
 a woman with a nameless son. Do you think I can ever get over 
 the degradation of being talked to about such a subject? " 
 
 Eve did not answer. She sank down upon the sofa, while her 
 sister stood before the looking-glass, frowning at her tear-stained face 
 as she unbuttoned the bodice of her gown, that gown which she 
 made a point of calling her " frock." 
 
 Her nameless son. Eve remembered the boy in the boat, the 
 Murillo-faced boy, looking up with big wondering eyes as his mother 
 and Vansittart clasped hands. Her nameless son. She remembered 
 that curious speech of Vansittart's a week ago — " Yes, it was at 
 Venice we met. That is the first half of the riddle." What was the 
 second half? The parentage of that boy, perhaps. His son — his son 
 — another woman's and his. And she, his adoring wife, had no son 
 to place in his arms, no child to gratify the well-born man's desire 
 to see his race prolonged. 
 
 " If I live to be an old woman he may die without an heir," she 
 thought. " There may be no more Vansittarts of Merewood. 
 Hannah's husband did not hate her because she was childless — but 
 then he had other wives." 
 
 She pictured her husband loving that alien's son, making him his 
 heir perhaps by-and-by, desiring to bring him into his home, asking 
 her to receive Hagar's child, to let him call her mother. She had 
 heard of such things being done. 
 
 " No, no, no, not for worlds," she protested to herself. " I could 
 not do it." 
 
 She got up and walked about the room, while Sophy bathed her 
 eyes, and tried to undo the damages her emotions had inflicted on 
 her.delicate prettiness. 
 
 "I can't go to the party looking like this," exclaimed Sophy, 
 ruefully contemplating her swollen eyelids in the glass. 
 
 u We need not go till half-past ten. Eleven o'clock would be 
 early enough. There is time for you to get back your good looks. 
 Benson shall bring you a light little dinner, and then you had better 
 lie down and take a long nap." 
 
 " Do you think I can eat or sleep in my state of mind? " protested 
 Sophy ; but a quarter of an hour later, when Benson appeared with 
 an appetizing meal, the victim of misplaced affection found that 
 violent emotions are not incompatible with hunger. 
 
 She eat her dinner, cried a little now and then between whiles, 
 and at half-past ten went down to the drawing-room in her most 
 attractive frock, and with her light fluffy hair piled as high as she 
 could pile it, and sparkling with those dainty paste stars which Eve 
 had sported at the memorable hunt ball. 
 
 "Sophy," cried Vansittart, "I vow you look almost as pretty as
 
 302 The Venetians. 
 
 Eve looked that night in the snow. And what do I see? Surely 
 I know those quivering starlets ! You are wearing the family 
 diamonds." 
 
 Sophy rewarded him with a most ungracious scowl, and moved to 
 the other side of the room. Vansittart was looking at an evening 
 paper, and was serenely unconscious of the change in his sister-in - 
 law's manner ; but Eve saw that angry glance and movement of 
 avoidance, and wondered what could have caused such rudeness. 
 Temper, perhaps ; only poor Sophy's petulant temper, which had 
 never been discriminating in its outbursts. 
 
 This was Sophy's way of keeping a secret. Her visit to Charles 
 Street ended two days later. She was studiously uncivil to her host 
 up to the hour of her departure ; and in her farewell talk with her 
 sister, being closely questioned by Eve as to the reason of this change 
 in her manner, she prevaricated, hesitated, said things and unsaid 
 them ; and finally, in a flood of compassionate tears, she protested 
 that it was only on Eve's account she was angry with Eve's husband. 
 Mr. Sefton had told her that Vansittart stiii visited that odious 
 woman. Mr. Sefton had met him leaving her house only a few 
 days previously ; and Mr. Sefton had assured her that it was he. 
 Eve's husband, who had brought Signora Vivanti to London, and 
 paid for her musical education. 
 
 " Can you wonder that I am angry with him, Eve, loving you as 
 1 do ? You have been so good to me, so generous. It would be 
 wicked of me to go away without warning you. I hated the idea of 
 telling you. I have thought over it again and again. I promised 
 Mr. Sefton that I would tell you nothing ; but I could not bear the 
 idea of your being hoodwinked by an unfaithful husband. It was 
 right to tell you, wasn't it, dear? It is better for you to know the 
 truth, is it not?" 
 
 "Yes, yes, it is better for me to know," Eve answered, in a hard, 
 cold voice. 
 
 " How quietly she takes it ! " thought Sophy, as the footman 
 announced the carriage. 
 
 Benson had gone on with Sophy's luggage in a four-wheel cab ; 
 twice as much luggage as Sophy had brought from Fernhurst. 
 
 " I shall never forget your kindness to me," said Sophy, with her 
 parting kiss. 
 
 " And I shall never forget your visit," answered Eve. 
 
 Eve was not at home at luncheon time, so Vansittart went off to 
 his club, and only returned to Charles Street at Eve's usual hour for 
 afternoon tea, when he was told that Mrs. Vansittart had gone out 
 at three o'clock, and had left a note for him in the study. 
 
 The note was a letter.
 
 In the Blue Chamber. 303 
 
 "I am taking a step which will no doubt make you angry," Eve 
 began, " but I cannot help myself. I cannot go on living as we are 
 living now. Every hour of my life increases my misery. I have 
 been told that you visit that woman — that woman who is the cause 
 of all my unhappiness. I have been told that it is you who brought 
 her to London, and had her educated for the stage ; that her child 
 is your child. I ought to have known all this without being told ; 
 but I shut my eyes to the truth. I wanted so to believe in you. I 
 clung so desperately to that which makes the happiness of my life. 
 You accuse me of unreasoning jealousy ; but could any wife help 
 being jealous, seeing what I have seen, hearing what I hear ? That 
 woman's face and manner spoke volumes. I tried to accept your 
 explanation — tried to believe you. I had even begun to feel happy 
 again, when I learnt this hateful fact of your visit to her house. I 
 cannot believe that you would have gone there, knowing my feelings 
 on the subject, if this love of the past had not been more to you 
 than your love for me, your wife. There is but one thing for me to 
 do, only one thing which can set my mind at rest, or make me 
 wretched for ever; and that is to see this woman, and hear her 
 story from her own lips. I have no fear that I shall fail in getting 
 at the truth when she and I are face to face. Woman against 
 woman, wife against mistress, I know who will be the stronger. 
 
 " If I have wronged you, my beloved, your wife in penitent love. 
 If you have wronged me, your wife no longer — Eve." 
 
 A pleasant letter to greet a husband on his home-coming. 
 
 "Woman against woman, face to face, those two ! " thought Van- 
 sittart. " She will discover— not that which she fears to discover, 
 but a darker secret — and then it will be as she has said, my wife no 
 longer." 
 
 He stood with his finger on (he button of the bell till a servant 
 came. 
 
 "A hansom instantly, but be sure you get a good horse," he said, 
 and went into the hall to wait for the man's return. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 IN THE BLUE CHAMBER. 
 
 Eve had learnt Madame Vivanti's address from Lady Hartley the 
 day after the singer's appearance in Hill Street. So her letter to 
 her husband written, and her mind made up, she had only to drive 
 to Don Saltero's Mansion, and to make her way to that upper floor 
 in which the singer had her bower. The door was opened by 
 Fiordelisa herself, who gave a little look of surprise at seeing her
 
 304 The Venetians. 
 
 visitor, and then stood in mute wonder, waiting for Eve to speak, 
 smiling faintly, and evidently embarrassed. 
 
 She wore her accustomed black stuff gown, with a yellow silk 
 handkerchief knotted carelessly on her breast. The boy was hanging 
 on to her gown, and peeping shyly at the strange lady, so pure and 
 fresh looking in her soft grey silk, and dainty grey hat with pale pink 
 roses. Lisa noted her rival's toilette in all its details, the long loose 
 grey gloves, the grey parasol. 
 
 For a minute or so the two women stood thus, looking at each 
 other in silence. Then, with an effort, Eve spoke. 
 
 " Are you alone, Madame Vivanti? " 
 
 " Alone, all but Paolo, and I don't suppose you count him any- 
 body, Eccellenza. La Zia has gone to London." 
 
 " I have come to talk to you — about my husband." 
 
 Lisa flushed crimson. 
 
 " Please take the trouble to sit down, Excellenza," she said 
 politely, placing her prettiest armchair in front of the open window. 
 
 There were flowers in the balcony, a bed of marigolds, a flower 
 which la Zia had discovered to be decorative and cheap. For 
 perfume there w T ere stocks and mignonette. The balcony was wide 
 enough to hold plenty of flowers, and a couple of basket chairs in 
 which Lisa and her aunt sat for many idle hours in fine weather, 
 breathing the cool breezes from the river, and submitting to the 
 blacks. They thought of their attic window in the Campo, and the 
 life and movement in the paved square below, the passing and re- 
 passing of the light-hearted crowd to and fro on the Rial to, the 
 twanging of a guitar now and then, the tinkling 'of wiry mandolines, 
 the nasal tones of a street-singer. Here they had a wider hoi'izon, 
 but a murkier sky, and not that concentration of gaiety which makes 
 every campo in Venice a busy little world, self-contained and self- 
 sufficing. Eve looked round the room, noting the pretty furniture, 
 obviously chosen by a person of taste ; the open piano ; the glimpse 
 of a somewhat untidy bedroom through a door ajar. Her husband 
 had chosen the furniture, Eve told herself. He had built this nest 
 for his singing-bird. 
 
 "I am looking at your rooms," she said, with pale lips; "the 
 rooms my husband furnished for you." 
 
 Lisa had not even the grace to attempt a denial. 
 
 " He was very good, very generous," she faltered, her eyes 
 suffused with tears, those tears which came so readily to Lisa's eyes, 
 on the stage or off. " There never was any one so good as he." 
 
 " He owed you at least as'much as that," said Eve, sternly. " It 
 was the least he could do." 
 
 "Ah, he has told you then," cried Lisa, eagerly; "he has told 
 you his secret."
 
 In the Blue Chamber. 305 
 
 " No, he has not told me. He was too much ashamed to tell 
 me of anything so infamous. He is not shameless like you," said 
 Eve, trembling with indignant feeling. 
 
 It was all true then, all that Sefton had told her sister; all that 
 her own jealous fears had suggested. This woman stood before her, 
 unabashed, ready to expatiate upon her sin. 
 
 " He has told me nothing," she said, " or if he has spoken of you 
 it has only been to deceive me. But there are some things that 
 are easy to guess, when a woman has lived in the world as I have, 
 and has heard other women talk. Two years ago perhaps I might 
 have been fooled by his falsehoods ; but I am wiser now. I knew 
 from the first that you had been his mistress ; that he was the 
 father of that boy." 
 
 She pointed to the unconscious Paolo, sprawling on the floor, 
 turning the leaves of a picture-book, and doing his utmost to destroy 
 an indestructible " Jack the Giant Killer," printed on stout linen. 
 
 " You knew what was not true, then," said Lisa, drawing herself 
 up, with crimson cheeks and flaming eyes. " You pretend to know 
 that which is false, false, una, bugia indegna. He was never any- 
 thing to me but a friend, my generous and noble friend. He hired 
 this apartment for us, for la Zia and me, and he furnished these 
 rooms, and he bought me that piano, and he paid the good Zinco to 
 teach me to sing. E vero ! I owe him my fortune, and all I have 
 in the world. I would walk barefoot all over this earth if I could 
 make him happier by my toil. There is nothing in this world I 
 would not do for him." 
 
 " And you ask me to believe that he did all this for friendship — 
 mere friendship — he, an English gentleman, for an Italian peasant? " 
 
 " I don't ask you to believe anything, and I don't care what you 
 believe. He is all the world to me. You are nothing — less than 
 nothing ! " cried Lisa, passionately. " I hate you. If it had not 
 been for you he would have married me, perhaps. Who knows?" 
 
 " You think he would have married you ! And yet he was only 
 your friend, you say." 
 
 " He was only my friend." 
 
 " He brought you and your aunt from Italy and set you up in 
 London ; and yet he was only your friend." 
 
 " He did not bring us from Italy. We came to London of our 
 own accord. He was only my friend. He was never any more 
 than my friend. If he had been I would not disown him. I love 
 him too well to be ashamed." 
 
 " You own that you love him ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am not ashamed of my love. There are people some- 
 where who worship the sun. I am no more ashamed than they are. 
 I told him of my love on my knees in this room, where you are 
 
 x
 
 306 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 sitting. I knelt at his feet and asked him to give me heart for heart. 
 I thought then that he would hardly have been so kind unless he 
 loved me. But he told me that he loved an English girl, and that 
 she was to be his wife. There was no hope for me. I wanted to 
 kill myself, but he stopped me with his strong arms. Yes, for just 
 one moment I was in his arms ! Only one moment, and then he 
 flung me from him as if I were dirt." 
 
 " lie must have been very chivalrous to do so much for friend- 
 ship," said Eve, shaken, but not convinced. 
 
 The woman spoke with the accents of truth ; but Eve remembered 
 that she was an actress, trained in the art of simulated passion. No 
 doubt it was easy for an actress to lie like truth. 
 
 " He wanted to help us," protested Lisa ; " he blamed himself so 
 much for " 
 
 She stopped, coloured, and then grew pale. It was evident to 
 her now that Vansittart's wife had been told nothing, and she, Lisa, 
 had been on the point of betraying him. 
 
 " For what ? Why did he blame himself ? " 
 
 " Did I say 'blame ' ? I use wrong words sometimes," she said, 
 quick to recover herself. " I hardly know your language. He pitied 
 us : that is what I meant to say. He pitied us because we were 
 alone and poor — two helpless women." 
 
 " And the father of your child, where was he ? " Eve asked sternly, 
 only half convinced. " Why did not he help you ? " 
 
 Paolo had grown tired of his book, and had gone back to his 
 mother's knee. He stood half hidden in Lisa's gown, looking 
 earnestly at the stranger, his infantile mind puzzled at the tone and 
 manner of the two women, feeling dimly that there was a tempest 
 in the atmosphere, feeling it as the birds feel when they twitter 
 apprehensively before the coming of the thunder. Inquisitive as well 
 as alarmed, and bold in his wonder, he went over to Eve, and took 
 hold of her gown, and looked up in her face. 
 
 She looked down at him, and it was her turn to wonder. 
 
 Of whom did the face remind her ? He was like his mother ; but 
 it was not her face he recalled to Eve. Nor was it Vansittart's face, 
 though she tried, shrinkingly, to trace a resemblance there, looking 
 for something she hoped not to see. No, the face recalled some 
 other face, and the likeness, faint and indefinable as it was, thrilled 
 her with a tremulous awe, as if she had seen a ghost. 
 
 " You had a claim upon this child's father," said Eve, her hand 
 lightly touching the boy's head, and then shrinking away as from 
 pollution ; " the strongest possible claim, for he ought to have 
 been your husband. Why did not he help you ? " 
 
 " Because he was in his grave," said Lisa ; and again the ready 
 tears gushed out.
 
 In the Blue CJtamber. 307 
 
 There was a pause, and then Eve spoke in a gentler tone. 
 
 " That was hard for you," she said, with a touch of pity. 
 
 " Yes, it was hard. He had promised to marry me. I think he 
 would have married me, for Paolo's sake. My bahy was not born 
 till afterwards — after his father's death." 
 
 " Poor creature ! All that was very sad. Was my husband — was 
 Mr. Vansittart a friend of the man who died? Was it for his friend's 
 sake he was so kind to you ? " 
 
 " No, he was not a friend. It was for my sake, and la Zia's, that 
 he was kind. I tell you again, he pitied us." 
 
 Eve sank into a chair, drooping, miserable. Even yet she could 
 not believe in this story of Vansittart's chivalrous kindness to two 
 foreign waifs who had no claim upon his friendship, not even the 
 claim of country. She knew him to bo benevolent, generous, full 
 of compassion for all suffering of man or beast ; but there was 
 nothing Quixotic in his benevolence. That which he had done for 
 Lisa was too much to be expected of any man who was not a 
 millionaire or a musical fanatic. He could not have done so much 
 without a strong motive. And then once again she reminded herself 
 that Lisa was an actress, to whom all falsehoods and simulations 
 must be easy. She started to her feet ; indignant with this woman 
 for deceiving her ; angry with herself for being so easily duped. 
 
 " I don't believe a word you have told me," she cried. " I believe 
 that Mr. Vansittart was your lover ; my husband, John Vansittart, 
 and no other ; and when he came here the other day you had lured 
 him back to your net." 
 
 " You don't believe — you don't believe in Paolo's dead father ? 
 Don't cry, Carissimo ; she is a cruel woman, but she shan't hurt 
 you." The boy had begun to whimper, scared by the angry voices. 
 " I will make you believe. I will show you his likeness — the like- 
 ness I have never shown to any one else. It is a bad one ; it does 
 not make him half handsome enough. He was handsome ; he had 
 hair as light as yours, only redder, and he was very fair — a true 
 Englishman. He was not as handsome as your husband — no, there 
 is no one else like Mm. Shall I show you his picture ? Will you 
 believe me then? " 
 
 She did not wait for an answer, but ran into the adjoining room, 
 pulled a heavy, iron-clamped box from under the bed — the box 
 which contained her jewels — unlocked it, and came running back 
 with a photograph in her hand. 
 
 " Ecco, Signora. It was taken at Burano, by a man who came 
 from Venice one summer morning, and photographed the church, 
 and the street, and the bridge, and as many of the people as would 
 pay him a few soldi for a likeness. I have kept it hidden away 
 since he died. It hurt me to look at it, remembering his end. But
 
 308 The Venetians. 
 
 there ! " — pushing the photograph in front of Eve's gloomy, dis- 
 trustful countenance — " look at it to your heart's content, Signora. 
 That man was the father of my child ! Believe, or not believe, as 
 you please." 
 
 Eve glanced with a careless contempt at the faded sun-picture — 
 a bad photograph, which time had made worse — the blurred image 
 of a face which, as her widening gaze fastened upon it, flashed back 
 all the picture of her childhood upon the mirror of her memory. 
 
 " Oh, God ! " she cried. " My brother Harold ! " 
 
 The door opened as she spoke, and looking up she saw her husband 
 standing on the threshold. 
 
 She appealed to him hopelessly in her bewilderment. 
 
 " Did you know ? " she asked. " Was it for my sake you were 
 kind to her ? Was that the link between you ? " 
 
 "No, Fatima," he answered sternly. "My Blue Chamber holds 
 a ghastlier secret than that. I was kind to her because I killed her 
 lover. Are you satisfied now ? You wanted to know the worst. 
 You would not be content. We were united, happy, adoring each 
 other ; the happiest husband and wife in all London, perhaps ; but 
 you would not be satisfied. I entreated you to trust me. I assured 
 you, with every asseveration a man could make, that I was true to 
 you. But you would not believe. You were like your first name- 
 sake ; you lent your ear to the hiss of the snake. You were jealous 
 by a woman's instinct, and you let Sefton feed your jealousy. Well, 
 you are content now, perhaps. You have his picture in your hand 
 — the picture of the man I killed." 
 
 "You killed him? You?" 
 
 " It sounds like madness, doesn't it, but it's true all the same. 
 A vulgar incident enough — nothing romantic about the story. The 
 man whose likeness you hold, and whom you recognize as your 
 brother — that man and I met as strangers in a Venetian caffe, in 
 Carnival time. This young woman here and her aunt were with 
 me — the chance acquaintance of the afternoon. We had known 
 each other only a few hours, had we, Fiordelisa ? You did not even 
 know my name." 
 
 " Only a few hours," nodded Lisa. 
 
 " He had been on a journey, and had been drinking. He came 
 on us unawares ; and he chose to take offence because Lisa and her 
 aunt and I were sitting at the same table. He was easily jealous 
 — as you are. It runs in the family, perhaps. He assaulted me 
 brutally, and I fought him almost as brutally. It would have all 
 ended harmlessly enough with a rough [mauling of each other — 
 perhaps a black eye, or a broken nose — but as Fate would have it 
 I had a dagger ready to my hand — and exasperated at a little extra 
 brutality on his part I stabbed him. Luck was against us both.
 
 In the Blue Chamber. 309 
 
 That casual thrust of a dagger might have resulted in a slight flesh 
 wound. It killed him." 
 
 " And you let me love you — you let me be your wife — knowing 
 that you had murdered my brother," said Eve, trembling in every 
 limb, white as death. 
 
 " No, Eve. It was not murder. It is the intention that makes 
 the crime. He was unarmed, drunk. I ought to have spared him, 
 I suppose — but he fell upon me like a tiger. It was brute force 
 against brute force. The knife was an unlucky accident." 
 
 " He had just bought it in the Procuratie," explained Lisa ; "he 
 had no thought of killing him. You do not know how violent tho 
 Englishman could be. He was cruel to me sometimes — he struck 
 me many times when he was angry." 
 
 " You take the part of the murderer against the murdered — 
 though this man would have married you, would have made you an 
 honest woman." 
 
 " He had promised," said Lisa, doubtfully. 
 
 Eve put the photograph to her white lips and kissed it passionately, 
 again, and again, and again. 
 
 " Oh, Harold," she said, " to have hoped so long for your return, 
 to have prayed so many useless prayers 1 You were dead — dead 
 before that child was born." 
 
 She looked at the boy, reckoning the years by the child's growth. 
 Four years, at least, she told herself. 
 
 " And you dared to make me your wife, to let me love you with 
 a love that was almost idolatry," she cried, turning upon Vansittart 
 with dilated eyes, " knowing that you had killed my brother. You 
 heard me talk of him — you pretended to sympathize with me — and 
 you knew that you had killed him." 
 
 " I did not know. There was no such thing as certainty. When 
 1 asked you to be my wife I knew nothing of your brother's fate. 
 Afterwards, when we were engaged, the idea was suggested to me 
 by your officious friend Sefton — who wanted to put a stumbling- 
 block in the way of our marriage. He succeeded in tracing your 
 brother to Venice, and he read the story after his own lights. He 
 thought Harold Marchant was the man who struck the fatal blow. 
 He did not take him for the victim. But the links in his chain of 
 evidence were not over strong — and I had ample justification for 
 not accepting his assertions as certainties. And you loved me, did 
 you not ; and our marriage was likely to make your life fairer and 
 brighter, was it not? " 
 
 " What of that ? Do you think I should have weighed my own 
 love or my own happiness against my brother's life ? Do you think 
 I would have married you if I had known the truth ? " 
 
 " You would not, perhaps ; and two lives would have been spoilt
 
 310 The Venetians. 
 
 by your loyalty to the dead — who would sleep none the more 
 peacefully because you and I were miserable. Did you owe him so 
 much, this wandering brother of yours? What kindness had he 
 ever shown you ? What care had he ever taken of you ? " 
 " He was my brother, and I loved him dearly." 
 " And did not I love you, and had not I some claim upon you ?" 
 asked Vansittart, indignantly. " Could you have let me go without 
 a tear ? " 
 
 " No, no, no. I adored you from the first — yes, that first night 
 on the snowy road, and at the ball, when you were so kind. I 
 began to love you almost at once, foolishly, ridiculously, without a 
 hope of being loved again. But, let my love be what it would, the 
 love of a lifetime, it would have made no difference. Nothing would 
 have induced me to marry the man who killed my brother. Oh, 
 God," she cried hysterically, "the hands that I have kissed so often 
 — stained with Harold's life-blood ! " 
 
 "I thought as much," said Vansittart, doggedly. "I told myself 
 that you would not marry me if you knew my secret. I told my- 
 self that two lives would be spoilt — it was a question, perhaps, of 
 half a century of happiness for two people, to be sacrificed because 
 of the angry passions of one night— of one minute. The deed was 
 done in less time than the bronze giants of the clock-tower would 
 have taken to strike the hour. Because once in my life, for one 
 instant, under grossest provocation, I let my temper master me — 
 because of that one savage impulse two hearts were to be broken. 
 I spent a night of agony deliberating this question, Eve. Mark 
 you, it was within a few weeks of our wedding-day that your 
 kindred with the dead man was first suggested to me." 
 " You knew that you had killed a fellow-creature ? " 
 " Yes, I knew, and I had suffered all the bitterness of a long 
 remorse ; and I had given myself absolution. And when I knew 
 the worst, knew at least the probability that I had killed your 
 brother, even then, after most earnest questioning, I told myself 
 that it was best for both of us that we should marry. Our lives 
 were our own-. Neither of us was responsible to that dead man in 
 his grave. But now, now that I see how clear he was to you, now 
 that I know which way your heart turns, I wish to God that he had 
 killed me, and that I were lying where he lies, among that quiet 
 company by the lagune." 
 
 They were alone together, Lisa having slipped away, taking the 
 boy with her, when she found the revelation inevitable. Let them 
 fight it out, these two ; and if this Englishwoman loved her dead 
 brother better than her living husband, and chose to desert that 
 noble husband, and thus show of what poor stuff she was made, 
 there was Lisa who adored him, who would follow him through the
 
 u> Tzs not the Same now" 311 
 
 world, if he would let her, with fidelity that neither time nor trouble 
 could change. 
 
 Eve stood for a few moments mutely looking at the blurred 
 photograph, the wretched production of an itinerant photographer's 
 camera, in which one hand was out of focus, jointless, fingerless, 
 monstrous. Poor as the image was, it brought back the days of 
 her childhood as vividly as if it had been the finest work of art 
 that Venice, in her golden age of Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, 
 could have produced. How well she remembered him! How 
 dearly she had loved him ! His holidays had been a season of 
 boisterous gladness, his return to school or university a time of 
 mourning. He had given interest and delight to all her childish 
 amusements. He had taught her to ride. He had taught her to 
 shoot with an air-gun, which was one of his choicest possessions. 
 He had taught her to serve at tennis, to play billiards on the worn- 
 out table, where the balls rattled against the cushions as on cast 
 iron. He had done all these things in a casual way, never sacrificing 
 any inclination or engagement of his own to her pleasure — but in 
 after days, when he had vanished out of her life, she knew not whither, 
 it seemed to her that he had been the kindest and most unselfish of 
 brothers. And he was dead, had been dead for years, cut off in the 
 prime of his manhood by a remorseless hand. He was dead, and 
 the man who had slain him stood before her, undaunted, impenitent 
 — her husband. 
 
 And the boy whose treble voice sounded now and again from the 
 next room — the child from whose lightest contact she had shrunk 
 with jealous abhorrence — that child was of her kindred, no matter 
 how tasely born. He was all that was left to her of the brother she 
 had loved, and it was not for her to shrink from him. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIX. 
 "'tis not the same now, never more can be." 
 
 Vansittart was the first to break that agony of silence. 
 
 " Does this mean the end of love ? " he asked. " Is all over and 
 done with between you and me ? Is love only a dream that we 
 have dreamed ? " 
 
 " Yes ; it is a dream," she answered, looking at him with tearless 
 eyes, which had more misery in them than all the tears he had ever 
 seen in the eyes of women. " It is something perhaps to have 
 believed one's self happy for two blessed years. You have been so 
 good to me — so good to poor Peggy. She loved you almost as much 
 as I did. You have been all goodness, — and you did not know that 
 he was my brother. Yet, yet, when you killed him you must have
 
 312 The Venetians. 
 
 known that some heart would be broken. No, I can never forget 
 how good you have been — or how dear. Don't think that I can 
 change in an hour from love to hate. No, no ; that cannot be. To 
 ray dying day I must love you — but I cannot live with the man who 
 killed my brother. I can never be your wife again. That is all 
 over. We must be strangers on this side of the grave." 
 
 " A hard sentence, Eve ; it could not be harder if I were a 
 deliberate murderer. And yet perhaps it is no more than I deserve 
 — perhaps even the gallows would be no more than my desert " 
 
 " The gallows ! Oh, God, could they kill you because ? " 
 
 The words died in her throat, choked by the agony of a great fear. 
 
 " But no one knows — no one will ever know," she cried. " She 
 will never tell " — pointing to the door. " She loves you too dearly." 
 
 " No, she will not tell." 
 
 " Is there any one else who knows? " 
 
 " Only her aunt, who may be trusted. No, I don't think I am 
 in any danger from the law," he said carelessly, as if that hardly 
 mattered. "But you — you are my supreme judge; and you look 
 upon me as a murderer. Well, perhaps you are right. Let me 
 sophisticate with my T self as I will, in that one moment I was in mind 
 and instinct a homicide. When I struck that blow I did not care 
 about consequences. All the savage impulses within me were raging. 
 Yes, I was a murderer. And you say that we must part 1 That is 
 your sentence ? " 
 
 She nodded yes. 
 
 " Very well ; then I must do all I can to make our parting easy 
 and reputable. The world will wonder and talk, but we must bear 
 that. I think I know a way of lessening the scandal. You will live 
 at Mere wood, and I will travel. That will make things easy." 
 
 " Live at Merewood without you ! Not for all the world. I can 
 go back to Fernhurst to my sisters. What does it matter where I 
 live ? The worst is that I must live. You will let me give them 
 some of my pin-money, I know, so that I may not be a burden 
 upon them." 
 
 " Let you ? Why, your pin-money is your own, to throw in the 
 gutter if you like." 
 
 " No, no ; it was meant for your wife. I shall have no claim upon 
 it when we are parted. But I don't want to be a burden at the 
 Homestead. I should like to give them fifty pounds a year. I shall 
 not cost them so much as that." 
 
 " I dare say not. Why do you torture me with this talk of money ? 
 All the money I have is turned to withered leaves. Eve, Eve," he 
 cried passionately, " y r ou could not do this cruel thing if our child 
 had lived ! " 
 
 " Could I not? Would that have altered the fact that you killed
 
 "'Tis not the Same now." 313 
 
 my brother? No, for God's sake don't come near me," as he 
 approached her with extended hand, trying to clasp her hand in his, 
 passionately longing for reunion. " There is a ghost between us. 
 I should hate myself if I could forget the dead." 
 
 " Ah, that is the worst sting of death," he cried bitterly, " the 
 influence of the dead which blights the living. Is there no hope, 
 Eve — no hope ? Is your mind made up ? " 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! I have no choice." 
 
 "Take time to think, at least, before you act." 
 
 " Time to think ? Why, I have been thinking for an eternity. 
 It is ages since that woman put this picture in my hand. Oh, I 
 have thought, Jack. I have thought. If I could shut my eyes and 
 say I forget — if I could say the past is past, and the dead are no 
 better for our tears and our sacrifices, our crape gowns, or the roses 
 we plant on their graves — if I could be like the heathens who said, 
 ' Let us be happy to-day, for to-morrow we die,' how gladly would 
 I blot thought and memory from my brain ! But you see while I 
 live I must think and remember ; and every hour of my life with 
 you would be darkened by one hideous memory. I should see my 
 brother in his blood-stained winding-sheet standing between us. 
 There are some things that cannot be, that heart, and mind, and 
 conscience cry out against, and our marriage is one of those things. 
 Oh, it was wicked, wicked, to marry me, knowing what you 
 knew." 
 
 " Was it wicked ? If it was, I don't repent of that sin. I repent 
 my first crime — the crime of bloodshed — not my second, the crime 
 of making you mj wife. I have had two years of bliss. How many 
 men can say as much ? Well, since you are resolute — have weighed 
 what you are doing, and still decide against me, I will leave you in 
 peace. If the memory of those years cannot plead for me, all words 
 are idle." 
 
 She heard the strangled sob in his voice as he turned from her 
 and went slowly to the door : but she did not call him back. She 
 stood like a woman of stone till the door closed on him, and the 
 outer door opened and shut again. Then she clasped her hands 
 above her head with a distracted gesture, and rushed out upon the 
 balcony to see the last of him. She leant over the high iron rail 
 to watch him as he sprang into the waiting hansom. She saw him 
 drive away, and did not shriek to him to come back, though her 
 whole being, brain, heart, nerves, yearned after him with despairing 
 love. She watched till the cab vanished from her sight, hidden by 
 the foliage on the Embankment, and then she dragged herself slowly 
 back to the room, as a wounded animal crawls to its lair, and flung 
 herself upon Lisa's sofa, a broken-hearted woman. 
 
 " Could I act otherwise, — could I, could I ? " she asked herself.
 
 314 The Venetians. 
 
 " My brother, my own flesh and blood ! Even if I had not loved 
 him, could I live with the man who killed him? " 
 
 Lisa crept into the room, while Eve sat sobbing, with her face hidden 
 
 in the sofa pillow. Lisa crept to her side, and sat on the ground by 
 
 her, pitying her, and looking up at her with mute doglike tenderness. 
 
 " What have you done ? " she asked at last. " Have you sent 
 
 him from you — your husband who loves you? " 
 
 " Yes, he is gone. It is our fate." 
 
 "Fate!" cried Lisa, contemptuously. "What is fate? It is 
 you, not Fate, that make the parting. If you loved him you would 
 not let him go." 
 
 "If I loved him ? Why, my whole being is made up of love for him." 
 " What then? And you send him from you for an accident — for 
 something which no one could help. I was there — these eyes saw 
 it. A moment and it was done ! There was not time for thought. 
 For that one instant of wrong-doing are you to make his life miser- 
 able?" 
 
 "He killed my brother. Do you understand that, Lisa? The 
 man who ought to have been your husband was my brother. Did 
 you care nothing for him — you, the mother of his child ? " 
 
 " Si, si, I cared for him. When first he came to Burano I 
 worshipped him as if he had been St. Mark. And when he said, 
 ' Come to Venice with me, Lisa, and be my little wife,' I went. It 
 was wicked, I know. I ought not to have left Burano till I had 
 been to confession, and the priest had married us ; but Avhen I said, 
 ' You will marry me, Signor Inglese,' he said, ' Yes, Lisa, by-and-by,' 
 and that was what he always said till the last — ' by-and-by.' He 
 was not always kind to me, Si'ora, though he was your brother. He 
 beat me sometimes when the luck had been bad at cards. When 
 he had been sitting up hah the night playing cards with his friends, 
 and I crept into the room and begged him to play no more — he was 
 not kind then. He would start up out of his chair, and swear a big 
 English oath, and strike at me with his clenched fist. But am I 
 sorry ? Yes, of course I am sorry. It was dreadful to see him fall 
 dead in a moment ; but is that to be remembered against your 
 husband years afterwards ? He was brutal that night, so brutal that 
 he deserved his death, almost. He flew at the strange Englishman 
 like a tiger. He would not listen, he would not believe that I was 
 not false to him. He was mad with drink and foolish anger. He 
 was like a wild beast. And for an accident like that you would 
 make the noblest of men unhappy. Ah, Si'ora, that is not love. 
 If your husband belonged to me, and he loved me as he loves you, 
 he might kill twenty men, and I would cling to him and love him 
 still. What would their life be to me, or their death, if I had him ?" 
 " You are a semi-civilized savage, and you can't understand,"
 
 "'Tts not the Same now." 315 
 
 said Eve, sternly. <l Life and death, good name, and honour, have 
 no meaning for you." 
 
 " Love means more than all," said Lisa, doggedly. 
 
 " There is only one man you have the right to love," said Eve ; 
 " the man who ought to have been your husband. You must be 
 indeed a wretch if you can love the man who killed him." 
 
 " Ah, madonna mia, we do not make our hearts. They are made 
 for us," Lisa pleaded naively. " The Signora Inglese was very good 
 to me at Burano in my poverty ; but afterwards, at Venice, I had a 
 good deal to suffer. It was a hard life sometimes. One had need 
 be young, and able to laugh, and forgive and forget. But he — Signor 
 Vansittart — he was always kind. His face haunted me after that 
 Shrove Tuesday on the Lido, and when we met again — when la Zia 
 and I were strangers in London, without a friend in the world — oh, 
 how kind and generous he was ! All that I have of fame and fortune 
 I owe to him, and though he does not care for me so much as that," 
 with a contemptuous wave of her fingers, " yet he is always gentle, 
 always good. Do not tell me that I am to care more for the dead 
 man who deceived me and beat me than for the living man who 
 has been my benefactor, my guardian angel, and for whom I say a 
 paternoster and two aves every night of my life. It is sweet to say 
 these for his sake : that his sin may be forgiven." 
 
 " Ah, you do not understand. You do not know what death is," 
 said Eve, with gloomy anger, getting up from the sofa, and re- 
 arranging her loosened hair with trembling hands. 
 
 " It must come to all of us," answered Lisa, with a philosophical 
 shrug. " Better that it should come in a moment as his came, with- 
 out suffering, without fear, than that we should live to be old and 
 fat and full of maladies. People die of dreadful diseases that one 
 shudders only to hear of, and that is called a natural death. How 
 much better to be stabbed to the heart unawares." 
 
 " I cannot reason with you," said Eve, haughtily. " I loved my 
 brother. You, his mistress, evidently cared nothing for him." 
 
 And with this verbal stab, she departed. Who shall say whether 
 she was more indignant with the Venetian for loving Harold Marchant 
 too little or for loving John Vansittart too much ? 
 
 Her carriage was waiting for her ; the servants were asleep in the 
 afternoon sun. She was only just able to utter the monosyllable 
 "Home," in answer to the footman's question. 
 
 How strange the streets and all their movement of everyday life 
 seemed to her, as she drove along the interminable King's Road, 
 and by Sloane Street and the Park — how careless the faces of the 
 people. Was there no other trouble in the world but her own ? 
 Was everybody else busy, and bustling, and happy ? She felt as if 
 she had been driving home from a funeral, wondering to find a world
 
 3i6 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 where there were no signs of sorrow. Had she not verily parted 
 from her dead ? The dead brother whom she had always pictured 
 to herself as alive and happy in some far-off African wilderness, 
 leading the adventurer's reckless life, caring for no one he had left 
 in the civilized world, but destined to come back to her hereafter 
 with that wild spirit tamed, and his home affections reviving with 
 mature years. He was dead, and she would see him no more on 
 earth — killed in a tavern brawl, for the sake of a worthless woman. 
 And the husband she adored, he, too, was dead — dead to her for 
 ever. She had renounced him, and he was free to go his own way, 
 and lead his own life, and find consolation and happiness where he 
 could. Her friends of Mayfair had told her that no man laments 
 long for the loss of any woman ; that one beautiful face blots out 
 another ; that there is no image, however cherished, which does not 
 grow faint, and fade and vanish, as a circle widens and melts away 
 upon still water. 
 
 Even the house in Charles Street had a strange aspect when she 
 re-entered it. Should she find him there ? Would he plead with 
 her again, in their own house, where she had been so happy with 
 him, where all mute things reminded her of the glad life he had 
 given her? Would he plead with her once more, and renew the 
 struggle between love for the living and loyalty to the dead ? No ; 
 she was spared that ordeal. The servant who opened the door told 
 her that his master had been summoned hurriedly to Southampton, 
 and had left a letter for her. She caught up the letter eagerly, 
 hungry, in her desolation, for some sign from him, some last link 
 between them. 
 
 " I start by the mail for Southampton," he wrote. " Till nine 
 I shall be within reach of a telegram at the Travellers, if you change 
 your mind. Before to-morrow night I shall be outward bound ; 
 but till to-morrow night a wire to the Post Office at Southampton 
 would find me. I have made no plans as yet, but you may think 
 of me as an exile and a wanderer." 
 
 He was gone ! She had been obeyed. The wrench was over ; 
 and now she had to face life calmly and deliberately without him. 
 She had sacrificed all that was nearest and dearest to her on this 
 earth to the shadow of the dead. She had made her choice between 
 the dead and the living. Could she have chosen otherwise ? 
 
 That was the question she asked herself when she had locked 
 the door of her room and was alone with her misery, walking to 
 and fro among the familiar surroundings which had been the back- 
 ground of a happy union. How could she have chosen otherwise ? 
 
 " He killed him ! " she repeated to herself with dogged insistency. 
 " He killed my brother. What should I be if I could stay with 
 him — call him husband, love him and obey him for the rest of my
 
 u, Tis not the Same now." 317 
 
 life — the man who killed ray brother? Was it murder or not 
 murder, he killed him. It was death. Oh, to think of my poor 
 Harold — to think that he entered that fatal place in all the strength 
 of his manhood ; a young man, with a long life before him, perhaps ; 
 with all the chances of fortune and happiness which length of years 
 can bring; and there in a moment he was breathing his last breath, 
 stabbed to the heart ! " 
 
 Memory recalled that fondly loved brother in the flush of his 
 active boyhood — a cricket field shining in the sunlight, the white 
 tents, the village crowd, and that tall, muscular form, the sunburnt 
 face, blue eyes, and auburn hair, the type of English boyhood at 
 its best. One scene after another of her childhood passed before 
 her as in a panorama, and Harold was the central figure in every 
 picture. So strong, so brave, so intelligent, so kind to her always, 
 even when at war with others ; loving her to the last, even when 
 an outcast from his home. 
 
 How cruelly Fate had used him — an unkind father — a forced 
 exile — an early and a violent death ! 
 
 For more than an hour — for an eternity of suffering — she paced 
 her room — or knelt beside the bed, not praying, nor yet crying — 
 only thinking, thinking of the life that had been and that was over 
 for ever — her childish life in Yorkshire while her brother was still 
 the cherished son, the honoured heir — the later season of disgrace 
 and parting — her life with the husband of her love. 
 
 " And Peggy," she thought, with a new agony of unavailing love, 
 " oh, how good he was to my poor Peggy ; but if she had known 
 that the hand which smoothed her pillow was the hand that killed 
 her brother — if she had known ! Does she know now, I wonder, 
 and know what I suffer, and pity me, from the far distance, in the 
 land where there are no tears ? " 
 
 She refused admittance to her maid at the usual hour of dressing. 
 She told Benson that she had a headache, and would not go down 
 to dinner. Later in the evening she wandered about the house, 
 looking at the rooms in which she had been so happy — remembering 
 the days of her courtship, when those rooms were still new to her, 
 and when they realized all she had ever imagined of luxury and 
 refinement. She went about bidding the rooms good-bye, looking 
 at them for the last time, as she believed, for she meant to depart 
 on her journey early next morning. 
 
 To depart whither ? 
 
 On thinking out the question of her future she rejected the notion 
 of that return to the old home of which she had spoken to Vansittart. 
 
 She could not go to her sisters at Fernhurst, the refuge which 
 she would instinctively have chosen, content to hide herself in the
 
 3i8 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 humble home of her girlhood, to live the old unluxurious life, to sit 
 by the cottage hearth, and read the tattered old books, and try to 
 think herself a girl again, a girl who had never seen the face of 
 Jack Vansittart. 
 
 Fernhurst would not do. It was too near Lady Hartley ; it was 
 not remote enough from Merewood. She had to find some abiding 
 place which should be unknown to all the world except the servant 
 who went with her. She did not feel herself equal to travelling 
 without a servant. The ways of wealth had spoiled ber for the 
 ways of penury. She was no longer the same young woman who 
 used to head an early expedition from Haslemere to Waterloo, 
 travelling third class, among soldiers and workmen, to be first in 
 the scramble for bargains at a sale of drapery. She felt herself 
 powerless, in her bruised and broken state, to face the confusion 
 of a crowded railway station, the bewilderment of foreign travel, 
 with its stringent demands upon the traveller's calmness and 
 intelligence. 
 
 She found her good Benson waiting for her in her boudoir 
 dressing-room with a tea-tray, and a meal of cold chicken, fruit 
 and jelly, set out temptingly to beguile her into eating. 
 
 " You have had nothing since lunch, ma'am." 
 
 "I can't eat anything — yes," as Benson looked distressed, " some 
 bread and butter. You can leave that and the tea — but take away 
 all the rest, please. And then give me Bradshaw — and I want 
 you to pack before you go to bed. It is not very late, is it ? " — 
 looking hopelessly at the watch on her chatelaine, but unable to 
 see the quaint old figures with those tired eyes. 
 
 " Past eleven, ma'am ; but I can pack to-night, if you like. Are 
 we to leave early to-morrow? " 
 
 Eve turned the leaves of Bradshaw before she answered, and 
 pored over a page for a few minutes. 
 
 " The Continental train leaves Charing Cross at eight," she said. 
 
 " Then I must certainly pack to-night, ma'am. Shall I take 
 many dresses — evening gowns — tea-gowns ? Shall you be going 
 out much in the evenings ? " 
 
 " I shan't be going out at all. Take my plainest walking gowns, 
 and, yes, a tea-gown or two ; one black evening gown will do. 
 Take plenty of things. I shall be abroad a long time." 
 
 " It is very sudden, ma'am," faltered Benson, who was honestly 
 fond of her mistress. 
 
 " Yes, it is very sudden. You must not ask me any questions. 
 You must take it on trust that there is nothing wrong in my life." 
 
 " Oh, ma'am, I should never think that, whatever happened. I 
 know you too well. Are we going to join Mr. Vansittart on the 
 Continent ? "
 
 "'Tzs not the Same now!* 319 
 
 " No, Benson. We are going away from him. Mr. Vansittart 
 and I have parted for ever. Please don't speak of it to any one 
 downstairs. I want to avoid all talk and scandal. I tell you 
 because you are going with me. You will share in my new life — 
 if you like to go." 
 
 "1 would go to the end of the world with you, ma'am. But, 
 dear, dear, dear, to think that you and Mr. Vansittart can be parted 
 — you who have been so happy together, like children almost ! It 
 can only be a temporary misunderstanding. I am sure of that." 
 
 " Benson, if you talk about my trouble I shall go alone. Can't 
 you understand that there are griefs that won't bear to be spoken 
 of? Mine is one of them. I am going abroad ; I hardly know 
 where as yet. To some quiet place in Brittany or Normandy most 
 likely, where I can just exist." 
 
 " Oh, my dear young lady, you will kill yourself with grief," 
 sobbed Benson, as she poured out tea for her mistress. 
 
 While Benson was packing, with all the dexterity and method of 
 an accomplished packer, Eve was employed in writing the most 
 difficult letter she had ever written in her life. 
 
 She was writing to her husband's mother, the woman who had 
 received her at first reluctantly, but afterwards with motherly 
 a I cction; the woman who had surrendered the son she adored to 
 the wife he had chosen for himself, and who looked to that wife 
 for the happiness of her son's future years. Penniless, the daughter 
 of a disreputable father, with no social surroundings or family 
 influence to recommend her, she had been accepted by Jack 
 Vansittart's relations ; petted and praised by his sister ; lovingly 
 cherished by his mother ; and for recompense of their trust in her 
 what was she going to give them ? 
 
 She was going to spoil her husband's life in the heyday of youth and 
 love ; to leave him bound in wedlock and yet companionless ; with a 
 wife and no wife. He could not divorce her ; she could not divorce 
 him. His sin was not of the kind which breaks marriage bonds. 
 
 What could she say to her mother-indaw which could in any 
 manner explain or justify the parting of husband and wife who 
 until yesterday had been living together in seemingly happiest 
 union? There was no explanation, no justification possible. The 
 mystery of those two broken lives must remain for ever dark to 
 their kindred and the world. 
 
 " My husband and I have agreed to part, and our parting must 
 needs be for a lifetime," she wrote. "We can tell no one our 
 reasons, not even you, mother, who of all people have the strongest 
 right to question us. Unfaithfulness or lessening love has nothing 
 to do with our separation. I never loved my husband better than 
 1 love him now; or, at least, I never knew the strength of my love
 
 320 The Venetians. 
 
 for him so well as I know it now. What must he must be. It is 
 Fate, and not our own will, that divides us. Wherever ho may go 
 my heart will go with him. Think of me with indulgence if you 
 can ; pity me if you can, for I have direst need of your pity." 
 
 She said nothing about her destination. She had not made up 
 her mind yet where she was to go. She sat for an hour or more 
 turning the leaves of the Continental time-table ; now thinking she 
 would go by Ostend, and to the Ardennes ; and then again deciding 
 upon Brittany. It mattered nothing to her where she went ; all 
 places were alike, except for her desire to avoid the people she knew. 
 
 Finally she decided upon crossing to St. Malo by the boat that 
 left Southampton at five o'clock next day ; and from St. Malo to 
 Dinan or Avranches. She woidd avoid the seaside, where English 
 visitors would be likely to be met at this season. The Norman and 
 Breton towns she knew by repute as places where people lived 
 quietly and economically, forgotten by the world. 
 
 The same post which brought Mrs. Vansittart Eve's letter from 
 London brought her a letter from her son, written from Southampton. 
 
 "You will be surprised at the address from which I write, and 
 still more surprised when I tell you that Southampton is only the 
 first stage on my journey to South Africa. I sail from here to the 
 Cape, and from thence shall make my way to whichever portion of 
 the Dark Continent promises best for health and enjoyment at this 
 time of year. Do not be uneasy about me, my dear mother. I 
 shall take counsel with experienced travellers before I turn my back 
 upon the civilized world ; and I shall not go to meet fever, famine, 
 or assassination. You shall hear from me at each stage of my 
 wanderings. I do not go as a scientific explorer, or as a sportsman 
 in quest of big game, though I hope to make good use of my gun. 
 I go with the desire to escape from civilization, monotony, and my 
 own thoughts, which just now are of the saddest. 
 
 " A cloud has spread itself between Eve and me, and we two, 
 who were so happy in each other's affection a little while ago, have 
 agreed to part, I fear never again to live together. I cannot tell 
 you our reasons, for they involve a secret the revelation of which 
 would be disastrous to me — the only secret I ever kept from you. 
 Eve is blameless — chaste and faithful as in the beginning of our 
 wedded lives. I implore you to think of her always with affection ; 
 to shelter and cherish her if ever she appeal to your love or claim 
 your protection. She is entitled to your respect and to your pity. 
 The only sinner — never a deliberate sinner — is your son, who in his 
 shattered domestic life pays the forfeit of one unhappy act."
 
 321 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 a do run: exile. 
 
 Hail, dark mother of wanderers, parched nurse of lions! Amidst 
 thy romantic wildernesses grief and dishonour may forget them- 
 selves ; with thee man is only man ! He leaves that other half of 
 himself, reputation, yonder in the crowd, and in these solitudes 
 hecomes a creature of thews and sinews, valuable only for his 
 strength and endurance, for the range of his eye and the truth of 
 his hand. He has done with the outward shows of life, and with 
 all nice differences between good and bad. Here, worth is to be 
 measured by the hunter's fieetness of foot, and honour by the marks- 
 man's aim. What a man is counts for but little ; what he can do 
 for much. In that aching misery which possessed him when he left 
 England, John Vansittart looked to the desert as his best refuge. 
 The hunter's life in Mashonaland gives scanty leisure for broodni"- 
 over the ruins of a home in England. The early trek with the 
 waggons, or the start on foot from the skerm ; the hard day's tramp 
 under the blazing sun ; the need of providing meat for the boys — 
 tli- long following on the spoor of giraffe or antelope, with the wild 
 ride or cautious stalk at the end — which that need involves ; the 
 charm of the life, its poetry, its absolute novelty, and the ever- 
 recurring vicissitudes which each new day brings' forth, leave the 
 head of the expedition briefest time for introspective thought. His 
 slumbers are for the most part dreamless ; or his dreams are of lions 
 prowling by the camp-fire, or of the dark forms and wild gestures 
 of those he has last seen dancing by its flickering light ; not of the 
 lost faces o' home. Best of all, his conscience is at ease, for face to 
 face with man in his most primitive aspect he loses the habit of 
 weighing Ids past acts and comparing, with futile regret, the things 
 he has done with the things he ought to have done. 
 
 For Vansittart there could have been no better refuge than the 
 desert. 
 
 _ Here, if his heart wounds were not healed, his consciousness of 
 sin was deadened. Here, where no exaggerated value was set on 
 human life, he could remember Harold Marchant's death with less 
 intensity of pain. Here, where the native freely turned his gun or 
 his assegai against his fellow-man, a mischance such as that of 
 Florian's Caffe seemed a small thing — the fortune of war, a spurt 
 of anger, an unlucky blow, and there an end. Every man must die 
 somehow; and it may not be the worst doom to drop down in the 
 fulness of youth and vigour, knowing not the slow agonies of gradual 
 extinction, the torture of dying by inches.
 
 322 The Venetians. 
 
 Vansittart's thouglits were tempered by his surroundings. His 
 character took new colours in that vivid life, in that lapse backward 
 from the civilized and the complicated to the primitive stage of 
 man's history. It was as if Time had turned his glass and the earth 
 were young. The wild race of Cain, the outcast, could have been 
 no wilder than these woolly-haired followers of his, who were faithful 
 to him because he was a good shot. 
 
 Nature, the great consoler, helped him to forget his grief by 
 forgetting himself. Here, face to face with Nature's mightiest forces, 
 man's sense of his own personality dwindles to the faintest shadow 
 in the vastness of his surroundings. Instead of Trafalgar Square he 
 has the Falls of the Zambesi ; instead of the languid club lounger 
 he has the elephant and the lion for his companions — the purring 
 growl of the lion instead of the gossip of the smoking-room ; the 
 trumpet of the elephant instead of the chatter of the dinner-table. 
 Surely it is good for a man to be alone in the wilderness — alone 
 save for the company of followers to whom, though he be their 
 leader, he is as another being, a white man, a stranger in their land, 
 between whose thoughts and feelings and their own a great gulf is 
 for ever fixed. It is good for him to feel his own insignificance 
 among men who value him only for his powder and shot, and who 
 will lose their reverence for his white superiority with the spending 
 of his last cartridge. Here he must needs forget that pride of place 
 which at home was a part of his being. Here there are no trades- 
 men to fawn upon him, no servants to touch their hats to him, no 
 women to praise him. Small food for vanity here, where the darkies 
 call his smooth, flat hair dog's hair, and who liken his hairy arm to 
 a baboon's arm. Here if the women fawn upon him it is not for 
 his smiles or his favour, but for beads or printed calico, such vivid 
 orange or scarlet fabrics, figured with stars or half moons, as 
 Manchester weaves for the Torrid Zone. Here if the men are true 
 to him it is because he can feed them and pay them. He is in a 
 world of stern facts, where sentiment and sophistication are unknown. 
 
 The atmosphere suits him. The primitive interests of this 
 primitive life help to shut off that other life where all is gloom, the 
 life of thought and of memory. Sufficient for the day, that is the 
 motto here : food for the day ; safety for the day ; wood for the fires, 
 water for man and beast. Beside them, behind them, ahead of 
 them, stalk dangers that Europe knows not. Danger from beasts 
 of prey ; danger lrom men as cruel ; fever, starvation, death in 
 many shapes — all the vicissitudes of a life between the desert and 
 the sky. 
 
 Fortune favours him in his desolation of spirit. A happier man 
 might have been less lucky. A man more careful of his life, with 
 more to live for, might have hardly escaped scot-free from all the
 
 A Double Exile. 323 
 
 dangers of the hunter's life in an unknown land. Travellers far 
 more experienced wondered afterwards when they heard the story 
 of this man's travels, and the impunity with which he had done 
 desperate things. 
 
 His daring had heen the audacity of ignorance, they said. If he 
 had known the extent of the peril in such unconsidered wanderings, 
 with so small a party, with such inadequate preparation, he would 
 have been a madman to set his life upon such chances. Had he 
 answered them truthfully he would have told them that he was a 
 madman when he turned his face towards the desert ; mad with the 
 agony of a life that was blighted ; mad with the bitter memories of 
 lost happiness. 
 
 Of these wedded lovers, parted in the noontide of their love, one 
 carried his wounded heart to the wilderness, and sought for tran- 
 quillity of spirit in a life of movement and peril; the other, the 
 weaker vessel, had no such large resources. The life of adventure, 
 the ever-changing horizon, were not for her. She could only creep 
 to some quiet haven and sit alone and brood upon her grief. 
 
 She went first to Avranches ; then late in the autumn she took a 
 fancy to the solitude of Mont St. Michel, the quaint monastic citadel, 
 th i fortress on the rock ; and here, when the last of the tourists had 
 gone, and the equinoctial gales were roaring round the Gothic towers, 
 she took up her abode in an apartment specially prepared for her 
 by the cheery patronne of the Inn at the Gate, an apartment upon 
 the ramparts, with windows looking wide over the sea towards 
 Coutances and Jersey. 
 
 Benson, who had a constitution of iron, complained bitterly of 
 this wind-swept rock, yet had to own later that her health had never 
 been better. Eve stopped here late into the winter, sketching a 
 little, reading a great deal, wandering on the sands in all weathers, 
 and sometimes wishing that her footsteps would take her unawares 
 to that portion of the bay, where, as in the Kelpie's flow, sorrow 
 might find a grave. 
 
 An imprudent ramble in the marshy fields between Pontorson 
 and the Mount, which left her belated in the mists of a November 
 evening, resulted in congestion of the lungs. She had contrived to 
 lose herself among those salt meadows as completely as ever her 
 husband had lost himself in Mashonaland, and it was eleven o'clock 
 when she and her whimpering attendant tottered along the cause- 
 way leading to the gates of the fortress, footsore and weary, their 
 6hoes worn out in that long tramp over coarse grass and sandy 
 hillocks. 
 
 Benson telegraphed to Miss Marchant at Fernhurst, and Sophy 
 appeared on the scene as quickly as boat and rail, and a wretched
 
 324 The Venetians. 
 
 fly from Avranehes, with harness eked out by bits of rope, could 
 bring her. Sophy was broken-hearted at this cruel turn which her 
 sister's bright fortunes had taken, and agonized with remorseful 
 retrospection. It was she, perhaps, whose imprudent tongue bad 
 parted husband and wife, bad destroyed that happy home. Sophy 
 hated herself for the folly of that revelation. Why could she not 
 have let well alone ? Why could she not have left undisturbed that 
 happy state of things by which she herself had profited so richly ? 
 Looking back upon her conduct of that fatal week, she saw that it 
 was her own disappointment which had soured her, and her own 
 selfish vexation which had made her so angry with Vansittart. 
 
 It was a long time before Eve was well enough for serious talk of 
 any kind. She rallied slowly, and during the monotonous days of 
 her convalescence she was treated as a child, who must only hear 
 of pleasant things ; but when she was well again, quite well — save 
 for that little hacking cough which seemed to have become an 
 element of her being — Sophy ventured to approach the subject of 
 her domestic sorrows. 
 
 "I have been utterly miserable since the day I left Charles 
 Street," said Sophy, seated beside Eve's easy-chair, and resting her 
 forehead on the cushioned arm as she talked, so that her face was 
 invisible. " I have hated myself for speaking of your husband as I 
 did — only upon hearsay. After all, Mr. Sefton might have mis- 
 interpreted Jack's conduct. It might all have been a mistake." 
 
 "It was a mistake, Sophy." 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad. You found out at once that Mr. Sefton was 
 wrong." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Thank C4od ! But then" — looking up at her sister in blank 
 astonishment — "if that is so, why are you parted, Jack and you? " 
 
 " That is our secret, Sophy." 
 
 " But why, but why ? I can't understand. There could be only 
 one reason for your leaving him when you loved him so clearly. 
 Nothing but the knowledge of his infidelity would justify " 
 
 " Stop, Sophy," said Eve, peremptorily. " There is nothing 
 gained by speculating about other people's business. My husband 
 and I have our own reason for taking different roads. We have 
 never quarrelled ; we have never ceased to care for each other. I 
 shall love him with all my heart, and mind, and strength, till my 
 last breath." 
 
 " I guess your reason," answered Sophy, nodding sagaciously. 
 " He is an Atheist, and you, who have always been a good Church- 
 woman, could not go on living with an unbeliever. You are like 
 poor Catherine in 'Robert Elsmere.' " 
 
 " Oh, Sophy, do you think I should forsake him because he was
 
 "Brief is Life, but Love is Long" 325 
 
 without hope or comfort from God? Why Jo you tease mc with 
 foolish guesses? I tell you again the reason of our parting is our 
 secret. A secret that will go down with me to the grave." 
 
 Sophy's eager imagination ran riot in the world of mystery. 
 Politics, Freemasonry, Hypnotism, Theosophy, Nihilism, hereditary 
 madness, epilepsy, hydrophobia, a family ghost, a family fatality ! 
 That lively mind of hers touched each possibility, rejected each, and 
 new off to the next ; and lastly, with a sigh of relief, she exclaimed — 
 »i " I am more thankful than I can say that it was not my imprudent 
 tongue which parted you." 
 
 • An hour later, walking alone on the ramparts, she told herself 
 that hi all probability this desolate wife was only throwing dust in 
 her eyes, and that Vansittart's inconstancy had been clearly de- 
 monstrated in accordance with Sefton's story. It would be only 
 like a devoted wife to violate truth in order to vindicate her husband. 
 Pride and love would alike urge Eve to deny her husband's infidelity. 
 
 CHAPTER xxxr. 
 
 "Oil TELL IIEK, BRIEF IS LIFE, BUT LOVE IS LOXG." 
 
 As soon as Eve was well enough to be moved she left the rock and 
 went to finish the winter at Dinard. The doctor who attended her 
 through her illness suggested the south of France, Cannes for in- 
 stance, as the better climate for her ; but she told him she had lost 
 a sister at Cannes, and that all that lovely coast was associated with 
 her loss. 
 
 "It is very beautiful," she said; "but I shall never go there 
 again. My sister was sent there because she was consumptive; 
 but my case is altogether different. It would be absurd to go to 
 the south just because I have had a touch of congestion, in conse- 
 quence of an autumnal ramble." 
 
 "It was a somewhat severe touch, madam," said the doctor; 
 "but perhaps Dinard may suit you very well. There are some 
 people who say the climate is almost as good as Provence." 
 
 Sophy went with her sister to Dinard, which she pronoimced a 
 considerable improvement upon Mont St. Michel, the medisevalism 
 of which picturesque settlement had in no wise reconciled her to 
 existence in a place without people and without shops. At Dinard 
 there were smart residents even in winter, and if Eve had not been 
 obstinately bent upon isolation they might have known people, as 
 Sophy murmured regretfully. 
 
 Not knowing people, she soon wearied of Dinard, which was only 
 the sands and the sea over again, when one had exhausted the town 
 and the quaintness of shops which were unlike English shops, and
 
 326 The Venetians. 
 
 had explored St. Malo and St. Servan, and excursionized, chaperoned 
 by Benson, as far as Dinan, where she was more impressed by the 
 bad drainage than by the fine architecture. 
 
 Sophy began to talk of her home duties. Jenny's letters had been 
 most exasperating of late, and it was too evident she was interfering 
 with Nancy, and making a mess of the housekeeping. Finally 
 Sophy declared that things at Fernhurst could go on no longer 
 without her. Jenny had been entertaining in a most reckless manner 
 — people to luncheon, people to tea. " She will be giving dinner- 
 parties next," said Sophy. " Nancy is so weak about her, because 
 she saved her life in the measles — as if it was any merit of Jenny 
 to have bad measles worse than any of us." 
 
 Eve did not oppose her departure, being somewhat weary of that 
 fight talk which centred chiefly in self, one's own experiences, 
 sensations, hopes, disappointments. 
 
 " How I wish you would go back with me, Eve ! " urged Sophy, 
 with very real warmth. " Surely you would be happier at Fern- 
 hurst than here, and it would be like the old days for us to have 
 you again. You would be one of us, the head of the family once 
 more. You would forget that you had ever left home." 
 
 " Ah, Sophy, if that were possible ! If any one could forget ! 
 They can't, dear. They only harden their hearts and call it for- 
 getting. Dear old Fernhurst ! Yes, I should love to be there ; to 
 ramble over Blackdown again, and hear the wind whistling in the 
 dark fir trees ; to look over the weald far off to the faint streak of 
 distant sea, just a line of light on the horizon and no more. But it 
 can't be, Sophy. Fernhurst is too near Bedwold Towers, too near 
 Mr. Sefton's place, too near all the people I have done with." 
 
 " Poor Eve, it is sad to hear you talk of yourself as if you had 
 committed a crime. It was most trying when Mrs. Vansittart came 
 over to see us, and questioned us so closely about you. Did we 
 think this or that ? Had we known of any unhappiness between 
 you and Jack ? Had we any idea why you parted ? I felt it more 
 than the others, for I thought I was at the bottom of it all with my 
 foolish speech about your husband. But I held my tongue. The 
 others declared they knew nothing, could not even surmise a reason 
 for your conduct. They adored Jack, thought him simply perfect 
 as a husband, and Eve the luckiest girl of their acquaintance. And 
 then there was Lady Hartley. Of course we had to go through the 
 same kind of thing with her, not once but several times, for she is 
 always nice in asking us to her house, and in coming to tea with us 
 every now and then, and I know that she is very fond of you, in her 
 light-minded way. But, indeed, Eve, I don't see any reason why 
 you should not go home with me. Nobody will venture to question 
 you, and Jack is in Africa "
 
 "Brief is Life, but Love is Long." 327 
 
 "No, no; I could not bear to see the people I know, or the old 
 places. I should be miserable. I see them often in my dreams — 
 hill and common, and lane, and cottage garden — and wake disap- 
 pointed to find myself so far away. But I could not bear to be 
 there again — without him. No, dear. Jack is travelling, and I am 
 travelling. That is much the best arrangement." 
 
 " But you don't travel," remonstrated Sophy. " You bury your- 
 self alive in a place like this, and walk up and down the same stretch 
 of sand every day, or tramp along the same chalk)- mad, or cross the ■ 
 same ridiculous ferry, and march round the same windy ramparts. 
 Surely you don't call that travelling." 
 
 " I mean to do better by-and-by. I mean to go to Italy. Perhaps 
 you would spare me Hetty for a travelling companion ? " 
 
 " Spare her, indeed ! You have but to ask her, and she will spare 
 herself. She won't ask my leave. She is pining for a change. 
 She even wanted to go into a convent by way of variety. She 
 would think nothing of going over to Bome ; and if you take her to 
 Italy you will have to be very careful that the priests don't get hold 
 of her." 
 
 " I will take care of her, Sophy. Benson and 1 will keep the 
 priests at bay. Benson is a dragon of Protestantism." 
 
 It was settled that Hester should meet Eve and her maid in Paris 
 early in April, and that they should travel from that city, slowly 
 and at their ease, by Basle and Lucerne to Milan, and thence to 
 the Italian lakes, or possibly to Venice. Eve trembled as she spoke 
 the name of that fatal city. She had a morbid longing to go there 
 to look upon her brother's grave before she died. She could afford 
 to .indulge any fancy in the way of travelling, for the pin-money sent 
 her quarterly by the trustee to her marriage settlement was suffi- 
 cient for her wants, and over and above this private income of hers 
 the trustee, who was also her husband's solicitor, sent her a hundred 
 and fifty pounds quarterly, in accordance with Mr. Vansittart's 
 parting instructions. She had protested against this extra allow- 
 ance, assuring the solicitor that the income under her settlement 
 was sufficient for her maintenance, and the solicitor had replied that 
 he was instructed to furnish her with six hundred a year during his 
 client's absence from Europe, and that as his client was in Africa, 
 beyond the reach of letters, it was impossible to depart from his in- 
 structions. Eve was thus richer than her needs, and was able to be 
 generous to the sisters, whose letters informed her of the result of 
 her bounty, in the shape of a much smarter style of living at the 
 Homestead. They had a page to open the door ; they dined at eight 
 o'clock, and they always had dessert on the table. They had their 
 afternoon; and carriages — chiefly pony — came from far distances to 
 take tea with them, Jenny assured her sister.
 
 328 The Venetians. 
 
 " Your marriage lifted us all out of the mire," wrote Jenc r ; 
 " but it is too sad to think of Jack in Africa aud you a broken- 
 hearted wanderer. It is awfully sad, and we can none of us guess 
 the why or the wherefore. We feel that there must be some ter- 
 rible secret. No light reason could have parted you. Mr. Sefton 
 is at the Manor, hunting every day, and going long distances by rail 
 when there are no hounds in the neighbourhood. We hear he has 
 been paying attentions to Lord Haverstock's only daughter, who will 
 be enormously rich. No doubt he will end by marrying for money. 
 Poor Sophy turned deadly pale the first Sunday she saw him in 
 church. We were earlier than usual, and we were seated in our pew 
 as he came up the nave, staring about him as if he had been in a 
 theatre." 
 
 With Hetty for her travelling companion, Eve felt more her own 
 mistress, and, therefore, happier than she had felt with Sophy. 
 Hetty was only fifteen, and might be treated as a child, and, indeed, 
 she still possessed some of the best attributes of childhood ; was in- 
 curious about the future save when it promised some novelty, change 
 of place, new possession, amusement or excitement ; was deeply in- 
 terested'in trifles, and had no margin of mind left for serious things. 
 Such a companion may do much for a heart weighed down by the 
 burden of unavailing regret, Hetty, when allowed to give full scope 
 to her own absorbing individuality, left very little room for any one 
 else's feelings. Her delight in travelling was so intense as to be 
 almost contagious. Everything interested her, and the newness of 
 things was a perpetual surprise. She paused in her raptures only 
 to pity the people who are doomed never to travel. She kept a list 
 of the towns through which she passed, were it only sitting in a 
 railway carriage. She had brought the shabby old family atlas from 
 the Homestead, and had it open on her lap in the railway carriage, 
 poring over it till her eyes ached, and rarely able to find the place 
 she was looking for in that pale and faded type. 
 
 They stopped a couple of nights at Basle, where the Rhine was 
 rapture. They stopped a week at the Schweitzerhoff, and exhausted 
 the drives and excursions about Lucerne, and explored the lake of 
 the Eorest Cantons, and climbed the Rigid, and did all that the 
 veriest Cockney tourist can do, personally conducted by Hetty, who 
 read her Baedeker every morning, and gave her sister no rest till 
 the day's excursion had been settled upon. 
 
 " Sophy said I was not to let you brood," explained Hetty. " I 
 was to take care you went about and enjoyed the scenery." 
 
 Eve went about uncomplainingly, first to please Hetty, and next 
 because days and weeks must be got rid of somehow, and sorrow 
 must keep moving by day if it would court a few hours' respite by
 
 "Brief is Life, but Love is Long" 329 
 
 night. Eve had her little cough still— only a little cough ; bui the 
 -experienced Benson heard that dull, hacking sound with some 
 anxiety, remembering poor Peggy's chance, and how little it had 
 done for her. Would it ever come to that pass with her young 
 mistress, Benson wondered? Was the fatal strain in the blood of 
 all these fair sisters, with their transparent complexions and hectic 
 bloom? Half a year ago Eve had seemed in exuberant health, as 
 well as in exuberant spirits, the fairest type of youthful womanhood, 
 dancing along the flowery path of life with foot so light as never to 
 touch the thorns, or disturb the snake asleep in the sun. The 
 parting with the man she adored bad changed her whole being, and 
 the sound of her laughter was heard no more, despite of the lively 
 Hetty's provocations to mirth. 
 
 They went from Lucerne to Como, and lingered in that enchant- 
 ing region until the midsummer heat drove them into the mountains. 
 They roughed it in the Dolomites till October, and then went down 
 to Lake Leman, and established themselves for the winter at Lau- 
 sanne, where Eve took her sister's education seriously in hand, and 
 placed her as day-boarder in a very superior establishment " to be 
 finished." Here they lived very quietly, Hetty interested in her 
 work, and improving herself with a rapidity which astounded her 
 mistresses, who had been scandalized at her benighted condition* 
 from the educational point of view, and who had not yet grasped 
 the idea that a girl who has led a free out-of-door life until she is 
 iifteen years old has a stock of brain power that makes education a 
 much easier business for her between that age and twenty than it is 
 for the victim of premature culture, who has been straining and 
 exhausting the growing brain ever since she was five. 
 
 Hetty revived her juvenile French, and took to German and 
 Italian as readily as to tennis or golf. Eve was delighted with her 
 progress, and for Hetty's sake she stayed at Lausanne, with only a 
 summer holiday in the Jura, until the second winter of her exile, 
 when by her English doctor's advice she went up to St. Moritz, 
 Hetty, who was growing a very pretty girl, accompanying her, and 
 turning the heads of all the young men at the Kulm Hotel, most 
 especially when she played one of poor Samary's characters in a 
 little French duologue with the all-accomplished Dr. Holland. 
 
 Home letters told Eve that Vansittart was still in Africa, and that 
 his mother was living very quietly at Merewood. From that lady, 
 directly, Eve had not heard of late. She had answered her daughter- 
 in-law's letter coldly and cruelly, as it seemed to Eve. 
 
 " I cannot enter into your domestic mystery," she wrote. " I 
 only know that you took my son's life into your keeping, and that 
 you have wrecked it. He was the only son of his mother, and sho 
 wis a widow.' We were very happy together till you crossed his
 
 32,o 1 he Venetians. 
 
 path ; and now he is an exile, and I do not even know the reason 
 of his banishment. Forgive me if I say I wish he had never seen your 
 face." 
 
 Lord Haverstock's daughter was now the Honourable Mrs. Sefton, 
 and her husband was said to have secured the highest matrimonial 
 prize in Sussex. The lady's aristocratic features had the stamp of 
 a shrewish temper, as plainly as ever a knife was stamped " Shef- 
 field." She was proud of her birth and of her money, and a lesser 
 man than Wilfred Sefton would have had a bad time with her, but 
 he was reported to be equal to the situation. They entertained 
 enormously, and were considered an acquisition to the neighbour- 
 hood. The Miss Marchants had been bidden to all their parties, 
 and Sophy's cheerful tone in describing the high jinks at the Manor 
 showed that she had outlived her disappointment. 
 
 " Everybody knows that he married for money," concluded Sophy, 
 after a graphic account of a New Year's dance given by Mrs. Sefton, 
 " and everybody admires the way he manages his wife. He is 
 obviously supreme in everything. If he had married a curate's 
 daughter he coidd not be more completely the master, although her 
 income is nearly treble his, and they are always buying land, either 
 adding to the Sefton property, or creeping over the county in other 
 directions. They have no heir as yet, or promise of an heir, which 
 is a disappointment to Lord Haverstock, who wanted a grandson 
 immediately. I don't believe it is possible to imagine a more un- 
 happy marriage, looked at from our point cf view; but as, in my 
 opinion, he never had a heart, in spite of his folly about the Vene- 
 tian singer, it is just the kind of marriage to suit him. 
 
 " Lady Hartley's last baby is perfection — a girl — and I am asked 
 to be godmother, a great compliment, considering her extensive 
 circle and what snobs people are. 
 
 " Nancy sends you her dear love, and wants me to tell you that 
 6he always uses the lovely carved workbox, with the sleeping lion 
 on the lid, which you sent her from Lucerne. 
 
 " Shall I secure you a few remnants at Marshall's or Kobinson's 
 before the January sales are over? You must pay outrageous 
 prices for everything in Switzerland." 
 
 So much for news from home. The London papers afforded ample 
 information about Signora Vivanti, who pursued her successful 
 career unchecked, and rose a step or so in public estimation with 
 each new part she created — "created" was the word the critics 
 used of this uncultured islander's impersonations. She had fresh 
 whims, and eccentricities, and gaieties for each new character. She 
 was peuple to the marrow of her bones, and she had all the clever- 
 ness and unflagging pleasure in life which belongs to the populace.
 
 "Brief is Life, but Love is Long." 331 
 
 Her London public adored her, and to provincial audiences she 
 came as a revelation of what gaiety of heart really means. She 
 seemed a well-spring of joyousness, and sent her audience home 
 convinced that life was not so very dreary after all. 
 
 Could Eve have known more than the newspapers told her she 
 would have known that the Signora was keeping herself what Mr. 
 Hawberk called " straight." Slander had not breathed upon hei 
 name. She had loved, and her love had been rejected ; and from 
 the hour of that disillusion she had concentrated her affections upon 
 that which never betrays or disappoints. Lisa and her aunt found 
 the chief delight of their lives in the scraping and self-denial which 
 enabled them to add to their hoard. 
 
 Lisa no longer bought diamonds, and wore her whole fortune 
 upon her neck and arms. The diamonds were a very delightful 
 form of investment, but the elementary theory of principal and 
 interest had been gradually borne in upon her mind, and she now 
 knew enough of finance to know that she ought to get something for 
 her money. Keluctantly, and with serious misgivings, she followed 
 the advice of her manager and opened a deposit account at the 
 Union Bank, whither her light feet tripped gaily once a week, and 
 where she handed in the major part of her salary to a clerk who could 
 scarcely write the receipt under the too near radiance of those 
 dazzling eyes. 
 
 Life was so cheap for two abstemious women and one little boy. 
 Vansittart had paid three years' rent of the flat in advance before he 
 left Southampton. Lisa and la Zia were on velvet, and while the 
 deposit account was growing there came offers from America, which 
 were intoxicating in their liberality. American agents had seen and 
 heard the lovely Venetian ; Anglo-American newspapers had written 
 about her talents and her beauty ; and the always enterprising 
 agent-in-advance was eager to introduce her to the Western world. 
 
 Lisa carried the tempting offers to her London manager, who 
 shrugged his shoulders, and raised her salary, for the sixth or 
 seventh time. 
 
 " You will ruin me if I try to keep you, Signora," he said ; " but 
 I can't afford to lose you." 
 
 The prima donna and her aunt used to sit over their handful of 
 fire in the small hours after a cheap but savoury supper of liver, or 
 some other abomination, chopped up in a seething mass of macaroni, 
 reeking of garlic and oil. There was no dish the smartest restau- 
 rant in London could have provided that they would have enjoyed 
 better than their native kitchen. They came of a people who can 
 make a feast out of a morsel of meat which the sturdy British 
 workman would toss to his dog. Their luxuries and their pleasures 
 were alike of the cheapest. A jaunt to Greenwich or Kew by river.
 
 ,32 The Venetians. 
 
 a long day roaming about the Crystal Palace, idle afternoons on the 
 grassy levels of Battersea Park, basking in the sunshine while Paolo 
 made pies in the sand. Pleasures as simple as these sufficed for 
 Lisa, while her fortune was growing at the Union Bank. By the 
 kind manager's advice she had invested the bulk of her wealth in 
 railway shares, to which she had added from time to time as her deposit 
 account grew. She had at first been very chary of trusting the 
 railway with her savings, preferring to confide in the bank, which 
 looked solid and respectable ; but on beiug assured that she would 
 get better interest from the railway with equal security, she con- 
 sented to become a shareholder. It was pleasant when sitting with 
 her aunt in a third-class carriage on the way to Windsor or Richmond 
 to be able to remind that good lady that she, Lisa, was part owner 
 of the carriage, and indeed of the whole line. 
 
 Economical as the two women were their parsimony never de- 
 generated into meanness. If their fare was humble they were always 
 ready to share it with a friend. Little Zinco, who was a bachelor, 
 dined with his pupil every Sunday, la Zia devoting the whole morn- 
 ing, after an early Mass in the chapel near Sloane Street, to the 
 preparation of a little bit of beef stalled with raisins, and a mess of 
 rice and cheese, while Lisa in her best gown, escorted by the faith- 
 ful Zinco, attended Mass at the Oratory or the Pro-Cathedral. 
 
 In their after-midnight talk by the fire, when autumnal or wintry 
 nights made a fire a necessity, Lisa and la Zia built their castle in. 
 the air, and that castle was a small house on the Guidecca, a house 
 of which they could let a couple of floors, reserving the piano nobile. 
 or upper story, with its fine views over the blue water, for themselves, 
 and furnishing the same gorgeously with carved chestnut wood and 
 inlaid ebony, from one of the big manufactories on the Grand Canal. 
 Here they were to live happily ever after, when once Fiordelisa had 
 earned an income that would maintain them for the rest of their 
 days, and pay for Paolo's education. 
 
 Already he had shown a passionate love of music, and Zinco saw 
 in him the makings of a fine opera singer. 
 
 "He will be handsome, he will be big," said the 'cello, "and 
 
 already at five years old he shows me that he has an ear as true as 
 
 i bird's, or as yours. You will send him to the Conservatorio at 
 
 Milan as soon as he is old enough to enter, and he will find his 
 
 fortune in his larynx as you have."
 
 ( 333 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 "A SCE2JE OF LIGHT AXD GLORY." 
 
 It was April, the third springtime after the parting of the wedded 
 lovers, and to Eve it seemed as if many years had come and gone since 
 she looked upon her husband's face. She had endured her life some- 
 how, a life of mornings and afternoons, of twilight and sunrise, of 
 moons that waxed and waned, of seasons that changed from hot to 
 cold and back again, an existence like a squirrel's wheel, and having 
 nothing in common with that happy wedded life in which her eyes 
 opened every morning upon joy and love — the joy of knowing tho 
 beloved companion near, the love which seemed ever near and eve: 
 growing. 
 
 Hetty had been a comfort to her in all that time, and had shown 
 herself so sympathetic that Eve had resolved never to part with her, 
 except to a husband ; and, as yet, among Hetty's numerous admirers 
 there had been no one whom she cared for as a future husband. So 
 far Hetty was heart-whole and devoted to her sister, more than ever 
 levoted, alas ! now, when tho red flag of phthisis flaunted upon Eve's 
 hollow cheeks, and too surely marked the beginning of the end. 
 
 She had borne up bravely in those years of exile, making the 
 best of life in some of earth's pleasantest places, courting cheerful- 
 ness for her young sister's sake, and never wearing her widowed 
 heart upon her sleeve. She had borne up bravely, though the 
 enemy had been at work all the time, and the fatal strain which 
 had developed so early in Peggy, showed itself in Eve by occasional 
 illnesses, through which she battled successfully, with the aid of much 
 careful nursing by the skilled Benson and the devoted Hetty. They 
 had patched her up time after time, as Benson told her compatriots 
 in the courier's room at the hotel, but the day was coming when patch- 
 ing would no longer serve — when the frail frame and the brave spirit 
 must yield to the inevitable. 
 
 "Well, it'll have to come to all of us, in our time," said Benson, 
 brushing away a tear or two, " but it seems hard it should come to 
 her before she's six and twenty. So pretty, too, and such a sweet 
 disposition. It'll be a long time before I shall get a mistress I shall 
 like as well, though when I first took the place I thought I should 
 find it strange like, after being used only to titled people. But there, 
 we're all human, and there ain't much difference between a plain 
 country gentleman's wife and a duchess when you're putting a 
 poultice on her chest." 
 
 In the bright April weather Eve and her sister came to Venice.
 
 334 The Venetians. 
 
 the city to which all Eve's thoughts had been trending ever since 
 she left England, nearly three years before. She had always meant 
 to go there, always wished to look upon the scene of her brother's 
 untimely death, and to kneel beside his nameless grave ; but she 
 had shrunk with an indescribable dread from the accomplishment 
 of her desire, her heart aching even at the thought of the pain it 
 must cost her to look upon that place, which was associated with all 
 her misery. 
 
 Hetty had talked about Venice very often, in her ignorance of all 
 painful associations, and Eve had put her off with promises. " Yes, 
 dear, I mean to go there, sooner or later ; " and Hetty hung over 
 the coloured plan in Baedeker — the blue canal, with its curious 
 serpentine curve — and longed to be there with all the intensity which 
 pertains to the juvenile side of twenty. Venice, a name to conjure 
 with ! She repeated those lines of Rogers', the plain unvarnished 
 statement — " There is a glorious city by the sea ; the sea is in the 
 broad, the narrow streets "■ — which brings that wonder-city before 
 the eye of the mind more vividly than all the fire and fervour of 
 Byron, or the word-painting of Dickens and Howells. 
 
 And now, now, in the beginning of the end, Eve knowing there 
 was no time to lose, the sisters were here in the spring sunset, their 
 gondola moving with the smooth, delicious motion which serves as 
 a balm for troubled spirits, a cure for all the agitations of life, moving 
 in and out of the labyrinthine rios, as the hansom cabman of Venice 
 takes his short cut to the Riva degli Schiavoni, and the comfortable 
 hostelry of Danieli, where at Benson's advice rooms had been 
 secured on the entresol facing the lagoon, Benson professing fami- 
 liarity with almost every hotel in Europe. She had stayed at Danish's 
 with her Duchess, stayed there for a month, occupying the piano 
 nobilissimo, in the most palatial wing of that patchwork of palaces, 
 where the traveller may either find himself ushered into the mediaeval 
 splendour of a kingly chamber, or may be conducted by a labyrinth 
 of passages to a garret looking out upon a slum that recalls St. 
 Giles's. The wise traveller, of course, is he who gives Danieli ample 
 notice of his coming, and for him the noble floors are reserved. 
 
 The entresol was cosy rather than palatial ; the rooms were 
 spacious, although low ; and the windows opened directly upon all 
 the life and movement of this noisiest and gayest spot of Venice, 
 curiously suggestive of Margate in the Cockney season, save that it 
 is cosmopolitan instead of Cockney, and that instead of the Jew of 
 Houndsditch one may meet the Jew from Damascus or Cairo, from 
 Ispahan or Hungary, from Frankfort or Rome. Here all nations 
 meet and mingle, and all tongues are heard in the voices that mix 
 with the tramp of passing footsteps from morning till midnight. 
 For people who want the silence of the city by the sea, this entresol
 
 "He her God, she his Idol? 335 
 
 would be hardly the choicest portion of Danieli's rambling caravan- 
 serai ; but to Hetty's mind those windows opened on a scene of 
 enchantment. 
 
 The fishing-boats were coming in, their painted sails gaudier than 
 the sunset, and an Italian man-of-war was lying between the Eiva 
 and the Island church yonder. How familiar that church of St. 
 George the Greater seemed to Hetty, and the Custom House, 
 and the dome of Santa Maria della Salute. She had known them 
 all her life in pictures and photographs — sham Canalettis, books of 
 engravings — but the glory of light and colour were as new to her 
 dazzled eyes as if she had died unawares and had come to life again 
 in Paradise. 
 
 " Lovely, lovely ; quite too lovely," was all she could say, not 
 having a Ruskinesque vocabulary at her command. 
 
 When she looked round, appealing to her sister for sympathy in 
 this new delight, it was a shock to find the room empty. 
 
 She ran into the adjoining bedroom, where Benson was unpacking, 
 and then into her own little room further on ; but there was no sign 
 
 of Eve. 
 
 " She must have gone out for a stroll," Hetty said ruefully. "She 
 might as well have told me she was going. She ought to know that 
 I am dying to see St. Mark's." 
 
 Hetty knew her sister's dislike of all public rooms in hotels, so 
 she had very little hope of finding her in any of those lounges — 
 reading-room, hall, salon — which Signor Campi has provided for his 
 guests. There was no doubt in Hetty's mind that Eve had gone to 
 look at St. Mark's, before the twilight shadows began to veil the 
 splendour of the facade. Hetty went back to the window, and 
 amused herself with the perpetual movement on the quay, and on 
 the water, man-of-war, P. and 0., fishing-boats, barges, gondolas 
 moving diagonally across the crimsoned water towards the crimson 
 sky, light and colour reflected upon all things, save where the dark 
 cool shadows accentuated that sunset splendour. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 " BOTII TOGETHER, HE HER GOD, SHE HIS IDOL." 
 
 Pale, quiet, resolute, with her mind made up as to what she had to 
 do, Eve Vansittart crossed the Piazzetta towards Florian's Caffe, and 
 slowly, very slowly, passed in front of the windows, looking at the 
 loungers seated here and there at the marble tables, and wondering 
 whether this was the scene of her brother's fate. She had not been 
 told the name of the caffe. She only knew that it was at Venice,
 
 336 The Venetians. 
 
 in Carnival time, and at a crowded caffe that the fatal encounter had 
 happened. 
 
 She passed Florian's, and a door or two further on was assailed- 
 by a photographer, who wanted to sell her views of the city at five 
 francs a dozen, and who would not believe that she could exist 
 without them. She looked at him absently for a minute or two 
 while he showed his views, expatiating upon their beauty and cheap- 
 ness, and after that thoughtful pause went into his shop, seated 
 herself, and turned over the leaves of an album of specimen photo - 
 graphs, choosing a dozen at random — " this — and this — and this " — 
 without looking at them. 
 
 " Have you had this shop long ? " she asked. 
 
 " Fifteen years." 
 
 " Then you must remember something that happened in a caffa 
 in the Piazza — Florian's, most likely — seven years ago. It was on 
 a Shrove Tuesday, late at night. A young man was killed, acciden- 
 tally, in a scuffle. Do you remember ? " 
 
 The photographer shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " That is a thing that might happen any year at Carnival time, M 
 he said lightly. " There is much excitement. Our people are good- 
 natured, very good-natured, but they are hot-tempered, and a blow- 
 is quickly given, even a blow that may prove fatal. I cannot say 
 that I remember any particular case." 
 
 " The man who was killed was an Englishman, and the man who 
 killed him was an Englishman." 
 
 " Strange," said the photographer. " The English are generally 
 cool and collected — a serious nation. Had it been an American I 
 should be less surprised. The Americans are more like us. There 
 is more quicksilver in their blood." 
 
 "Cannot you remember now? An Englishman, a gentleman, 
 stabbed by an English gentleman," urged Eve. " Surely such thin_ s 
 do not happen every day ? " 
 
 "Everyday? No, Signora. But in Carnival time one is pre- 
 pared for strange things happening. I begin to recall the circum- 
 stance, but not very clearly. A young Englishman stabbed with a 
 dagger that had been bought over the way a short time before. He 
 had been drinking, and was jealous of a young woman who was 
 present. He attacked his compatriot with savage violence. Yes, I 
 recall the affair more clearly now. There were those present who 
 said he brought his fate upon himself by his brutality. The man 
 who stabbed him made a bolt of it, on a hint from a bystander — 
 ran across the Piazzetta, jumped into the water, and swam for his' 
 life. No one in Venice ever knew what became of him. He must 
 have been picked up by a gondola, and must have got away by the 
 railroad. Who knows? He may have got ashore on the mainland,
 
 "He her God, she his Idol." $37 
 
 and made his way to Mestre, so as to avoid the railway station here, 
 where the police might be on the watch for him. Anyhow, he got 
 away. He had courage, quickness, his wits well about him." 
 
 " It was at Florian's that this happened ? " asked Eve. 
 
 "Yes, at Florian's— where else? There is no caffe in Venice 
 equal to Florian's." 
 
 That was all. She paid for her photographs and went back to 
 Florian's, and peered in at the bright, pretty salons, where the 
 Italians were lounging over their coffee, with here and there a group 
 playing dominoes, and where tourists — English, American, German 
 — were enjoying themselves more noisily. She wondered in which 
 of those salons the tragedy had been acted. Was the stain of her 
 brother's blood on the floor ineffaceable, like Rizzio's in the fatal 
 room at Holyrood ? She loitered for a few minutes, looking in 
 through the open doors and windows shudderingly ; and seeing she 
 was observed, she moved quickly away, and presently was being 
 followed across the piazza by a Venetian seeker of bonnes fortunes, 
 she herself happily unconscious of the fact. 
 
 She looked at the shops in the Procuratie Vecchie, and was 
 pestered by the touting shopkeepers after their Venetian manner. 
 She looked in at all those Eastern toys and Italian gewgaws, and 
 jewellery which has here and there a suggestion of Birmingham. 
 
 " Do you sell daggers ? " she asked a black-eyed youth, who had 
 entreated her earnestly to ascend to the show-room above, assuring 
 her that the " to look costs nothing." 
 
 Her question startled him. " Daggers, yes, assuredly. Was it a 
 jewelled dagger for her hair that the Signora desired? He had of 
 the most magnificent." 
 
 No. She wanted no dagger, only to know whether he sold them, 
 real daggers, strong enough to wound fatally. 
 
 He showed her a whole armoury of Moorish knives, any one of 
 which looked as if it might be deadly. 
 
 " Do you remember a young Englishman being killed with such a 
 dagger as this ? " she said, pointing to one of the deadliest, " by 
 accident, in Carnival time? " 
 
 He remembered, or affected to remember, nothing. 
 
 Leaving his shop, after buying half a dozen bead necklaces for 
 civility, Eve found herself face to face with her Venetian admirer, 
 upon whom she turned so dark a frown as to repel even that 
 practised Lothario. She hurried back to Danieli's, and arrived 
 there flushed and breathless, and far too much exhausted to do 
 justice to the simple little dinner of clear soup and roast chicken 
 which Benson had ordered, a dinner served in her own sitting-room, 
 which privilege of dining alone was Eve's only extravagance in her 
 
 travels. 
 
 z
 
 338 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 Hetty questioned her sister closely, and reproached her for un- 
 kindness in going ont unaccompanied ; but Eve gave her no ex- 
 planation of that excursion. 
 
 "You are not strong enough to walk about alone, dear," the 
 sister said tenderly. " You want a giraffe like me to give you an 
 arm." This was Hetty's way of alluding to the tall slim figure 
 which had been so much admired on the tennis courts of St. Moritz 
 and Maloja. 
 
 Eve engaged a gondola next morning. It was to be her own 
 gondola, and the gondolier was to give allegiance to no one else, so 
 long as Mrs. Vansittart remained in Venice. She set out alone in 
 her gondola directly after breakfast, in spite of Hetty's remonstrances. 
 
 " I have some business in Venice that I must keep to myself, 
 Hetty. It will be the greatest kindness in you to ask no questions." 
 
 "You are full of mysteries," said Hetty, " but I won't tease you. 
 Only take care of yourself, dearest, and don't be unhappy about 
 anything, for the sake of the sisters who idolize you." 
 
 Eve kissed her, and went away without another word. Hetty 
 marched about all the morning with Benson, who showed her St. 
 Mark's and the pigeons, and the Doge's Palace, whisking her rapidly 
 through all the picture-rooms, but not letting her off a single dark 
 cell on either side the Bridge of Sighs. 
 
 Eve's first visit was to the chief office of the Venetian police, 
 where she found an obliging functionary, who, at her desire, pro- 
 duced the record of the unknown Englishman's death. 
 
 The story was bald and brief. A scuffle, ending in a fatal wound 
 from a dagger. The man who used the dagger had escaped. The 
 weapon was in the possession of the police. 
 
 " Was every means taken to find the man who killed him ? " Eve 
 asked. 
 
 " Every means, although there was no extra pressure put upon 
 us. Nobody came forward to identify the victim or to claim the 
 body. He must have been a waif and stray ; his name, Smith, is 
 one of the commonest English names, I am told, and it may have 
 been an assumed name in his case. He was a fine young fellow, 
 but showed marks of having lived recklessly and drunk hard. The 
 lines in his face were the lines that dissipated habits leave on young 
 faces. It was a sad business. Has the Signora any personal interest 
 in this unfortunate gentleman ? " 
 
 " Yes, he was my relation. I have come to Venice on purpose 
 to find his grave." 
 
 " That will be difficult, I fear. He belonged to nobody. His 
 bones will have been mingled with other bones in the public grave 
 ere now."
 
 "He her God, she his Idol" 339 
 
 " Ohj that is hard," said Eve, in a broken voice. " A pauper's 
 grave. He was a gentleman by birth and education. There were 
 those in his own country who would have starved rather than let 
 him lie in a nameless grave." 
 
 The official shrugged his shoulders with the true philosophical 
 shrug. 
 
 "Does the Signora really think that it matters whether we have 
 as grand a tomb as Titian or lie nameless and forgotten in some 
 quiet corner? For my part, the finest monument that was ever set 
 up would not console me for a short life. When these bones of 
 mine are only aches and pains, and can carry me about no longer, 
 away with them to the crematorium. The Signora will pardon me 
 for venturing to state my own views, and if she desires it I will try 
 to discover the exact circumstances of the Englishman's burial. 
 It is possible that there may have been some one interested in bis 
 last resting-place, and the grave may have been bought. There 
 was a young Venetian, the girl who caused the quarrel, who seems 
 to have been attached to him. She may have done something. If 
 the Signora will be good enough to wait till to-morrow I may be 
 able to furnish her with better information." 
 
 Eve thanked him for his polite interest, and promised to recompense 
 him for any trouble he might take on her behalf. 
 
 She received a letter from him the next morning. 
 
 " The grave is the last in the avenue leading due west by the side 
 of the south wall in the cemetery at San Michele. There is a 
 wooden cross, and the name Smith. The grave was bought and 
 the cross erected at the expense of the Venetian girl." 
 
 Eve's gondola took her to the sea-girt burial-place in the morning 
 sunshine. She carried a basket of roses and narcissus, to lay upon 
 her brother's grave, and her mind was full of the hour when she 
 saw him for the last time. How near in its distinctness of detail, 
 of sensation even ! how far in that sense of remoteness which made 
 her feel as if she were looking across a gulf of death and time to 
 another life ! Was that really herself — that impetuous girl, whose 
 arms had clung round her brother's neck in the agony of parting, 
 and who had never known any other love ? 
 
 To-day there was a conflict of feeling. There was the thought 
 of the man whose crime had been the crime of a moment, whose 
 punishment was the punishment of a lifetime. 
 
 " I know that he loved me," she told herself. " I know that I 
 was necessary to his happiness, and yet I sent him away from 
 me. Could I do otherwise? No. The man who killed my brother 
 could not be my husband, I knowing what he had done. Ah, as 
 long as I did not know, what a happy woman I was ! And I might 
 have lived happy in my ignorance to the end but for my own fault."
 
 340 The Venetians. 
 
 And then with bitterest smile she said aloud — 
 
 " Ah, Fatima, Fatima, how dearly you have paid for the turning 
 of the key ! " 
 
 She found San Michele, the quiet island of the dead, sleeping in 
 the soft haze of morning on the bosom of the lagune. A little way 
 off, the chimneys of Murano were tarnishing the clear Italian sky 
 with their smoke; the barges were loading and unloading; the 
 glass-makers were passing to and fro — women and girls flip-flopping 
 over the damp stones in their quarter-less shoes ! the children and 
 the beggars were sprawling in the sun. There the stir and variety 
 of life : here the silence and the sameness of death. 
 
 She found her brother's grave, and the monument which 
 Fiordelisa and her aunt had set up in his honour. The grave was 
 a mound on which the grass grew tall and rank, as it grows at 
 Torcello, above the ruins of the mother city. The monument — 
 poor tribute of faithful poverty — was a wooden cross painted black, 
 with an inscription in white lettering, rudely done : — 
 
 SIR SMIZZ 
 
 MORTO A VENEZIA, 
 
 MARTEDI-GRASSO, 1885. 
 
 Below this brief description were seven of those conventional 
 figures — in shape like a chandelier-drop — which often ornament the 
 funeral drapery that marks the house of death. These chandelier- 
 drops, painted white on the black ground of the cross, represented 
 tears. They were seven, the mystic number, sacred to every 
 Catholic mind. 
 
 These seven tears — seven heart-wounds — were all the epitaph 
 Lisa could give to her lover. A wreath of immortelles, black with 
 the blackness of years, hung upon the cross. It dropped into atoms 
 as Eve touched it, was blown away upon the salt sea wind, vanishing 
 as if it had been the spectral form of a wreath rather than the thing 
 itself. 
 
 Eve sank on her knees in the hollow between two graves, and 
 abandoned herself to a long ecstasy of supplication, praying not for 
 the dead, at peace beneath that green mound where the grasshoppers 
 were chirping, and the swift lizards gliding in and out, — not for the 
 dead, but for the man who killed him, for the conscience-burdened 
 wanderer, under torrid suns, far from peace, and home, and all the 
 pleasures and comforts of civilization, seeking forgctfulness in the 
 arid desert, in the fever-haunted swamp, among savage beasts and 
 savage men, going with his life in his hand, lying down to sleep at 
 the end of a weary day, with the knowledge that if his camp-fires 
 were not watched he might wake to find himself face to face with a 
 lion. Oh, what a life for him to lead, for him whose days had been
 
 "He her God, she his Idol." 341 
 
 spent so pleasantly in the busy idleness of a man whose only occu- 
 pation is the care" of a small landed estate, and whose only notion 
 of hard work is the early rising in the season of cub-hunting, or 
 the strenuous pleasures of salmon-fishing beyond the Scottish 
 border. 
 
 When her prayer was done — her prayer that her beloved might 
 be sheltered and guarded by a Power which guides the forces of 
 Nature, and bridles the neck of the lion, and can disperse the 
 pestilence with a breath — prayer is a dead letter for those who 
 believe less than this — Eve sat upon the grass, under her Italian 
 umbrella, the red umbrella which all the peasants use as shelter 
 from sun and rain, and abandoned herself to thoughts of the 
 wanderer. 
 
 She knew more of his wanderings than she had hoped to know 
 when Sophy's letter from Fernhurst first told her that he was 
 travelling with a friend in the Mashona country; thanks to an 
 occasional letter from his own pen which appeared in the FiehK 
 and over which his wife hung with breathless interest, and read 
 and re-read, returning to it again and again long after the date 
 of publication, as she returned to Hamlet or " In Memoriam." 
 Week after week she searched the paper eagerly for any new 
 letter, or any stray paragraph giving news of the wanderer ; 
 but the letters appeared at long intervals, and the last was 
 nearly three months old. He had turned his face homeward, lie 
 said, in that last letter. Her heart thrilled at the thought that 
 he might have returned ere now, that he might be at Merewood 
 perhaps, in the rooms where they had lived together, in the 
 garden which was once their earthly Paradise, in which she had 
 watched the growth of every flowering shrub, and counted every 
 rose, in that mild Hampshire where roses flourish almost as 
 abundantly as in balmy Devon. She thought of the tulip tree she 
 had planted on their favourite lawn, he standing beside her as she 
 bent to her work, laughingly prophetic of the day when they should 
 sit on a rustic bench together under the spreading branches of that 
 sapling of to-day, to accept the congratulations of garden-party 
 guests upon their golden wedding. 
 
 " ' We must really go and speak to the old people,' some pert 
 young visitor would say to a perter granddaughter of the house 
 ' only one hardly knows wdiat to say to people of that prodigious 
 
 age-' " 
 
 Eve remembered her feeling of vague wonder what it was like to 
 
 be old, whilst Vansittart jestingly forecast the future. 
 
 Well, all speculation of that kind was at an end now. She would 
 never know what it was like. 
 
 "Those the Gods love die young," she repeated to herself,
 
 34 2 The Venetians. 
 
 dreamily. "I would not mind dying — any more than Peggy 
 minded, happy-souled Peggy — if I could but see him before I die. 
 There could be no harm in my seeing him — just at the end — no 
 treason to my flesh and blood lying here." 
 
 She laid her wasted cheek upon the mound, and let her tears 
 mix with the last lingering dew on the long grass. She wanted to be 
 loyal to her dead ; but her heart yearned with a sick yearning for 
 one touch from the hand of the living, for one look from the eyes 
 that would look only love. Love, and pardon, and fond regret. 
 
 It was a fortnight after that morning in the cemetery at San 
 Michele, that in poring over her Field Eve came upon a two-line 
 paragraph at the bottom of a column, a most obscure little paragraph 
 — side by side with one of those little anecdotes of intensest human 
 interest which chill one at the end by the fatal symbol, " Advt." — a 
 tiny scrap of news which any but the most searching reader would 
 have been likely to overlook. 
 
 "Among the passengers on board the City of Zanzibar, which 
 left Cape Town on the 3rd inst ., for Alexandria and Brindisi, were 
 Mr. Murthwait and Mr. Vansittart, returning from a hunting expedi- 
 tion to Lobengula's country." 
 
 Eve sent for her doctor that evening, the English doctor who had 
 attended her at St. Moritz in January and February, and who was 
 now taking a semi-professional holiday in Venice — willing to see 
 old patients who might have drifted to the city in the sea, but not 
 desiring new ones. 
 
 She submitted patiently to the necessary auscultation, while her 
 sister stood by, pale and breathless, waiting to hear the words of 
 doom. 
 
 The doctor's face, when lie laid down the stethoscope, was grave 
 even to sorrowfulness. He had been warmly interested in this case 
 in the winter, had hoped against hope. 
 
 " Am I worse than I was in Februarj^ ? " Eve asked quietly. 
 
 " I am very sorry to have to say it — yes, you are worse." 
 
 " And you think badly of my case ? You think it quite 
 hopeless?" 
 
 " There is no such thing as hopelessness," said the doctor, re- 
 sponding to an appealing look from Hetty. "You are so young 
 — have such a fine constitution, and even after what you told me 
 of your family history — who knows ? — there is always a chance." 
 
 " Yes, there was a chance for my youngest sister," answered Eve, 
 with a faint smile. " Peggy's chance lasted six months." 
 
 " If there is anything you want to settle — any business matter, 
 such as the disposal of property, which makes your mind uneasy — 
 it is always well to set such anxieties at rest," answered the doctor, 
 eoothingly.
 
 "He her God, she his Idol" 343 
 
 " Yes, I mast see to that. My settlement gives me the right to 
 dispose of my property — the property my husband gave me. I 
 had none of my own. But it is not of that I am thinking. Oh, 
 doctor, be frank with me. I have a reason for wanting to know. 
 Do you think that I am dying? " 
 
 j " Alas, dear lady ! I cannot promise you many years of life." 
 J " Or many months ? Or many weeks? Oh, doctor, don't think 
 I am afraid of the truth. I am not one of those consumptives who 
 deceive themselves. I have no spurious hopes— perhaps because I 
 do not set a great value on life. Only there is some one I want to 
 see before I die." 
 
 " Send for him, then," said the doctor, divining that the some one 
 was her husband. " Send for him, and set your mind at rest." 
 
 " I will," she answered resolutely, and before the doctor had left 
 her half an hour she had written and despatched her telegram — 
 
 " John Vansittart, Steamer City of Zanzibar, Poste Restante, . 
 Brindisi. — I am at Venice, and would give much to see you on your 
 way home. — Eve. — Danieli's." 
 
 The windows of Mrs. Vansittart's salon on the entresol at Danieli's 
 opened upon a balcony — a balcony shaded and sheltered by a striped 
 awning, under which Eve loved to sit at her ease, nestling among 
 the cushions which Hetty arranged for her, on days when, in her 
 own words, she felt hardly equal to the gondola. There had been 
 many days since the despatch of that message to Brindisi when Eve 
 had felt unequal to the gondola, and Hetty had by this time ex- 
 hausted all the sights of Venice under the chaperonage of Benson 
 — who gave herself as many airs as if she had been Ruskin — and 
 had yawned as heartily in the Accademia as ever she had yawned 
 in the National Gallery. She had wearied of Titian and Tintoretto. 
 She had tried her hardest to admire Carpaccio, and to pin her mind 
 to her limp little piratical edition of the " Stones of Venice." She 
 thought of Ruskin religiously every day as she tripped past Figtree 
 Corner. More fondly, perhaps, did she affect the shops in the 
 Merceria, and all those wonderful little streets which to the Cockney 
 of mature years recall all that was most precious — that is to say, 
 most characteristic of the little industries and little trades of a great 
 city — in the vanishing alleys and paved courts between Leicester 
 Square and Oxford Street. Here there was always something to 
 interest the girl from Sussex; and the Rialto, market and bridge, 
 afforded never-failing pleasure. Tims the gondolier had an easy 
 time of it, and slept away the brightening hours, and basked in the 
 sun, and fattened on golden messes of polenta. 
 
 It was quite true that Eve felt less capable of exertion — even that 
 slight effort of going downstairs and stepping from Danieli's door- 
 step into a gondola — than when first she came to Venice; but she
 
 344 -The Venetians. 
 
 had another and stronger reason for preferring her cushioned nest 
 on the balcony to the Lido or the lagunes, lovely as those smooth 
 waters were in the lovely May weather. She was waiting for the 
 result of her telegram, she was watching for the coming of her 
 husband. He would come to her. On that question she had no 
 fear. If he lived to land at Brindisi and to receive her message, he 
 would come to Venice. She would see him, and forgive, and be 
 forgiven, before she died. Forgive him ; forgive the wrong done 
 to another ? For her own part there had never been anything less 
 than pardon in her mind. She had made every excuse that love 
 can make — love, the special pleader — the infallible advocate for a 
 criminal at the court of a woman's conscience. She had excused 
 his crime until it was no crime ; but she had been firm in her con- 
 viction that she could not live with the man who killed her brother. 
 Looking back now at the years of a double exile there was do 
 wavering in her mind, no regret for what she had done. She felt 
 only gratitude to Providence who had shortened the lonely years, 
 and brought the end so near. 
 
 Three weeks of watching and waiting passed like a slow pensive 
 dream — a dream of blue water — and lounging gondoliers — and flower- 
 girls with baskets of ragged pink peonies, and the shriek and whistle 
 of the steamer for the Lido, and the passing of many footsteps, and 
 sound of many voices, grey-coated tourists, American and British, 
 for ever coming and going, so light-hearted, so light-minded, so 
 noisy, that one might think care and sorrow had no part in their 
 lives or in their memories. To Eve, dwelling for ever on the memory 
 of the life which had been, on the thought of the parting which was 
 to be, all that tumultuous movement and gaiety seemed a thing of 
 wonder. 
 
 " How happy they all are ! " she said. " What a happy world 
 it seems — for other people." 
 
 " Ah, but you see people must wear their happy side outermost,' 7 
 answered Hetty, " and I dire say even Americans know what care 
 means, though they always seem wallowing in money and new 
 clothes. I wish you would come down to the hall to-night, and hear 
 the little concert we have every evening, and see my favourite young 
 lady from Boston. She has all her frocks from Paris, and her waist 
 is under nineteen inches. Yet she eats ! Ah, what a privilege to 
 be able to eat as much as she does, and yet keep one's waist under 
 nineteen inches ! " 
 
 The day had_ been almost oppressively warm, and the fishing- 
 boats were coming home through a sea of molten gold in the un- 
 speakable splendour of a Venetian sunset, when May has breathed 
 the first breath of summer heat over land and water. Eve had been 
 sitting in the balcony all day reading those little books of HowehY
 
 "He her God, she his Idol." 345 
 
 and his contemporaries, which seem especially invented for the 
 traveller in fair countries, light, portable, dainty to touch and 
 gracious to look upon, and eminent!}' proper. She had read, and 
 dreamed her waking dreams, and dozed a good deal at intervals — 
 for her nights now were sadly broken, and sadly wakeful— quite as 
 bad as poor Miss Margaret's nights, as Benson told her sympa- 
 thetically. Miss Margaret? Who was Miss Margaret ? And then 
 Eve remembered how the respectful Benson had insisted on calling 
 Peggy by a name which no other lips had ever addressed to her. 
 
 Benson was an admirable nurse, wakeful, watchful, really attached 
 to her mistress ; but she was just a shade too business-like, and too 
 much inclined to look upon Eve as a case rather than an individual. 
 She watched the progress of decay with a ghoulish gusto, and told 
 her mistress more about former patients than it was cheering for an 
 invalid to know. 
 
 To-day, after the weariness of the night, and the long, long hours 
 between sunrise and the breakfast hour of civilization, Eve's fitful 
 slumbers were sound and deep, deeper than dreamland, deep as the 
 dark abyss of unconsciousness. She had been falling into this gulf 
 now and again all day, falling suddenly from her book or her day- 
 dream into that black pit of sleep. 
 
 A cooler breeze sprang up with the sinking of the sun, and the 
 water between the Riva and the island church was stirred into bolder 
 ripples as the dark gondolas stood sharply out against the reddening 
 light. The salt breath of the Adriatic was blowing across the sandy 
 bar yonder with revivifying freshness. Eve rose from her nest of 
 pillows in the low canvas chair, and stood leaning, against the 
 balcony, looking at the animated scene. There was a paper lantern 
 twinkling here and there with a pale fantastic light, in sickly contrast 
 to that blaze of sunset colour, and as the crimson faded in the low 
 western sky the little earthly lights brightened and grew bold, and 
 there came the sound of that light music which Venetians love, 
 music that seems only a natural accompaniment to the ripple of the 
 incoming tide. 
 
 "How bright and gay it all looks!" said Eve. "Is there any- 
 thing on earth to equal Venice ? Oh, how strange that I should 
 love this city so well ! " she murmured, in self-reproach, remember- 
 ing the purpose that had brought her there. 
 
 The charm of the city had crept upon her unawares. She was 
 glad to live there, glad that she was to die there. 
 
 She looked towards the bridge by the Doge's Palace, and saw a 
 man walking quickly down the steps — a bearded man, with a brown 
 skin and a weather-beaten look. He was coming quickly towards 
 the hotel; he was looking up at the windows, scanning the wide 
 frontage with a sweeping glance, now high, now low, till his eyes
 
 346 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 lighted ou the balcony where she stood, lighted on herself, and neve: 
 unfixed their gaze. 
 
 Changed as he was, she had known him from the first instant. 
 She had known him when he appeared at the top of the steps for 
 John Vansittart and no other. There was something in his walk, 
 something in the carriage of his head, something which to the eyes 
 of love seemed to distinguish him from all the rest of the world — 
 characteristics that might have been invisible to all other eyes. 
 
 He ran towards the low doorway, and scarcely had he vanished 
 from the outer world below when she heard a door bang at the end 
 of the corridor and the rush of hurrying feet. How quick, how 
 impetuous, what a creature of fire and flame he seemed as he dashed 
 into the room and clasped her in his arms ! 
 
 "Are these your African manners?" she gasped, laughing and 
 crying in the same moment. 
 
 " Oh, my love, my love, how sweet to hold you on my heart 
 again and be forgiven! I am forgiven, am I not, dear? My 
 calamity, or my crime — call it what you will — is forgiven. Oh, 
 love, I have suffered. I have drunk the cup of atonement." 
 
 She was sobbing upon his shoulder, her face hidden, as she clung 
 to him, with wasted arms wreathing his neck. In the blindness of 
 hi s joy — for joy, like fortune, is stone blind — he had not noticed 
 how pitiably thin those caressing arms had grown. Suddenly, 
 scared by her silence, he withdrew himself from that caress, and 
 held her from him at arm's length, and, looking into her face, saw 
 the sign manual of death, and knew why she had summoned him. 
 
 By a heroic effort he commanded his countenance, and smiled 
 faintly back her own faint smile. 
 
 " There is no question of the past between you and me," she 
 said, " only love, a world of love." 
 
 He drew her to his breast again, cradling the thin cheek against 
 his brown and bearded countenance, holding her to him as if he 
 would hold her there against the grim assailant Death, breathing 
 his own strong life into her as their lips met and their breath 
 mingled. Surely between them there was life and vigour enough 
 to ward off Death. 
 
 " My darling, my darling, my darling ! " 
 
 It was all that he could say just yet. The rapture of reunion, 
 th3 agony of an unspeakable dread were storming heart and mind. 
 He felt like a man lashed to the mast in a hurricane, all the forces 
 of Noture warring round him, unable to measure his danger or his- 
 chance of rescue. 
 
 To have her, to hoi 1 her again, loving him as of old. And then 
 to lose her ! But must he lose her ? Could neither love nor science 
 work a miracle, and snatch her from the jaws of the Destroyer?
 
 "He her God, she his Idol." 347 
 
 He grew calmer presently, and they sat side by side in the 
 deepening shadows, and began to talk to each other quietly, in soft 
 hushed voices, while the music and the voices of the Eiva mixed 
 with their half-whispered sentences, and the footsteps went by with 
 a gay spring in them as if all Venice were hurrying from pleasure 
 to pleasure. 
 
 "Oh, dearest, it wai time you sent for me; it was time," he 
 said. " You have given me a long penance. Nothing but Africa 
 could have helped me to bear my life. In a world less full of 
 strange hazards I must have lost patience with calamity, and made 
 a swift and sudden end of myself. Thanks to the Dark Continent 
 I have lived somehow, as you see, and come back a semi-savage, a 
 creature of thews and sinews." 
 
 " No, you are only rougher looking and browner. I can see the 
 soul shining through your eyes. Africa has not altered that." 
 
 " But you, dear love," he said, with a thrill in his voice that 
 marked the strangled sob, "you are altered. You are looking tired 
 and ill. I am afraid you have been neglecting yourself. I shall 
 take you to the Engadine, where we ought to have taken poor 
 Peggy. The Riviera was a mistake. A winter at St. Moritz would 
 have cured her. We will start to-morrow." 
 
 She did not answer for a minute or so, but nestled nearer to hini, 
 with her wan cheek leaning against his shoulder, and her waxen 
 fingers clasping his strong wrist, hardened and roughened by weather 
 and toil. 
 
 "The Engadine can do nolhing for me, Jack— no more than it 
 could have done for Peggy. South or north, mountain or valley, 
 the end would have been the same. It is our family history, Jack. 
 We were doomed from our birth. I was sent to the Engadine last 
 winter, and He'ty and I only left St. Moritz in March. We stayed 
 at Varese for nearly a month, and then came here. Hetty is with 
 me, so bright, so active, so happy ; but some day perhaps she will 
 look in the glass as I have looked, and will see the summons 
 written on her face. Dear husband, don't be too sorry for me. 
 This parting must have com^, even if we had escaped the other; 
 even if I had never known what happened at Florian's ; never knelt 
 beside my brother's grave in the island cemetery. Let me lie near 
 him, Jack : and whatever your future life may be — and God grant 
 it may be rich in blessings, you have suffered enough lor your sin — 
 think of me sometimes ; and sometimes, in your wanderings, go to 
 San Michele and look upon my grave." 
 
 He clasped her close against his heart, with a shuddering sigh. 
 
 Two days after, he took her away from the life and movement of 
 the Eiva to a palace on the Grand Canal, where the quiet of the
 
 34S 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 -Silent City had a soothing influence on her overwrought spirit. It 
 any life could have been happy in which the end was so near, theirs 
 would have been happy in that delicious beginning of the Venefan 
 summer, a season when mere existence is a privilege. Whatever 
 love which passeth understanding can do to smooth the last days 
 of a fading life was done for Eve ; and it may be that the footsteps 
 of the invincible Enemy were slackened somewhat by that unsleeping 
 watchfulness. 
 
 The end came slowly, and not ungently, and till the end her 
 husband was her devoted nurse and companion, thinking no thought 
 that was not of her. 
 
 THE EOT). 
 
 LOKI>0>; : mlKTri) BY WILLTAM CLOWES AVD SOX.?, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A. 

 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY 
 
 FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 599 627 7
 
 1 
 
 1 «