-^LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 UNIVLRSITY 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 M444ve 
 v.\

 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/venetiansnovel01brad
 
 THE VENETIANS 
 
 ^ So^d 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "LADY AUDLEY'S SECKET," "VIXEN," 
 "ISHMAEL," Etc. 
 
 WITH THE PUBLISHERS' COMPLIMENTS. 
 
 7^- TEHEE VOLUMES 
 YOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 SIMPKIN, MAESHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. 
 
 LIMITED 
 STATIONEES' HALL COURT 
 
 1892 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 LOXDON : 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
 
 I 
 
 g^3 
 
 V.I 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTEB 
 
 I. In the City by the Sea ... ... •■• 1 
 
 n. ATTEB-THOrGHTS ... ... ••• ^5 
 
 III. "Faibies!" "^^ 
 
 IV. "The Pbelude to some Beightee Woeld" 121 
 V. Teatoie in Aecadia ... ... ••• 1^1 
 
 YI. "Love stands rroN thy Left HA2rD and 
 
 - THY Eight" ... ... ■•• ••• ^^^ 
 
 YIL He woeld taxe his Time ... ... 213 
 
 YIII. A Face in the Cbo-wd ... ••• ... 233 
 
 IX. " Though Love, and Life, and Death should 
 
 "^ j> 94-9 
 
 ; come and go ... .«• ••• ^** 
 
 X. "As Things that aee not shall these 
 
 ^ ThesGs be" ... ... ... ••• 268
 
 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 
 
 Little golden cloudlets, like winged liviDg 
 creatures, were hanging liigli 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 flashed and shone with an 
 illumination which the lamps and lanterns that 
 were to be 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 of those 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 along those palace fapades, 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 — any- 
 thing 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 steeped in the crimson after-glow, 
 and the Chioggian fishing-boats were moving
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 3 
 
 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 Yankees were bargaining on 
 the sea-washed steps below the hall-door with 
 gondoliers almost as shrewd. Quanto per la 
 notte — tutte la 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, and that song which is almost 
 the national melody of Venice fin de siecle — 
 " Funicoli, funicola." 
 
 The dining-rooms at Danieli's are spacious 
 enough for all ordinary occasions, but to-night 
 there was not sitting room 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 Signer Campi moved
 
 4 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 spacious 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 Signer 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 travelling 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
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 5 
 
 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 lamp- 
 light in their golden splendour. 
 
 Signor Campi was at the Englishman's side 
 before the ladies could get further than 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 mur- 
 mured — " Quite impossible. Those ladies cannot 
 dine here." 
 
 The Englishman laughed lightly. 
 
 "You are not fond of your own countrywomen, 
 it seems, Monsieur Campi ; " 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 for our 
 dinner. Shall we try a restaurant ?J
 
 6 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " 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 
 ^ve 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 foot- 
 steps of light-hearted travellers drunken with the 
 enchantment of Venice. They crossed the bridge, 
 the girl hanging on the young man's arm, 
 chatting gaily, 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
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 7 
 
 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. 
 
 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 noisy throng. They crossed 
 the Piazza in front of St. Mark's ^loorish domes, 
 and entered a low doorway under the colonnade, 
 only a few paces from the Torre del Orologio, 
 with its azure and golden clock and its bronze 
 giants to beat the time. At the end of a long, 
 narrow, and somewhat smelly passage, they 
 found themselves 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 absolute comfort. 
 
 The waiters were evidently devoted to the 
 dark-eyed Si'ora in black and yellow, for room was 
 speedily found where there was no room. Some 
 diners were hustled away from a snug little table 
 in a comer 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.
 
 8 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " May I order the dinner ? " pleaded the dark 
 eyes, smiling at the young man in rough grey 
 woollen, while la Zia looked about her, turning 
 her head to survey the groups of diners at the 
 tables in the rear. 
 
 The waiter set a huge flask of Chiante on the 
 table unbidden, and stood, napkin in hand, wait- 
 ing for Fiordelisa's orders. Fiord elisa was the 
 name of the dark-eyed damsel, who to her 
 cavalier'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 dispose of a couple of bottles of cham^ 
 pagne — which he ordered in lieu of the big flask 
 of Chiante — that they began with a frittura of 
 fish like minnows, and that the most substantial
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 9 
 
 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 unctious 
 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 only knowledge Mr. Yansittart 
 had of her history, since he had only made her 
 acquaintance three or four hours ago at the 
 concert hall on the Lido, where he had invited 
 this young person and her aunt to take coffee 
 with him, 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 St. Mark's and 
 St. George the Greater, meaning to feast them
 
 10 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 upon Sfgnor Campi's best ; but Signer 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, 
 and 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 
 was not there to sketch her, with all the eager 
 life in her changeful face, and fix that gay and 
 brilliant image upon canvas for ever. 
 
 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
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 11 
 
 as one of those wonderful pictures in the 
 Venetian Academy would have done. 
 
 His heart was unmoved by this sensuous, 
 brilliant, earthly loveliness. Her vulgarity, all 
 her words and gestures essentially of the people, 
 amused and interested him, yet kept him worlds 
 away from her. 
 
 He was rich, idle, 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
 
 12 THE VE1ST3TIANS. 
 
 them seats in his gondola, and then to see the fun 
 of the Grand Canal in their company ; and what 
 young man with his note-case plethoric with 
 limp Italian notes, and a reserve of English bank- 
 notes in a close-buttoned 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 off a Venetian guide, whom he 
 knew of old, to engage a stage box for the 
 evening. 
 
 Fiordelisa told him about the old life at 
 Burano, while she devoured her pastry, the aunt 
 listening placidly, replete with dinner and cham- 
 pagne, 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 good 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 under-
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 13 
 
 stand 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. 
 
 " 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, are 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 sweets. *' And pray in 
 what does 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
 
 14 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 friend's notion of education," said Vansittart, 
 laughing. " Well, I dare say that it is as good 
 as Greek or Latin, or the 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 sauutering in gondolas to this 
 or the other island, to dream away an idle after- 
 noon. It was his third visit, and he seemed to 
 know every stone of the city almost as well as 
 Kuskin — every palace front and Saracenic window, 
 every mouldering flight of steps, every keystone 
 of every bridge which he passed under almost 
 every day with lazy motion, drifting as the 
 cabbage leaves and egg-shells drifted on the 
 turbid waters of the narrow way. 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 travel-
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 15 
 
 ling 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 obligation laid upon him together witk 
 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 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 or 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.
 
 16 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 His windows at Danieli's looked over an en- 
 chanted sea, where the great modern Peninsular 
 and Oriental steamer moored between the Eiva 
 and St. George the Greater seemed an anachronism 
 in iron. All else was fairy like, 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 after- 
 noons had gone, and she was still lying there, 
 blocking 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 ought 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
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 17 
 
 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 him- 
 self 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 childlike innocence, 
 in spite of her tousled hair and tawdry raiment, 
 and although Signor Cam pi'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 Yansittart, as it flashed upon his 
 lazy temper that there might be peril in such 
 a city as Venice in being seen with another man's 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 sweetheart. " Why didn't he escort you to the 
 Lido?" 
 
 " He went to Monte Carlo ^ 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 Christ- 
 mas. There are few Venetians who would give 
 such handsome presents. He is very generous." 
 
 " Yes, he is very generous," echoed the aunt. 
 
 " It is time we went to the opera," cried Fior- 
 delisa. " I want to be there at the beginning." 
 
 The opera was " Don Giovanni," the company 
 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 un- 
 clasped 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 
 Rossini Theatre that night who listened intently :
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 19 
 
 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 
 Fiordelisa 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 
 companions 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
 
 20 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 Fiord elisa. 
 " We are going to the Piazza. This is the time 
 when there will be most fun. You'll take us 
 with you ? " she asked, slipping her hand through 
 his arm, 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 par- 
 ticular 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 lanterns, 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 movement, a military band braying 
 out brazen music, music of Offenbach, loud, 
 martial, insistent, above the multifarious squeak-
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 21 
 
 ings 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 his way quickly to the 
 brightest, largest, and gayest 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 Vecchie odious, and recalls Cranboume 
 Alley in the dark ages. Lisa made a dead stop 
 before a shop where gaudy wooden negroes, 
 garish with crude colour and much gilding, were 
 grilling in the glare of the gas. It was a kind of 
 bazaar, half Venetian, half Moorish, 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
 
 22 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 great, 
 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. Fiordelisa fastened 
 upon a tray of jewels, and lost herseK in a 
 bewilderment as to which of all those earrings, 
 brooches, and necklaces she most desired. Van- 
 sittart 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. 
 
 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
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 23 
 
 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 CDamel 
 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 Kialto. 
 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 Caffe 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
 
 24 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 Kossini 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. Beauty and vivacity are not attributes 
 to make a man ashamed of his companion, 
 although she may be only a Burnano lace- 
 worker 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 critically. The red 
 velvet sheath, embroidered with gold, took her 
 fancy much more than the damascened blade.
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 25 
 
 "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." 
 
 " 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.
 
 26 
 
 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 ** 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 flame. 
 
 He was scowling savagely, breathless with 
 rage. Lisa had risen as quickly as Vansittart, 
 and Lisa's aunt had moved towards the new- 
 comer in evident trouble of mind. 
 
 " Signer Giovanni,'* she faltered, ** who would 
 have thought to see you in Yenice to-night ? " 
 
 " Not you, evidently, you wicked old hag — nor 
 you, hussy!" cried the man, furious and half 
 stupid with 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 deep bass which means a 
 dangerous kind of anger. 
 
 He put his arm round Fiord elisa, drawing her 
 towards him as if she belonged to him and it
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 27 
 
 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 inter- 
 ference 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 everlastiag 
 universal comedy of human passion. 
 
 " You infernal blackguard," cried the stranger, 
 trying to tear the girl from Yansittart's protecting 
 clasp ; " I'll teach you to carry on with my " 
 
 A foul word finished the sentence : a blow from 
 Yansittart, straight in the stranger's teeth, 
 punctuated it. Then came other foul 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 Yansittart was in much 
 better condition, and was nearer sobriety, though 
 by 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.
 
 28 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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- 
 rage at 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 eyes 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, impal- 
 pable, 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."
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 29 
 
 A shriek rent the air, wild and shrill, and the 
 vibrating glasses answered with banshee echoings. 
 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 from 
 the back of the crowd with an authoritative air — 
 a doctor, doubtless; but before he reached the 
 little clear space where the victim lay with Lisa 
 crouching over him, and Lisa's aunt wringing 
 her hands and ejaculating 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 long white neck, 
 her dark eyes streaming, her red lips convulsed 
 and quivering. Vansittart was at the door, past 
 it, before a man cried —
 
 30 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " Stop him ; stop the assassin." 
 
 There was a sudden tumult, and twenty men 
 were giving chase, a whole pack of human blood- 
 hounds, perhaps as much for the sake of 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. Theo- 
 dore — 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 happy holiday wanderers 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 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
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 31 
 
 yonder, and they knew their quarry had taken 
 to the water. 
 
 The Venetians, warm with macaroni and wine, 
 and in no humour for an improvised bath in 
 those starlit waves, pulled up, and began to 
 chatter ; then whistled and shouted for gondolas, 
 hopelessly, as to the empty air; and anon, by 
 common consent, moved 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 cross- 
 ing 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 groan- 
 ing, all prepared for instant departure. 
 
 There was a deep-toned blast of the steamer's 
 whistle, the clamour of the donkey engines sud- 
 denly 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 withered leaves 
 on a running brook.
 
 32 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " 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 pulsations. The last boat had 
 left the side of the vessel ; the sailors were draw- 
 ing 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
 
 IN THE CITY BY THE SEA. 33 
 
 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 doubtfully, 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 sea- 
 ward 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 skyrockets, music and 
 laughter. Yansittart'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 chaffing 
 with the little merchants of the Rialto, following 
 Venetian beauty through the mazy ways and 
 over the innumerable bridges — happy, uncaring. 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 an Australian miner, or 
 a drunken sweep in Seven Dials ! "
 
 ( 35 ) 
 
 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 Yansittart 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 slow days at sea, out of sight of 
 land, with nothing between him and his own 
 dark thoughts but that monotony of cloudless 
 sky and ever-rolling waters. What did it matter 
 to him 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
 
 36 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 plumping down by his side in another deck 
 chair, and talking to him about the weather, or 
 his destination, with foolish 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 of the 
 sky that canopies the Mediterranean. Perhaps 
 the fact of living in that one suit of clothes all 
 through those hot days iotensified his sense of
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 37 
 
 being a pariah among the other passengers; he 
 who had come among them with a hand red 
 with murder. 
 
 Hour after hour 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 
 evenino: in Venice and the thino; that he had 
 done there. 
 
 To think that he, a gentleman by birth and 
 education, should have slain a man in a tavern 
 row; that he, who in his earliest boyhood had 
 been taught to use his fists, and to defend 
 himself after the manner of Englishmen, should 
 have yielded to a tigerish impulse, and stabbed 
 his 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
 
 38 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 fury which had made him grip the knife that 
 accident had placed in his way. 
 
 He was not particularly sorry for the man he 
 had killed; a drunken, violent brute, who for 
 the sake of the rest of humanity was better 
 underground than above it. A profligate who 
 had seduced that lovely ignoramus under a 
 promise of marriage, a promise which he had 
 doubtless not the least intention to fulfil. 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, there 
 was the reproach, which cut into his heart like 
 a whip of scorpions. All night long, between 
 snatches of troubled sleep, he writhed and tossed 
 in his berth, wishing that he were dead, wonder- 
 ing whether it were not the best 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 per- 
 petual representation of the hateful scene, for 
 ever beginning and ending and beginning again 
 in his tortured brain.
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 39 
 
 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. He had an only sister, too, a fair, 
 frivolous being, of whom, in a lesser degree, he 
 was fond ; a sister who had made her appear- 
 ance in Society at the pre-Lenten Drawing-Eoom, 
 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 ofif a P. and 0. 
 steamer ? Think of the scandal of it. And yet, 
 if he lived, and that brutal business in the
 
 40 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 Venetian caffe 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 cowardly ruffian for a 
 brother — an Englishman who used the kuife 
 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 interwoven with all her splendour 
 and her beauty. It would be horrible, humi- 
 liating, 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 go to make a case worthy 
 of 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 dis- 
 sociating himself from that tragedy in the 
 Venetian caffe. He had got clear of the city by
 
 ' AFTER-THOUGHTS. 41 
 
 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. 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 
 Yansittart did not look like a swindler or a 
 blackguard. He was under a cloud, perhaps, the 
 captain thought, and Smith was most likely an 
 assumed name ; but anyhow he was a gentleman, 
 and the captain meant to stand his friend.
 
 42 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " Are you going to stay long in Cairo ? " he 
 asked Vansittart, when they were within sight of 
 Alexandria. 
 
 "Not long. 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 Vansittart, lightly, having no more 
 idea of going up the Nile than of going to the 
 moon. 
 
 " You'll stop at Sheppard's, of course ? " 
 
 "Yes, decidedly. I'm told it's a very good 
 hotel." 
 
 While they were nearing their port he con- 
 trived 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 condi- 
 tion in which he had introduced himself to the 
 captain of the P. and 0. 
 
 He parted with that oflScer with every expres- 
 sion of friendliness.
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 43 
 
 "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 — Galignaniy Le Figaro, 
 Le Temps. There was a Turin paper, very 
 stale — and there was a copy of the Daily 
 Telegraph that had been left by some traveller, 
 and which was a fortnight old. Nothing to fear 
 there. Yansittart breathed more freely, and 
 thought of going on to Cairo. But second 
 thoughts warned him that Cairo was very Eng- 
 lish, and that he might meet some one he knew
 
 44 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 hall porter or 
 visitors' book. 
 
 The hotel was crowded, and he had — like a con- 
 vict — been simply known as *' 150," the number 
 of his room. 
 
 Clothes, portmanteau, dressing-bag, bore only 
 his initials, J. Y. 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 he made the plunge. No, he had 
 left nothing at Danieli's ; nor had he left 
 Danieli's deep in debt, for he had paid his 
 account on the morning before his flight, with a 
 half-formed intention of starting for Verona by
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 45 
 
 the early train on Wednesday. He could resign 
 himself to the loss of portmanteau and contents, 
 and the plain pigskin bag, which had seen good 
 service and had been scraped and battered upon 
 many a platform. 
 
 Keflection told him that he had nothing to fear 
 from the newspapers yet awhile, since no news- 
 paper 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 
 himself that the best thing he could do was 
 to make good use of his time and 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- 
 man who had stabbed another man to death. 
 
 Vansittart pulled himself together, counted 
 his money, and rejoiced 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-
 
 46 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 bis passage 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 belong- 
 ings. He bought a few French novels, and 
 those small necessities of life without which the 
 civilized man feels himself a savage. 
 
 His new 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 — the gigantic break- 
 water — ^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 very name meant all that 
 was grandest in the splendour of the antique 
 world. 
 
 Vansittart looked at the starlit sky and lamp- 
 lit city with a dull unobservant gaze, while the
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 47 
 
 weight and 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 water- 
 sheds and unpleasant encounters with blacka- 
 moors, 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 penetrating to that lone 
 land where the Zambesi leaps headlong into the 
 fathomless gorge, in blinding whiteness of foam 
 and uproarious 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 for- 
 tresses and tombs that meant history. He was 
 not a naturalist or a scientific traveller, had no
 
 48 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 hope of making the world any richer by his dis- 
 coveries, or of reading the smallest paper at the 
 Geographical Society. He wanted to see men 
 and cities, and all splendid memorials of past 
 ages, 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 seeing yet 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 dull aching agony of remorse had taken 
 hold of him, and left room for no other feeling. 
 To the end of his life all that was picturesque 
 and individual in this Egyptian seaport would 
 be part and parcel of his self-humiliation, asso- 
 ciated 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
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 49 
 
 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 ! " broke from 
 the parted lips, and the man fell as if struck by 
 a thunderbolt. There was scarcely any change 
 ia his face as he fell — no ghastly pallor, no con- 
 vulsion 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 Yansittart murder 
 bad been made easy. 
 
 The homeward voyage seemed ever so much 
 longer than the outward, and the gloom of his 
 mind intensified as the summer days wore out; 
 summer, for it was summer here on the Mediter- 
 ranean, whatever season it might seem in 
 London, summer at Genoa, summer all along 
 the Kiviera, where the mimosas flung their fairy 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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. 
 
 Re 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 house- 
 hold 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 Kialto, 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 priva-
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 51 
 
 tions. The first step upon the broad high-road of 
 sin having been taken there would be but little 
 scruple about the second ; and those frank, bold, 
 beautiful eyes, that swan throat and graceful 
 form, would belong to somebody else. The good 
 easy-going aunt would hardly stand in the way 
 of a new settlement, when the last of their poor 
 possessions 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 mandoline ; 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 substantial 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 
 
 UBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSmr OF ILUNOfJ?
 
 52 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 ruin 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 Kue de la Cannebiere
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 53 
 
 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 as strong wine 
 to him, exhilarating, delighting him, when he 
 could not have too much of the animation and 
 picturesqueness of the place, the Comiche road, 
 the wide-stretching bay with rocks and light- 
 houses, 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 that Eastern 
 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 himself at a table in an obscure 
 corner, and began to examine the papers, 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 caffes in the Piazza at Venice. Two
 
 54 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 Kiva favouring his escape. It 
 is supposed that he jumped into the water, and 
 either managed to scramble into a gondola and 
 get himself 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 a good many 
 of the smaller tradespeople in the Kialto. Very 
 little seems to have been known about his sur-
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 55 
 
 roundings, 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 Yan- 
 sittart had given to the captain and steward of 
 the Berenice. 
 
 It did not seem to him, as he re-read this para- 
 graph 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.
 
 56 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 Had he disappeared, had there been the attrac- 
 tion of mystery about his doom, a riddle to solve, 
 a crime unexplained and seemingly unexplain- 
 able, 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 one 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 accumu- 
 lation 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 Yenice by heart. In this article the pic- 
 turesqueness of the city, the riot of Carnival 
 time, the historical associations of Doge and 
 Kepublic, 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
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 57 
 
 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 
 Kapide — 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 dark- 
 ness when the train stopped at Avignon, and it 
 was winter again, the bleak March winter before 
 the Easter moon ; and at Lyons the blasts from 
 the two rivers blew colder still, and he felt that 
 he was going home. 
 
 He was in Charles Street by afternoon tea- 
 time, 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 was a widow, and 
 he was her only son, and he had been away from
 
 58 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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. Yansittart's grandfather, 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, before 
 the days when Oriental goods began to be manu- 
 factured wholesale for English buyers. Bombay 
 blackwood, with its clumsy curves enriched by 
 elaborate carving, ivories, screens of black and
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 59 
 
 gold, rainbow-hued embroideries which time had 
 scarcely faded, porcelain jars and enamelled vases, 
 relieved the 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. Yansittart's drawing- 
 room a fitting nest for a very elegant woman and 
 her very pretty daughter. 
 
 The London house was Mrs. Yansittart's own 
 property ; the house in Hampshire belonged to 
 her son, and she spoke of herself and her 
 daughter laughingly as caretakers. 
 
 "When you marry," said Maud, tossing up 
 her pretty head, with pale gold hair frizzed in 
 the prevailing fashion, *' mother and I will have 
 to budge. Whatever slut you may choose to 
 fall in love with will be mistress of Mere wood." 
 
 " 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 eyes 
 and half an inch of mud on the edge of her 
 gown."
 
 60 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " 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 either 
 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 
 Yansittart 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 sever- 
 ance. They had only given him time just 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
 
 AFTER-THOUaHTS. 61 
 
 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, rejoiced as I 
 was to know you were coming back to us, I took 
 it for granted you would loiter in Paris for a 
 week," said Mrs. Yansittart. 
 
 " Paris is always delightful," replied her son ; 
 " but I was tired of wandering, and was honestly 
 homesick. And here I am safe at home, 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 be devoted to 
 you 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, laugh-
 
 62 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 ing; "were I a good correspondent an interval 
 of a week or so 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." 
 
 There 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. 
 
 "1 have had none. No one has adventures 
 nowadays," he said. "I had a fortnight on an 
 American friend's yacht in the Mediterranean, 
 and we had some rather dirty weather, but 
 nothing to hurt. That's my nearest approach to
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 63 
 
 an adventure. I had a month, at Monte Carlo, 
 shot a good many pigeons, and 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 ? " 
 
 " 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 Yerona," he 
 answered carelessly, " and then back to Genoa, 
 and then I dawdled along the Kiviera, 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." 
 
 Maud filled his cup, and offered him dainty
 
 64 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 Kiviera is sometimes 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 Kiviera, 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 he 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
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 65 
 
 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 spring- 
 time 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 Joannes ? 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 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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," Maud began, folding her hands 
 and looking demure, " to begin with, I was pre- 
 sented at the February Drawing-Koom. 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." 
 
 "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
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 67 
 
 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 Yansittart. 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 worst 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 
 Yansittart Coiffure." 
 
 " What a frightful outrage ! And having been 
 presented, and being now actually out, I conclude
 
 68 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 among your Sussex friends 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 was there." 
 
 " And didn't that finish him ? " 
 
 '' Finish him ! oh, Jack, what a horrid expres- 
 sion. 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."^ 
 
 " The Devonshire," sighed Maud. " How sad 
 to think that he is one of the few respectable
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 69 
 
 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 Eadical, and 
 that I hate what people call Progress," protested 
 Maud. "Progress means pulling down every 
 historical house aud widening every picturesque 
 street, cutting railways through Arcadian valleys, 
 and turning romantic lakes into reservoirs." 
 
 " And progress sometimes means feeding the 
 hungry, and teaching the ignorant," said her 
 mother, "and building healthy 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
 
 70 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 of all over the world," replied Maud, " and I am 
 prouder of our sound, roomy cottages than any- 
 thing 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 cot- 
 tages at Hartley," pursued Maud, " but I cannot 
 imagine either comfort or picturesqueness 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 troublesome 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
 
 AFTEE-THOUGHTS. 71 
 
 sat silently enjoying his pipe, " I hope now we 
 have you home again you are going really to 
 settle down." 
 
 " Eeally to settle down," he repeated ; " that 
 sounds rather alarming. Settle down to what, 
 mother ? Isot 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 I am afraid of 
 being turned out of the big house at Merewood ; 
 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 that in this over-populated world 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 the wisdom 
 of my elders says that it is good for a man to 
 marry. I shall not marry just to place a hand-
 
 72 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 some 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 see you always an 
 idler — sauntering through a London season, 
 yachting a little in the Cowes week, shooting a 
 little in September, hunting a little in October, 
 and running away from the winter to amuse 
 yourself at Nice or Monte Carlo. With your 
 means and your independence you ought to do 
 something better with your life and 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 
 anything in that line." 
 
 "Perhaps not. You have too much energy
 
 AFTER-THOUGHTS. 73 
 
 and activity for a student's life. I should like to 
 see you a power in the House." 
 
 "Dearest flatterer, 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 enough, I 
 grant ; 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." 
 
 *' Mother, I believe you are at heart a Eadical." 
 
 " I don't think one need be a Eadical to wish 
 that the masses were better off and more thought 
 of than they are. No, Jack, it is because I am 
 not a Eadical that I want to see vou in Parlia-
 
 74 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 ment. You are rich, well-born, well-educated, 
 and a staunch Conservative. You could fill a 
 place that might be filled by some Eadical 
 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 Kadical adven- 
 turer — 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 your- 
 self, 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 her slender clasp. 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
 
 AFTEE-THOUGHTS. 75 
 
 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.
 
 76 THE YENETIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " FAIRIES ! " 
 
 Neaely 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
 
 " FAIEIES ! " 77 
 
 the Georgian style, built by his great-grand- 
 father; 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. 
 
 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 — Eedwold 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. 
 
 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
 
 78 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 cornfields were not wanting to the 
 estate, but those lay behind the crest of the 
 hill. 
 
 Maud had been married nearly two years, and 
 there was a short-coated baby in the nursery at 
 Eedwold, albeit Sir Hubert would rather the 
 eyes of his firstborn had opened upon the light 
 that shone into the old 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 peacefully, 
 verily " falling on sleep," after a life of ninety 
 years, and after having enriched the world with 
 many useful inventions, and established a 
 wealthy progeny. Unhappily, Maud hated 
 Hartley Manor House, and only went there for 
 a month 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
 
 " FAIEIES ! " 79 
 
 have my fling in London ; and I liked being 
 talked about as the pretty Miss Yansittart. I 
 was, you know, Jack. You needn't laugh at me. 
 -And I liked making other young men miserable, 
 by leading them on a little, meaning nothing all 
 the time." 
 
 " Had you many victims ? Were there any 
 suicides ? " 
 
 "Don't talk nonsense. You know how little 
 youDg men really 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." 
 
 " A hard-up coronet, do you mean ? A coronet 
 that wanted re-gilding." 
 
 "No, sir. All those go to America. My 
 coronet was rich and altogether desirable — 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 retro- 
 spective survey of a girl's career being made one 
 afternoon in the snowy Christmas week, as Jack
 
 80 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 and Lis 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 moralist's 
 point of view. He has found out that although 
 I am fond of pretty cottages and cottage gardens, 
 I don't care much ahout 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 Kadical, 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 spite of any difference in 
 your political opinions. Indeed, I did not think 
 you knew much about politics." 
 
 " I don't. I know hardly anything. I never 
 read the debates, and my mind always wanders 
 when people are talking politics ; but my Con- 
 servatism and Hubert's Kadicalism enter into
 
 " FAIRIES ! » 81 
 
 everythiag — -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 can't achieve that unconscious 
 air of perfect equality 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 will insist upon showing 
 people 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 
 
 VOL, I. G
 
 82 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 stood may be kept to the letter, while it is 
 broken ia the spirit. But this was a particularly- 
 irksome case, for the good man had made his 
 money out of tallow, and had been painted with 
 a pound of mould candles in each hand. Think 
 of that, Maud ! Fustian and corduroy are paint- 
 able enough ; but not even Herkomer could 
 make anything out of two bunches of tallow 
 candles." 
 
 " I wish Hubert would let me hang a fine 
 Venetian glass in front of his worthy great- 
 grandfather. However, since he himself is ja 
 gentleman, I suppose I ought to be satisfied," 
 said jMaud ; " 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 enchant- 
 ing 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
 
 "fairies:" 83 
 
 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 Conserva- 
 tive ways these Kadicals sometimes have in the 
 bosoms of their families. 
 
 Sir Hubert Hartley was not like David, ruddy 
 and fair to see. He was a small, dark man, who 
 looked as if some of the original Sheffield smoke, 
 the smoke inhaled by the inventor day after day 
 for half a century, had given its hue to his com- 
 plexion. He was wiry, and well built, for a small 
 man, active, energetic, a good shot, a good horse- 
 man, a lover of all field sports and wild animals, 
 loving, after the sportsman's fashion, even the crea- 
 tures 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, house-proud in the best 
 sense of the word, and he was a man whom the 
 better-born Jack Yansittart loved and honoured. 
 
 They were about the same age, and had been
 
 84 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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. 
 
 Jack Yansittart 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 be 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 wait till the General Election, and then 
 I'll go in for all I know, and try to gain them 
 a seat in the teeth of the enemy. I should like 
 to try 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 represented Burtborough for 
 two generations, but Hubert had withdrawn from
 
 " FAIEIES ! " 85 
 
 the political arena, disgusted at the turn of 
 events, and finding more pleasure in turnips and 
 prize cattle than in the art of legislation. 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. John Yansittart thought him the most 
 enviable among men. 
 
 " He has all the desires of his heart," thought 
 Yansittart. " 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."
 
 86 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 And then he thought of Fiordelisa, with hei* 
 sunny Italian eyes, and her light-hearted accept- 
 ance of such good things as Fate threw in her 
 way — the lodgings on the Kialto, 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 seeking 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 spoiled her 
 life as he might have felt had he been cruel to 
 a child. Her ignorance, her friend lessness ap- 
 pealed so strongly to his pity — and even the old 
 aunt, who so placidly accepted the situation, did
 
 " FAIRIES ! " 87 
 
 not appear to him as odious as a hard-headed 
 Englishwoman would have appeared under the 
 same conditions. 
 
 Nearly three years had passed, and he knew 
 no more about the man he stabbed than he 
 had known when the dagger dropped from his 
 hand warm with the stranger's life-blood. 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 sudden and acci- 
 dental nature of the encounter — and the brutality 
 of the unknown's attack had been discussed at 
 length, and there had been a good deal of specu- 
 lation 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, her Venetian lodgings, and 
 her mandoline would have furnished material for 
 a spirited article. 
 
 The interest in the death of a nameless Eng-
 
 8S THE VENETIANS. 
 
 lishman 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 bur- 
 dened with the death of a fellow-creature, or that 
 her son, in a moment of anger, had behaved as 
 savagely as the commonest ruffian. 
 
 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 Van- 
 sittart 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
 
 " FAIRIES : " 89 
 
 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 ful- 
 filled all the social duties. He was a good son, 
 a kind and affectionate brother, a generous land- 
 lord 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, 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 
 he said to himself, in the hour of dark 
 memories. 
 
 A chance allusion — some loving word of praise
 
 90 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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. 
 
 He bore himself gaily enough in this Christ- 
 mas holiday at Kedwold Towers, and Lady Hart- 
 ley 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 I go with the luncheon cart."
 
 "fairies!" 91 
 
 " 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 cannot 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 under- 
 stand 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
 
 92 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 modelled upon the boot 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 he was." 
 
 "And you put me down as a single-soled, 
 effeminate person?" said Jack; whereat there 
 was a laugh from the house-party, 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 Hubert'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. "He cares for humanity, and is 
 always thinking how he can improve the con- 
 dition 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
 
 "fairies!" 93 
 
 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, T dare say ; 
 capital cottages for the landscape, but not so 
 agreeable to live in as to look at." 
 
 The party in the morning-room consisted of 
 the three Miss Champernownes, daughters of a 
 Cornish baronet, all handsome, stylish, accom- 
 plished, 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 art needlework 
 that she might as well have stopped at home and 
 worked by her own fireside ; but as her husband, 
 Major Baddington, was a good shot and a pleasant 
 companion, the lady's inoffensive dulness was 
 tolerated in country houses.
 
 94 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 The other ladies present were Mrs. Yansittart 
 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 with 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 be- 
 queathed his wealth to her with an embargo 
 against marriage with any man — less than a 
 Peer — 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 one be forthcoming, should be called 
 Green — by letters patent — and should inherit the 
 Green wealth, strictly tied up in the case of the 
 heiress. 
 
 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
 
 " FAIRIES : " 95 
 
 was a scourge to all the young matrons of her 
 acquaintance by her keen interest in their house- 
 keeping, her knowledge of prices, and her out- 
 spoken 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 
 the Co-operative Stores. 
 
 Such was the feminine portion of the house- 
 party at Kedwold Towers, and it was to this 
 party that John Yansittart had succeeded in 
 making himself eminently agreeable. He had 
 admired the artistic shading and Tudoresque 
 scroll-work of Mrs. Baddington's counterpane, 
 and had surprised that lady by what seemed a 
 profound knowledge of early Florentine needle- 
 work. He had tramped Blackdown in the wind 
 and the weather with the ^liss Champernownes, 
 turn and turn about, and was no nearer fallino^ 
 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 an 
 older family than the Plantagenets ; and to-dav
 
 96 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 he had given himself up to idleness in the 
 gynaeceum, or 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 morning-room windows 
 was for the most part a white world. 
 
 "The horses have been roughed, and your 
 coachman tells me he has no fear of the hills," 
 said Yansittart. "He is going to take four 
 
 " 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,
 
 " FAIEIES ! " 97 
 
 when the omnibus from Redwold 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 night, with the quiet fields and 
 pastures stretching round them, silvery in the 
 moonshine, while in every dip and hollow the 
 oak and chestnut copses lay in deepest shadow, 
 darkly mysterious. 
 
 They skirted Bexley Hill, they passed by 
 sleeping villages and wind-swept commons. 
 
 " Are we nearly there ? " asked Hilda Cham- 
 pernowne. 
 
 " Hardly halfway," answered Lady Hartley. 
 " I told you it was a long drive." 
 
 Th^re was a bright lamp 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 
 
 VOL. 1. H
 
 98 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 Bad- 
 iington and Sir Hubert were outside, wrapped to 
 the ears in fur coats and caps, and enjoying their 
 smoke in the frosty air. Jack and two other 
 young men rode inside with the feminine contin- 
 gent, 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. 
 
 "Who 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
 
 " FAIRIES ! " 99 
 
 inclined plane, and Hilda Champernowne in her 
 place at the back of the vehicle looked down 
 upon Jack Vansittart 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. 
 
 " 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
 
 100 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 your places. It's a lovely night. You're none 
 of you broncliial, I hope." 
 
 "Only chronic, 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 
 Keggie 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 Haddington were all standing round 
 a most melancholy specimen of the genus fly, 
 the very oldest and mouldiest of one-horse
 
 " FAIRIES ! " 101 
 
 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 Yansittart 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. 
 
 She was very tall, but so slim and willowy of
 
 102 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 form that her height made her no less sylph-like 
 — a queen of sylphs, perhaps, but assuredly of 
 the sylphide 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 and 
 unknown. 
 
 " 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 ; 
 " they went crash, and the horse fell down. 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."
 
 ** FAIRIES ! " 103 
 
 " 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 March ant 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." 
 
 " W^hy 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 crochet hood. 
 
 " 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 dreadful ! I'm 
 afraid there's not much heat left in our foot- 
 warmers, but it is tolerably warm here still " —
 
 104 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 the heat inside the 'bus was tropical — "and I 
 hope you'll be able to make yourselves comfort- 
 able." 
 
 '* Such a dreadful intrusion ! " 
 
 " Such a frightful herd of us ! " 
 
 " How you must all detest us ! " cried three 
 fresh young voices all at once. 
 
 The three Champernownes and the Green main- 
 tained a stolid silence. Those four pair of eyes 
 were coldly appraising the intruders— their looks, 
 their dress, their social status, everything about 
 them. 
 
 The fair tall girl in the swansdown hood was 
 very pretty. That fact the most unfriendly 
 observer could not well 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 some- 
 thing the girl's eyes were real — lovely dancing 
 blue-grey eyes, softened by dark brown lashes. 
 Her nose was the prettiest thing in that un- 
 recognized order of noses ; mouth and chin were 
 in perfect harmony; and she looked round at 
 the strange faces with the sweetest smile, as if
 
 " FAIRIES ! " 105 
 
 she had never suffered from prejudice or un- 
 deserved disdain. 
 
 The other two girls were of the same type, but 
 of inferior beauty. 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 crochet headgear and tawdry blue 
 opera cloak suggested all that is commonest 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 are 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 i\randelford within the memory of 
 Sussex, and the fact that this ball was taking 
 place at Mandelford was due to the enterprise of
 
 106 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 Champer- 
 nownes 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 enveloped in a cloud of snowy 
 gauze and ostrich feathers, peeping out at the 
 three pretty faces on the other side of the 'bus, 
 with bright, inquisitive eyes, like a squirrel out 
 of a mossy nest. 
 
 ** I don't know what I have done to offend you, 
 Lady Hartley, that you should not think me 
 worthy to be introduced to these young ladies," 
 said the good little man at last.
 
 "fairies!" 107 
 
 " My dear Mr. Tivett, it was an oversight on 
 my part. I forgot that you and the Miss Mar- 
 chants 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 
 amusements, 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 are 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 coquet- 
 tish giggle, darting out his little suede glove 
 to give his hostess an affectionate pat on the 
 shoulder ; " and now you have heard my charac- 
 ter, 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
 
 108 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 man, who was small enough to be almost hidden 
 in the Champernowne 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 Champer- 
 nownes, 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
 
 "FAIEIES!" 109 
 
 all social matters ; and when two matrons of his 
 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. 
 
 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 Champer- 
 nowne exclaimed at last, as the omnibus drew up 
 at a lighted door, and she 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
 
 110 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 Marchant girls fell back, and lingered in the 
 vestibule — said vestibule being neither more nor 
 less than the cabinet-maker's empty shop, trans- 
 formed by scarlet and white draperies and ever- 
 greens 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 sweep- 
 ing down, swanlike, beautiful, " in gloss of satin 
 and glimmer of pearls," and Miss Green in a 
 very severe, tight-fitting yellow silk frock, with 
 a shortish skirt, and round her homely-corn-
 
 "fairies!" Ill 
 
 plexioned 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 fluffi- 
 ness 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 drawing- 
 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- 
 mere, and didn't get back to his dinner till 
 nine o'clock." 
 
 Mr. Ponto was grinning in the backgroand,
 
 112 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 very red and puffy, 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 Champernowne, 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 
 new Nottingham lace, and obviously " let out " to 
 accommodate Mrs. Ponto's increasing bulk, was a 
 thing to wonder at. 
 
 The three March ants and their chaperon 
 entered the ball-room in a cluster. The Red- 
 wold 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 ^oint d'Alengon. 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.
 
 "fairies!" 113 
 
 *'If we don't get seats at once we mightn't 
 have a chance of sitting down for an hour," 
 said Mrs. Ponto. " Ain't the room full ? 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. I 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 fes- 
 tooned 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 prodigious wealth and local importance, a 
 rustic Eoyalty. 
 
 Eve had shaken out her well- worn white frock. 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 It was made of some 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. 
 The younger 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. 
 
 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 back- 
 ground. He put his arm through Sir Hubert's. 
 "■ When youVe done talking to Miss Champer- 
 
 •#
 
 " FAIRIES ! " 115 
 
 nowne 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 ? " 
 
 "Thefairgirl, 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 dowager 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. Vansittart," 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
 
 116 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 given in the moming-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 — other- 
 wise Titania — 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 myself 
 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
 
 "FAIEIES!" 117 
 
 with a fine rhythmical swing. Miss Green 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 hei delight to criticize her fairer sisters 
 — the flaws in their beauty; the tricks which 
 helped them to be beautiful ; their affectations ; 
 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 hump- 
 backed, though that bodice laced all askew 
 certainly suggests deformity."
 
 118 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " 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 people 
 infinitely insignificant, simply because they 
 happen not to be rich ? " 
 
 " I only think them immensely amusing. One 
 only sees such people 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
 
 "FAIEIES!'* 119 
 
 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, or a change of atmosphere — any- 
 thing 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 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 ; 
 but just as she had resigned the empty ice-plate, 
 and was moving towards the door, a man in a
 
 120 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 hunt coat met and stopped her with a semi- 
 authoritative air that made Yansittart'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 see," taking her programme out of 
 her hand. " Oh, you fair deceiver ! Why, you 
 might answer about this programme as 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
 
 "FAIEIES!" 121 
 
 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, confidentially. " 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 3Ir. Tivett, 
 closely followed by Mr. SeftoD, and Yansittart 
 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." 
 
 " 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
 
 122 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 be 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 look higher than Miss 
 Marchant." 
 
 "What and who is he?" 
 
 " Oh, he belongs to a good old Sussex family, 
 and has a fine place on the other side of Black - 
 down. 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 the lower classes — 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.
 
 "FAIEIES!" 123 
 
 Their vis-a-vis were Mr. Sefton and Miss Mar- 
 chant. 
 
 " So she is dancing with him, after all," 
 thought Yansittart, curiously vexed. "Varium 
 et mutabile semper lemina ! '*
 
 124 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 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 peculiarly 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.
 
 " PRELUDE TO SOME BRIGHTER WORLD." 125 
 
 ** Only mother of pearl," as 'Mi. 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 lovely lace, I 
 assure you." 
 
 "He was a clumsy bear all the same. How 
 sweet of you, dear 3Ir. 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 pant- 
 ingly, 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 Yansittart, 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 ? " 
 gaid he, " and not a bit of nonsense about her ; 
 naivete itself. You should have heard her and
 
 126 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 the sisters prattle in the 'bus, while the Cham- 
 pernownes sat looking thunder." 
 
 " You dog, I believe that bronchitis of yours 
 was all humbug. You were determined to stop 
 inside the 'bus so as to make your wood with 
 those girls. 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 
 vet 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 proces- 
 sion of youths and maidens, and in the confusion 
 made by so many couples pouring out of the big
 
 "PRELUDE TO SOME BRIGHTER WORLD." 127 
 
 room into the small room, Yansittart 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 simultaneously 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 Yansittart 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 common- 
 places with which even the most fateful acquain- 
 tance must needs begin. 
 
 Yansittart talked of the long, cold drive; of 
 the rooms, with their red and white panels, and 
 vizards and other emblems of the chase ; of the 
 heat and the draughts ; of the people, the faces, 
 the frocks. Easily as she had prattled with the 
 lively Tivett, Yansittart found her somewhat 
 reticent, and even shy. But she waltzed delight- 
 fully, 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
 
 128 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 preten- 
 sions 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 Cham- 
 pernownes were wandering with their partners,
 
 "PRELUDE TO SOME BRIGHTEB WORLD." 129 
 
 but Mis3 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 comer 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 pro- 
 gramme 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 Cham- 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 pernowne 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. 
 
 " There will be a crowd," she said, " but we 
 shall get the first of the oysters, and the scrim- 
 mage 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 Cale- 
 donians ? " he said. " It is a cruelty to keep the 
 floor from all those portly matrons in 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
 
 "PKELUDE TO SOME BRIGHTER WORLD." 131 
 
 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 Yansittart, 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 Yansittart sipped a glass of cham-
 
 132 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 pagne, 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 to us all, and he has given 
 my father some shooting ; so I don't want to be 
 rude to him." 
 
 " 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 heard all we said." 
 
 "Every syllable." 
 
 " How flattering to the lady who was talking 
 to you ! "
 
 " PRELUDE TO SOME BRIGHTER WORLD." 133 
 
 " Dear Miss Green ! Oh, she would not mind. 
 She is so pleased with her own conversation that 
 it does not matter whether people 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 see 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.
 
 134 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " 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 — prepos- 
 terous — as if he were a curate ! My two nursery 
 sisters offered to work him a set of mats in 
 Eussian 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 de-
 
 "PRELUDE TO SOME BRIGHTER WORLD." 135 
 
 liglitful to hear him talk about London people 
 and London parties." 
 
 " Did he set you longing to be in the whirl of 
 a London season ? " 
 
 "I don't know. It would be very nice for 
 once in one's life ; but I am quite happy in our 
 country home, as long as — as," she faltered a 
 little, " father is well and contented." 
 
 He felt that in this faltering phrase there was 
 a hint of domestic cares. Hubert Hartley had 
 told him, during a few minutes' talk on the 
 omnibus, that Colonel Marchant had been a 
 scamp, and was a difficult man to get on with. 
 
 " I always feel sorry for those five girls of his," 
 Sir Hubert concluded. 
 
 " 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,
 
 136 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 thoroughly 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
 
 " PEELUDE TO SOME BRIGHTEK WORLD." 137 
 
 many belles," said Yansittart. " 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 Yansittart 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, ex- 
 cept to garden-parties, where they are lost in a 
 crowd of nobodies. It has been too sad to 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 Champer- 
 nowne, with her most affected drawl; "I'm 
 glad some one has taken compassion upon them. 
 They've always been sittin' when I happened 
 to look their way."
 
 138 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 own garden gate. But 
 he was not allowed to do more than hold the 
 door open, for Yansittart 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
 
 "PBELUDE TO SOME BRIGHTER WORLD." 139 
 
 express our gratitude," said Sophy, as Maud 
 shook hands with her at parting. 
 
 Eve was less demonstrative, but not less grate- 
 ful, and the youngest of the three only murmured 
 something unintelligible from between the folds 
 of her tartan shawl. 
 
 Yansittart 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 foot- 
 steps 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 Yansittart to do 
 except to wish the three sisters good night, and 
 go back to the 'bus, where Sir Hubert was begin-
 
 140 THE VENETIA.NS. 
 
 ning 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 tobog- 
 ganing, 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."
 
 ( 141 ) 
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 
 TEATIME IN AECADIA. 
 
 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 grandes 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
 
 142 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 laughter, and the something of sadness in the fate 
 of this bright, light-hearted girl which appealed 
 to his deeper feelings. 
 
 To whatever circumstances 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 per- 
 petual locomotion; now driving one of the 
 Hartley dog-carts to Mandelford or Midhurst, 
 Fernhurst or Haslemere, as the case might be ; 
 and anon patrolling those towns and villages on 
 foot, in the ardent expectation of meeting Colonel 
 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
 
 TEATIME IN ARCADIA. 143 
 
 show themselves in those rural streets, where, 
 after all, as the local gentry said condescend- 
 ingly, one could really get almost everything 
 one wanted ? 
 
 He walked, he drove, he haunted the great 
 pond in Kedwold 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 ^Earchants 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 disappoint- 
 ment made Jack Yansittart 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
 
 144 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 a formal call upon the sisters. Surely he had 
 the right to call and inquire how they had 
 survived the fatigues 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 Blackdown to the further 
 side of 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 meadowland 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
 
 TEATIME IN AECADIA. 145 
 
 served as vestibule, and a large room on the 
 ground floor, which had been first known as the 
 nursery, then as the school-room, and which was 
 now simply the parlour, or general living room 
 for the whole family. The resident governess, 
 that element of respectability, had shaken 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. Yansittart noted the snowdrops 
 peeping over the snowy 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 down 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 chill and 
 dampness which the sodden gravel might 
 occasion. 
 
 Yansittart 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 
 
 VOL. 1. L
 
 146 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 after all its improvements, 
 had a bumble and homely aspect ; walls roughly 
 plastered, small square lattice windows, and that 
 steep slant of the roof, which Yansittart could 
 have touched with his hand. The porch was a 
 roughly built square block, 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
 
 TEATIME IN AECADIA. 147 
 
 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 thereupon 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 in the full enjoyment of 
 afternoon tea, which in this establishment had 
 come to be the most enjoyable, if not the most 
 substantial, meal of the day. 
 
 Happily Vansittart had lunched lightly in the 
 woods with the shooters, so was hungry enough 
 to find the odour of toasting bread rather a com- 
 fortable 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
 
 148 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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, 
 yose as Mr. Yansittart 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 knowD, 
 bought at one of the sales for half 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.
 
 TEATIME IN AECADIA. 149 
 
 To Yansittart'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 Eedwold 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. 
 Yansittart 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
 
 150 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 Sophy, much readier of speech this evening than 
 her elder sister. 
 
 " Kun to the kitchen and get me another tea- 
 pot, Peggy," whispered Eve ; whereupon one of 
 the girls 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 
 beginning to grasp the right idea of the Dutch 
 roll, and were 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 him 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 
 intelligent young pe;)ple,readY to help each other."
 
 TEATIME IN ARCADIA. 151 
 
 "I cannot conceive a more delightful spectacle. 
 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 unsym- 
 pathetic 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 after- 
 noon tea ? " 
 
 "And I see that afternoon tea, with you 
 young ladies, is a somewhat serious function," 
 said Yansittart, 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."
 
 152 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 The youngest girl, who had resumed her seat 
 on the hearthrug, was at this juncture seized 
 with a tendency to motiveless giggling, which 
 she vainly endeavoured 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 good 
 behaviour. "They are always laughing at 
 nothing." 
 
 "The happy disposition of early youth," said 
 Vansittart, "a golden age when we are ready 
 to laugh at everything. Kiper years change 
 laughter into groaning." 
 
 " She said it was our hungriest meal ! " gasped 
 Hetty, of the yellow pinafore, in convulsions of 
 undisguised laughter ; " I should rather think 
 it was." 
 
 "I suppose these young ladies are not yet 
 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?"
 
 TEATIME IN AECADIA. 153 
 
 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 household 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 light of the large 
 lamp in the centre of the table 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
 
 154 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 vases from the Eiviera. 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 fireplace 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 Bell agio rug of vivid 
 amber, and there were other Bellagio rugs 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 table- 
 cloth was of white and red damask, the crockery
 
 TEATIME IN AKCADIA. 155 
 
 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 delight- 
 ful aspect to John Yansittart. The room, the 
 firelight, the fresh young faces, with that one 
 fairest face shining like a star among the others, 
 the giggling girls upon the hearthrug laughing 
 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 home- 
 liness. 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 tea and strawberry jam ; a land where 
 young women put their elbows on the table, and 
 had no need of a chaperon to keep them in 
 countenance 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 con- 
 ventionalities of smart people, differing in detail 
 with the fashion of the hour, but fundamentally 
 the same — to Yansittart, the young man of pro-
 
 156 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 perty and position, this glimpse of an uncon- 
 ventional 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 gentle- 
 man when Hettie, the youngest but one, on 
 being reproved for noisy utterance, replied, " It 
 don't matter, father can't hear me at the Eag." 
 
 " 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
 
 TEATIME IN ARCADIA. 157 
 
 faces there spread a faint 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 ? " ex- 
 claimed Jenny, the third daughter, with a Ee- 
 publican air. " 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 Yansittart. " Both are objects 
 of envy rather than of compassion." 
 
 " 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 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
 
 158 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 lightness, as if their poverty were not really 
 poverty, but only a genteel limitation of means, 
 implying none of the shortcomings and degrada- 
 tions 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 Yansittart, 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 renowned for its corruption; 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."
 
 TEATIME IN AECADIA. 159 
 
 They all laughed, seeing that he meant a joke, 
 but unconscious of his drift. 
 
 " 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 re- 
 member 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 bom. 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 begin- 
 ning to be seriously ill."
 
 160 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " And if you could have seen this place when 
 we first came to it you would have pitied us," 
 said Sophy, who had more pretension than her 
 sisters, and who thought that Eve had done more 
 than her share of the conversation. " 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 there was no porch, and no 
 possibility of saying 'Not at home' to callers. 
 There were only vegetables in the garden, pota- 
 toes 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
 
 TEATIME IN ARCADIA. 161 
 
 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 things 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 Vansit- 
 tart. " 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 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 breast, a cat that was satiated with the worship 
 of pretty girls, and gave himself 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 Vansittart. 
 
 " Sussex is well enough, but when one is used 
 to a big stone house, with a picture-gallery, and 
 one of the finest Jacobean staircases in the East 
 Kiding, 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 
 blunt and outspoken Hetty. " You say all that 
 as if you had learnt it by heart; and as for 
 coming down, you came down to the labourer's 
 cottage when you 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 Yansit-
 
 TEATIME IX AKCADLl. 163 
 
 tart's incomparable she, wlio had migrated to 
 Sussex when she was twelve. One and twenty, 
 in the fair majority of her girlish charms. He 
 thought it the most delightful period in woman's 
 life — fair as in her teens, but wiser : mature for 
 love and wisdom. 
 
 All earthly blisses must end. The blissfullest 
 ^ve o'clock tea cannot last for ever ; but Vansit- 
 tart 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 comments 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 evening. 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
 
 164 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 
 home, and she is as faithful as Cabel Balderstone, 
 I dare say," said Yansittart, 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 con- 
 veniently 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
 
 TEATIME IN ARCADIA. 165 
 
 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 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 
 learned to grasp the family nettle, and was never 
 ashamed of her poverty. Perhaps it was her 
 country life, among green fields and blackthorn 
 hedgerows, and chestnut copses, and the barren 
 heather-ciad 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 spoiled, 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
 
 16(3 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 un- 
 flattering 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
 
 TEATDIE IN AECADIA. 167 
 
 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 rebaptize 
 her in a fountain 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 evidently 
 the Colonel's den for books, boots, and tobacco. 
 He had 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 hedgerows. He had time to note 
 everything during that lingering departure, pro- 
 tracted by much idle talk about the roads and 
 the weather : and yet while his eye took in the
 
 168 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 over- 
 topped all 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 down the steep gravel path, and 
 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.
 
 ( 169 ) 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 **LOVE STANDS UPON THY LEFT HAND AND THY 
 EIGHT." 
 
 Why should he not marry Colonel Marchant's 
 daughter ? Vansittart 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
 
 170 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 and careful 
 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 disadvantage; 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 auda- 
 cious flirt, said the village — for Eve's frank free- 
 dom of speech and manner was the rustic idea
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFRAIN? 171 
 
 of audacity in flirtation? To talk easily and 
 freely with a man under forty was to be an 
 outrageous flirt. The rustic idea of a well-con- 
 ducted young woman was simpering silence. 
 
 What would 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 abomina- 
 tion ; who think that the Church and the Army 
 were established for the maintenance of their 
 younger sons, who consider they make a con- 
 cession 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. Yansittart 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
 
 172 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 ante- 
 cedents 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 ultimately forced him to sell mansion 
 ^nd manor, farms and homesteads, 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.
 
 WHY SHOULD HE KEFEAIN ? 173 
 
 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 to become a cause ceTebre, 
 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 run- 
 ning. 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 
 established his lararium and began life anew, a 
 ruined man, with five young daughters and an 
 invalid wife. 
 
 Of Colonel Marchant's existence at the Home- 
 stead 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
 
 174 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 measures. How long would Midhurst and 
 Haslemere bear and forbear with a man wbo 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 
 all those ^ye girls upon his shoulders. He would 
 be disgraced and put to shame 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. Incli-
 
 WHY SHOULD HE KEFKAIX ? 175 
 
 nation and honesty pointing the same way, he 
 was determined to do his duty — yes, even at the 
 risk of disappointing the mother he fondly 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 w^ar 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 as he helped himself to a 
 roasted potato. 
 
 " One of those little birds of which we have a 
 whole aviary. I drove into Midhurst this morn- 
 ing to talk to the fishmonger, and met the two 
 Miss Etheringtons. They saw you going in at 
 Colonel Marchant's gate yesterday afternoon." 
 
 "I wonder they didn't wait outside to see 
 when I came out again," said Yansittart. 
 
 " I dare say they would if it had been warmer 
 weather. What could have induced you to call 
 upon Colonel Marchant ? Colonel, indeed ! 
 Colonel of a Yorkshire Yolunteer regiment ! I
 
 176 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 don't believe he was ever any higher 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 counte- 
 nance." 
 
 "Why should they require to be kept in 
 countenance? Surely ^ve 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."
 
 WHY SHOULD HE KEFEAIX ? 177 
 
 "You might spare your pity, mother," ex- 
 claimed her son, growing 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 acquaint- 
 ance 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 lier 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 you like. You don't live 
 quite at the other end of England. From Hasle- 
 mere 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 unsuspect- 
 ing mother, a light which was far from welcome. 
 She sat looking at her son dumbly. 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 178 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " Why not ask the whole five, while you are 
 about it, Mrs. Yansittart ? " said Claudia Cham- 
 pernowne, 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 Bohe- 
 mian ways would make me miserable," remon- 
 strated Mrs. Vansittart, severely. " I can't think 
 what can have put such an idea into your head." 
 
 " Christian charity, no doubt," 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
 
 WHY SHOULD HE EEFRAIN ? 179 
 
 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 
 Marchant is an impossible person." 
 
 " What has he done that makes him impos- 
 sible ? " 
 
 " 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, which, 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."
 
 180 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " 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 house- 
 hold of that kind. I 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 Hauberke 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 fine — 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 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 !
 
 WHY SHOULD HE KEFRAIX ? 181 
 
 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 utter want of knowledge, 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 ! " 
 
 The ladies left the dining-room in a cluster to
 
 182 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 put on their hats for a walk to the ice. Skating 
 was the rage at Kedwold 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 Eedwold 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
 
 WHY SHOULD HE EEFRAIN ? 183 
 
 sister's light and reckless 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 abso- 
 lutely nothing. It was only because she was so 
 lovely in his eyes that he was prepared to 
 champion her, ready to marry her if she would 
 have him. 
 
 " I am a 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 guile- 
 lessness 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? I dare say she is laughing 
 at my infatuation already, and wondering how 
 far it will lead me. Mr. Sefton too! Miss 
 Green said there was an understanding between 
 them. His manner was certainly a thought too
 
 184 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 easy for respect. 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 know- 
 ing 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." 
 
 He stopped in his swinging walk, after tramp- 
 ing 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 flies. 
 
 " Sophy said their gowns would be finished this 
 morning," he mused. " I wonder whether they 
 will be on the ice this afternoon." 
 
 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 pond or lake, which lay 
 in the lowest part of Kedwold Park, and only 
 five minutes' walk from one of the lodges, where
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFRAIN ? 185 
 
 some of the skaters kept their skates. There 
 were a good many skaters this fine bright after- 
 noon — an afternoon in which there was no con- 
 sciousness of cold, though the atmosphere was 
 twelve degrees below freezing point, just such a 
 calm, clear atmosphere as Yansittart 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 fine carriage and sober attire. Those girls 
 had certainly mastered the art of dress, Vansit- 
 tart admitted to himself. They wore black serge 
 gowns, cut to perfection by a fashionable tailor, 
 black cloth jackets, tight-fitting, severe, with 
 narrow collar and cufi's of Astrakhan, at a time 
 when Astrakhan was not yet universal. Their 
 hats were the neatest and quietest on the ice — 
 black felt hats, with the least touch of scarlet in 
 the loose knot of corded ribbon which was their 
 only trimming. No wings, claws, or beaks ; no 
 anchors, arrows, crescents, or buckles of jet, gilt
 
 186 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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, which 
 was worn alike by each sister, 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 put on his skates and 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 
 alder. Here and there in a bend of the lake 
 there was a hillock, on which the skaters sat to 
 take off or adjust their skates, and on which the 
 spectators 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 Mr. 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,
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFRAIN? 187 
 
 lightly clad, as if prepared for skating, but hold- 
 ing himself aloof from the throng. 
 
 There was a fascination for Yansittart 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 iu that direction. Yansittart 
 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 Cbampernownes 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 beau- 
 tiful 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
 
 188 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 Keckitt'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 and popular 
 drapers were almost giving away their blue stuffs 
 that January, and the prudent Marchants 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
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFKAIN ? 189 
 
 him while they were talking, and look right and 
 left, as if she was 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 Vansittart ; " there is 
 an understanding between them — they had made 
 an appointment for this afternoon." 
 
 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 dis- 
 illusions, he heard slow footsteps approaching 
 him, just where the path made a sudden bend, 
 footsteps and voices.
 
 190 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 They were coming back, those two. They 
 had not walked very far. 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 just 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. 
 
 " I am very sorry. It was a false scent," said 
 Mr. Sefton. 
 
 " And we are no nearer knowing anything? " 
 
 " No nearer. I deeply regret your disappoint- 
 ment." 
 
 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 here- 
 ditary 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. Mr. Sefton had power
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFKAIN ? 191 
 
 to make her cry. Surely that implied something 
 much more than common acquaintance, nay, 
 even more than friendship. All the tragedy of 
 an unhappy love affair might be involved 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 
 buckling 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 pas- 
 ture, turning his back resolutely upon the noise 
 of many voices, the ringing of many skates. 
 
 " It was a false scent." How 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 disappoint- 
 ment." What disappointment? Why should
 
 192 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 she be disappointed, and Mr. Sefton regretful? 
 In any love affair between those two there could 
 seem no reason for disappointment. Sefton was 
 his own master, 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 penniless 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, an adventuress and 
 a schemer by instinct and inclination, like Becky 
 Sharp ? Vansittart tried to put himself in John 
 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.
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFEAIN ? 193 
 
 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 — in- 
 clined 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 prejudice and 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 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 finally 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 flirta- 
 tion. No, he would trifle with no woman's feel- 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 191 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 ings ; he would not love and ride away. He 
 would put a bridle upon his tongue ; he would 
 be the very essence of discretion ; 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 polite and attentive, kind 
 and friendly, without entangling himself with 
 any one of the five. 
 
 Having made out for himself a line of conduct 
 he 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 if 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 reading coming on at half-past 
 seven, so they were fain to say good-night. 
 Yansittart came up as they parted. 
 
 " Let me walk home with you," he said ; " I 
 haven't had nearly enough walking."
 
 WHY SHOULD HE EEFRAIN ? 195 
 
 "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 pre- 
 sently 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 
 only 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 vou come to-morrow mornins: ? " 
 
 "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 determined slider." 
 
 "Does Colonel Marchant never come with 
 you?"
 
 196 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " Never. He does not care about walking with 
 girls." 
 
 " 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 occasional 
 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 thoughtfulness
 
 WHY SHOULD HE EEFRAIX ? 197 
 
 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 and 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 hdm. His sister 
 had pledged herself to be kind to these mother- 
 less 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 air 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
 
 198 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 suddenly radiant with her happiest smile, *' but 
 we could not think of such a thing." 
 
 " 1 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." 
 
 " 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."
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFRAIN ? 199 
 
 " Are the Miss Champernownes going away ? "' 
 
 "Yes, they go on to a much smarter house, 
 where baccarat is played of an eyening, 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 Eedwold Towers." 
 
 *' I am very glad they are going," answered 
 Eve, frankly. "We don't know them, so their 
 going or comiog ought not to make any differe:ijce 
 to us. But there is something oppressive about 
 them. They are so handsome, they dress so well, 
 and they seem so thoroughly pleased with them- 
 selves." 
 
 " 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 man as 
 richly endowed as Shakespeare or Scott must go 
 throuo^h life with a seemino^ unconsciousness of 
 his own powers, if he would have his fellow-men 
 love him."
 
 200 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 "I think both Shakespeare and Scott con- 
 trived 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 conver- 
 sation upon their favourite books and authors. 
 He did not find her " cultured." Of the learn- 
 ing which pervades modern drawing-rooms — 
 the learning of the Fortnightly , and the Con- 
 temporari/, the Nineteenth Century and Mac- 
 millan — 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 everybody reads. She 
 had never heard of Marlow, and Beaumont and 
 Fletcher were to her only names. She revelled 
 in fiction, this old, familiar fiction of the great 
 masters ; but history was a blank. She had not 
 read Froude ; she had never heard of Green, or 
 Gardiner, Freeman, or Maine. 
 
 " You will find us woefully ignorant," she 
 explained, when she had answered in the nega- 
 tive about several books, which to him were of 
 the best. "We have only had a nursery
 
 WHY SHOULD HE EEFEAIN ? 201 
 
 governess. She was a dear old thiDg, but I 
 don't think you could imagine a more ignorant 
 person. She came to us when I Avas 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 Ked- 
 wold Towers. He had been tramping about 
 ever since luncheon. He and Eve Marchant
 
 202 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 wondering doubt. 
 
 " I really 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."
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFRAIN ? 203 
 
 '* 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 country. Come, Maud, don't 
 prattle, but write your letter — just a friendly 
 little letter to say that I have told you they are 
 comiug 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 seal- 
 ing the last of a batch of letters. She took up 
 her pen at his bidding, and dashed off an invita- 
 tion, almost in his own words, with a thick stroke 
 of the J pen under " insist."
 
 204 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 "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 ho^e pour le hon 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 so 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.
 
 AVHY SHOULD HE EEFRAIX ? 205 
 
 " 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. Yansittart crossed the 
 drawing-room to hear the result of 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, 
 
 "Eye Marchant." 
 
 "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.
 
 206 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " 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 about be-fore Eve and her two 
 young sisters appeared at the lodge gates. He 
 met them near the gates, and they set off 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 
 through the frosty 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 lovely," answered Peggy; 
 " 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
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFEAIN ? 207 
 
 Vansittart coolly appropriated 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. Mr. 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 off- 
 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
 
 208 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 for ever so long," added Eve, joyously. "We 
 are going to lunch with Lady Hartley." 
 
 " That alters the case," said Sefton, prodigiously 
 surprised. "Then I'll look your father up 
 another day, when I can be of some use as an 
 escort. I dare say Mr. Yansittart 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 pursuing her evidently, with 
 some kind of suit, Yansittart thought. Could he 
 mean to marry her? Could any man with an 
 established position in the county mean to ally 
 himself with Colonel Marchant ? 
 
 Yansittart 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 his walk, 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 en-
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFRAIN ? 209 
 
 couraged 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 had a genius 
 for skating. 
 
 Lady Hartley was sunning herself in the broad 
 stone portico, waiting to receive her guests. Miss 
 Green had gone out shooting with Sir Hubert 
 and his party. There were only Mrs. Vansittart, 
 3Irs. Haddington, 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. Haddington, 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 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 substance," lie said ; " in moral influence I feel 
 myself a giant." 
 
 "Not without justification," said Yansittart. 
 " 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 in- 
 tellectual environment." 
 
 " Oh, they like me," replied Tivett, modestly, 
 *• because I can talk chiffons. I can tell them 
 of the newest ladies' tailor — 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 — 
 the Princess's shade. I can tell them lots of 
 things, and the dear souls know that I am in- 
 terested 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 ^Irs. Baddington, meditatively. 
 
 " Ah, that is because 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
 
 WHY SHOULD HE REFEAIX ? 211 
 
 the room with its wonderful mixture of old and 
 new ; 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 surroundings. 
 
 She looked and 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 occa- 
 sional 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 intro- 
 duce his sister's guest.
 
 212 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 "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 tenderness of his tone 
 as he spoke her name, he was committing 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 by 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 out- 
 look 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 blush- 
 ing bride whose drooping head and gentle bash- 
 fulness suggested the innocence that might ride 
 on lions and not be afraid, has afterwards made 
 a shameful figure in the Divorce Court.
 
 ( 213 ) 
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME. 
 
 The luncheon at Eedwold 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 daus^hters 
 than she would have been to guests of more 
 assured position. 
 
 The meal was abundant, and served with the 
 quiet undemonstrative 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 Yansittart had bargained for,
 
 214 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 our coffee," 
 she said. 
 
 " The still-room maid roasts her coffee every 
 time she makes any," 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.
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME. 215 
 
 ^[iss 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 very difficult one to manage. 
 My sisters are very good, and accommodate 
 themselves easily to circumstances. We live 
 very simply. We have none of those difficulties 
 with servants which I hear rich people talk 
 about." 
 
 "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 
 very well 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.
 
 216 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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. 1 
 know my daughter will like to have them ; but 
 my son and I are going home almost im- 
 mediately." 
 
 "Home." Eve looked a little crestfallen as 
 she echoed the word. '• You don't live very far 
 oflP, I think, Mrs. Yansittart ? " 
 
 " 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. York- 
 shire 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
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME. 217 
 
 tippets — spoil of rabbit or cat — and were ready 
 for the start. Mrs. Vansittart noticed their 
 coarse serge frocks, their homely woollen stock- 
 ings and village-made boots. They were tidily 
 clad, and that was all that could be said of 
 them. A Tillage 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 he 
 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 her adieus. 
 
 '•' 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."
 
 218 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 "And I'm sure you won't like father when 
 you see him," cried Peggy, the irrepressible. 
 
 " Peggy, how dare you ? " exclaimed Eve. 
 
 " 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. He keeps all 
 his good temper and pleasantness 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 Vansittart's heart sank at the awful doubt 
 as to what manner of man this might be whom 
 he was thinking of taking to himself as a father- 
 in-law. Other people had spoken ill of Colonel 
 Marchant, and he had made light of their dis- 
 paragement ; but this denunciation from the lips 
 of the eleven-year-old daughter was far more 
 serious. 
 
 " Perhaps the Colonel and I may get on better 
 than you expect. Miss Peggy," he said, with a
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TBIE. 219 
 
 forced laugh ; " and allow me at the same time 
 to suggest that you have forgotten a certain 
 commandment 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 descry- 
 ing a squirrel, both little girls rushed off to watch 
 his ascent of a tall beech that grew on the open 
 sward by which they were walking. 
 
 The walk was a long one, but though there 
 was time for Vansittart 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 spirits dull and heavy. 
 
 " You must not think anything of what Peggy 
 says," Eve apologized, 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."
 
 220 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 "It is a way we have Avlien we are young," 
 answered Vausittart gently, " to take snubs rather 
 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 dis- 
 appointments." 
 
 " Ah, that is a saddening experience," answered 
 Vansittart, tenderly sympathetic. 
 
 His heart thrilled at the thought that she was 
 beginning to confide in him, to treat him as if 
 he were really a friend. 
 
 " His property in Yorkshire was so disappoint- 
 ing. 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 Kiding, but he felt that if 
 this account of things were not sternest truth. 
 Eve Marchant fully believed what she was telling 
 him.
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME. 221 
 
 " And then his horses, they all turned out so 
 badly." 
 
 " Ungrateful beasts." 
 
 " You can understand that the life we lead at 
 Femhurst 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 Yansittart, slightly cynical. 
 " That kind of man is apt to be miserable with- 
 out the world." 
 
 After this they talked of other things ; 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 of shadows for the dwellers in lonely
 
 222 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 homes, and provide companions for tlie 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 full of life 
 and spirit 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 armchair which Yansittart 
 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 con- 
 sequence of your folly." 
 
 Only at this moment did he observe the mas- 
 culine figure in the rear. He rose hastily to 
 receive a visitor.
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TBIE. 223 
 
 " Mr. Yansittart, father," explained Eve. 
 
 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 ; but 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 calculations accord- 
 ingly-" 
 
 " 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 bom a 
 withering scowl, but took no further notice of 
 the contumacious remark. 
 
 " Pray sit down, Mr. Yansittart, 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 and born, Colonel Mar- 
 chant, and am pretty well used to be on the 
 tramp, on foot or on horseback."
 
 224 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 "Ah, you live near Liss, Eve told me. Have 
 you good hunting thereabouts ? " 
 
 Vansittart ran through the lists of packs ac- 
 cessible from his part of the country. 
 
 " Ah," sighed the Colonel, " you young men 
 think nothing of prodigious 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 such a desperate 
 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' shoot- 
 ing. I understand. That is what an English- 
 man'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 amoug the hill-tribes in Upper
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME. 225 
 
 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 Yansittart. 
 
 "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 
 1 was a lad, a family man who was hard up 
 could take his wife and children to France or 
 Belgium, and live 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. 
 
 Yansittart observed him keenly as he talked, 
 and was all the better able to do so, as the 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 dissolate habits, a face in which the 
 lines were prematnre and deep, lines that told 
 of discontent and anxious, angry thoughts. Van- 
 gittart conld bat agree with Hubert Biirtley's 
 estimate of Colonel >Iarchant. He was not a 
 nice mau. He was not a man to whom open- 
 hearted, generous-minded men conld take kindly. 
 
 But he was Eve*s father. 
 
 Yansittart had been sorry for her yesterday ; 
 sorry for her because of tliose narrow means 
 which cut her off from the pleasures and privi- 
 leges of youth and beauty. He was sorrier for 
 her to-day, now 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 
 prindy at the round table, silent for the most 
 part, while the Colonel rambled on with his 
 egjodxtical complaining, in the tones of a man 
 injured and maltreated alike by his Creator and 
 by society.
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME. 227 
 
 " Sir Hubert Hartley has a fine place at Red- 
 wold," he said, " and he got it dog-cheap. He is 
 a very lucky man." 
 
 " He's an uncommonly good fellow," said Van- 
 sittart, " and he ought to be an acquisition to the 
 neighbourhood." 
 
 " Oh, the neighbours take to him kindly," re- 
 torted 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-in-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, and didn't bow down to the golden calf 
 quite so readily as they do now." 
 
 Yansittart could but agree with Peggy as to
 
 228 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 
 no-tice 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 
 fingers smoothing out the gloves which lay on 
 the table before her, with a movement 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 gentle- 
 man 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
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME. 229 
 
 bitter enemy, stand-offish to strangers, frank 
 and free with the people he likes. He's the only- 
 man in this part of the country that I can get on 
 with ; and I am not ashamed to confess mv likins: 
 for him." 
 
 Yansittart watched Eve's face while her father 
 was praising his friend. It was a very grave 
 face, grave 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 lEarehant. 
 
 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 
 brilliancy. 
 
 No, he did not believe that Eve 3Iarehant cared 
 for \Yilfred Sefton. There had been no emotional 
 changes from white to red in the fair face he 
 studied, only a serious and somewhat anxious
 
 230 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 con- 
 versation, and those stray sentences, which seemed 
 to mean a great deal? "I am truly sorry for 
 your disappointment." " It was a false scent." 
 There must be some meaning deeper than the 
 trivialities of everyday life in such words as 
 these. 
 
 He thought, and gloomily, of Colonel Marchant 
 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 man- 
 hood had been known to all his friends and neigh- 
 bours 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 any act of generosity or good-fellow-
 
 HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME. 231 
 
 ship. 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 won in the iron trade. 
 
 That second visit to the Homestead had a 
 dispiriting effect, and again John Vausittart told 
 himself that he would take his time ; that haying 
 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 belongings 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 impulse and a foolish passion for
 
 232 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 a lovely face. He was free to come to Kedwold 
 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 Mar- 
 chant's children were heavily handicapped in the 
 race of life.
 
 ( 233 ) 
 
 CHAPTEK YIII. 
 
 A FACE IN THE CROWD. 
 
 Vansittart spent five weeks at Merewood, 
 hunting a good deal, dining with some of his 
 neighbours once a week or so, and occasionally- 
 entertaining them at dinner or luncheon ; tiring 
 himself prodigiously \\ith long rides to cover, 
 or railway journeys before and after the chase, 
 and falling asleep of an evening by the drawing- 
 room fire, lulled by the monotonous click of his 
 mother's kcitting 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 exceedirg joy 
 at having brought her son safe and sound out 
 of the cave of the syren, having no suspicion of 
 those serious thoughts of the syren which occupied
 
 234 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 any 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 disadvantages which poverty carries with it ; 
 the skimped education, the vulgarizing iufluence 
 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 un- 
 usually silent and thoughtful by the fireside she 
 ascribed silence and thoughtfulness 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
 
 A FACE IN THE CROWD. 235 
 
 was far afield nearly every day. She would 
 invite one of her favourites to a friendly dinner, 
 escorted by a young brother, perhaps — a pro- 
 ceeding 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 Meyer- 
 beer and Verdi ; but he had no passion for Grieg 
 or Eubinstein, as expounded, neatly, elegantly, 
 with ladylike 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 morninof-room or drawino--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 when- 
 ever 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
 
 236 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 of a young lady, albeit the most admirable of 
 her sex. His mother's favourites were very nice 
 girls, 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 ; 
 but 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 six 
 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 nearly 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
 
 A FACE IN THE CROWD. 237 
 
 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 Yansittart's valet, an Italian, able 
 to turn his hand to anything, made up an 
 efficient bachelor establishment. 
 
 To Charles Street, therefore, Yansittart re- 
 paired early in the Lenten month of March. He 
 had been at some trouble to resist the inclination 
 which would have taken him to Kedwold Towers, 
 rather than to London. It would have been so 
 easy to offer himself to his sister for a week ; and 
 at Kedwold 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 Eedwold very often. 
 
 " 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 as a small country gentleman, to make
 
 2a8 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 your mark in the world. But, although quite 
 impossible as your wife, as a human belDg 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 murmurings of Eve's, 
 but from the young sisters, who are appallingly 
 outspoken." 
 
 Vansittart had pledged himself to spend the 
 Easter holidays at Kedwold ; 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
 
 A FACE IN THE CROWD. 239 
 
 get a faithful account of a man than in the 
 village 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 Yansittart'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 Yansittart'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 chum and his young wife ;
 
 240 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 Netting 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 — the cutlet en 
 papilotte,the guinea-fowl, the tomato a I'ltalienne, 
 and Parmesan souffle — was being discussed, a 
 servant brought in a coroneted envelope for the 
 hostess, which being opened, contained 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
 
 A FACE IN THE CEOWD. 241 
 
 conscientious scruples on the ground of in- 
 hospitality." 
 
 " 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 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 the 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, sunny isles 
 of melody in the vast ocean of scientific har- 
 monies, 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 them- 
 selves 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 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 212 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 season not haying been a marked success. Lady 
 Davenant's box was near the proscenium, a 
 spacious box, which would have accommodated 
 six people as easily as three. Yansittart 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 at least pleasant to him, if 
 only 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 in- 
 terested. 
 
 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 thing?;, 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 ciieese." 
 
 " Yes, it must be a hard life," assented Van- 
 sittart ; " all the trouble of the show, and none of 
 the glory." 
 
 And then he took a sweeping survey of the gay
 
 A FACE IN THE CROWD. 243 
 
 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 even 
 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 mis- 
 taken. Nay, the fact was made certainty as he 
 looked, for he 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 her expressive 
 gestures, her Southern gesticulation. 
 
 Was she telling that stolid, heavy-looking 
 woman 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.
 
 244 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 
 rapidly, with energetic emphasis. No, 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 gas- 
 light; 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 violent 
 or 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
 
 A FACE IN THE CROWD. 245 
 
 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, re- 
 calling 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
 
 246 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 never comes back until after the curtain is up, 
 and sometimes not till the act is nearly over." 
 
 Vansittart opened the box door, and a treble 
 voice said, " 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 over-strained 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 watch- 
 ing him. The curtain rose, and the act began ; 
 but Vansittart had no longer any ear for the 
 music he loved. His whole attention was con- 
 centrated upon the chorus singers. He watched 
 and waited for their coming and going, searched 
 out Lisa's familiar figure amidst the throng 
 that crowded round Valentine's dying form, 
 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
 
 A FACE IN THE CROWD. 247 
 
 the curtain fell on the apotheosis of the pardoned 
 sinner ; and then he woke as from a dream, and 
 began to wonder what he must do next. Some- 
 thing 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 impos- 
 sible. 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
 
 248 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 It was a boxkeeper this time, with a letter. 
 
 "For you, sir," he said, handing it to Yan- 
 sittart, after looking at the two men. 
 
 "An unaddressed envelope," chirruped Mrs. 
 Pembroke ; " this savours of mystery." 
 
 Vansittart put the letter into his pocket with- 
 out a word. His most ardent desire at that 
 moment was to get rid of the Pembrokes. 
 
 " Can I be of any use in fetching a cab ? " he 
 said in the hall. 
 
 " You can stop with my wife while I get one, 
 if you don't mind," said Pembroke. 
 
 Happily there were plenty of cabs that night, 
 and it was only the carriage people who had to 
 wait. Mr. Pembroke came back for his wife in 
 two or three minutes. 
 
 "I've got a four-wheeler," he 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."
 
 ( 249 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 " THOUGH LOVE, AND LIFE, AND DEATH SHOULD 
 COME AND GO." 
 
 Yansittart 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 dis- 
 crimination 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
 
 250 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 together. Come soon, very soon. I live with la 
 Zia, in Stone Court, Bow Street, No. 24B, quite 
 near the Opera House. Come to-night if you 
 can. — Her humble servant, 
 
 " FlORDELISA." 
 
 He stood with the letter in his hand, ponder- 
 ing. 
 
 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 ah-eady, perhaps. 
 She might be having him watched at that 
 moment. She might have made her arrange- 
 ments 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 his 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
 
 WAIFS AND STRAYS. 251 
 
 himself that the memory of his sin would sit 
 more easily upon him could he but secure Lisa's 
 comfort, 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 regard- 
 ing 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.
 
 252 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " Welcome, Signer. She said you would come, 
 but I was doubtful that you would trouble about 
 her or me," she said,''in Italian, and then, in very 
 tolerable English: "Do me the favour to walk up- 
 stairs ; 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 ; where- 
 upon la Zia tumbled into an armchair, and 
 sobbed in concert.
 
 WAIFS AND STEAYS. 253 
 
 What could Yansittart do between two foun- 
 tains 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 communi- 
 cating with you. I knew neither your names 
 nor your address, remember. I had no means of 
 helpiog you. I could do nothing to lighten the 
 load upon my 'conscience — nothing. You must 
 have thought me an arrant coward for running 
 away and leaving you to suffer 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 fond of me —
 
 254 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 accept- 
 ing the tragic past, surprised him, so strangely 
 did her speech of this moment contrast with her 
 passionate sobs of a few minutes ago. That she 
 should tolerate his presence, that she should 
 threaten him with no vengeance, that she should, 
 in a manner, welcome him as a friend, was 
 stranger still ; and he had to remember that 
 this lightness was characteristic of the Italian 
 nature; he had to remember that in Kome a 
 noble lady and her daughter will go out to dine 
 at a restaurant because it is so dull and sad 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.
 
 WAIFS AND STEAYS. 255 
 
 It was a relief to him, naturally, to find a 
 philosophical submission to Fate where he had 
 expected to find a thirst for his blood, a stem 
 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 loaf — b'stening 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 were returning from 
 the Lido in your gondola " 
 
 " And when the lagoons looked enchanted in 
 the rosy sunset," said Lisa ; " and our dinner at 
 the Cappello Kero, and the champagne, and the 
 pastiti, and the opera afterwards, and the beads
 
 256 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 you gave me, I have the beads still. I wore 
 them to-night in the ball scene. Did you notice 
 them?" 
 
 "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 atone- 
 ment to you and your aunt." 
 
 "Atonement! but how? You cannot bring 
 him back to life. While we sit here, he is lying 
 in 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."
 
 WAIFS AND STKAYS. 257 
 
 '•' 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 Signer 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 
 Avould 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 bam- 
 bino came. The leaves were all dying off the 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 vines, the strangers were all leaving Venice, 
 the boats were bringing in the winter fuel, and 
 the cold winds were creeping up from the xldriatic 
 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 factory in 
 Venice, and w^e lived in one little room in the 
 Eialto, 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 Signer 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
 
 WAIFS AND STRAYS. 259 
 
 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 Guide's child-angels — full round 
 cheeks, with a crimson glow upon their olive 
 clearness, lips like Cupid's bow, long dark lashes 
 fringing blue-veined eyelids, and dark brown 
 hair waving in loose curls about the broad fore- 
 head. Truly a beautiful boy ! Yansittart 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 Yansittart, gravely, as they went 
 back to the sitting-room. 
 
 It was one o'clock by the little American clock 
 on the chimney-piece — one by the clock of the 
 church in Covent Garden, which pealed its single
 
 260 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 stroke with solemn sound as they resumed therr 
 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 he 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 to us. He gave me
 
 WAIFS AND STRAYS. 261 
 
 more lessons, without a sous, to be paid for only 
 when I 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 
 travelling with the opera company, but mostly in 
 London." 
 
 " And you have made wonderful progress in 
 our language, Signora." 
 
 " 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,
 
 262 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 elevated her eyebrows, and flung up her hands in 
 the expression of boundless admiration. 
 
 " Wonderful, wonderfullissimo," 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 
 here 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 Vansit- 
 tart. " We cannot offer you anything like your 
 lagoons ; we have no mountains like the Friuli
 
 WAIFS AND STKAYS. 263 
 
 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. 1 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 ? " 
 
 " 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 you — 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 life — to tell the world what 
 I did that night — to give me up to the strong
 
 264 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 arm of the law to answer for the life I destroyed. 
 You coiild 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 un- 
 armed man in the Caffe Florian. Promise that 
 as I am frank and true vvith you, so you will deal 
 frankly and fairly by me, and will do no act and 
 will say no word to my injury."
 
 WAIFS AND STRAYS. 265 
 
 " 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 pretence. 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 rimning 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 
 shall 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." 
 
 " Ah, what a noble gentleman," cried la Zia, 
 wiping her tearful eyes, " and how gracious of the 
 blessed 3Iary to give us so generous a friend!
 
 266 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 Little did I expect such fortune when I rose from 
 my bed this morning." 
 
 " And now, ladies, I must bid you good night,'* 
 said Yansittart. ** 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 oil, on the other side of Milan." 
 
 " To-morrow, then. A rivederci." 
 
 Two o'clock struck while he was walking to 
 Charles Street, with an easier mind 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 da 
 more for Lisa than that dead man would ever
 
 WAIFS AND STRAYS. 267 
 
 have done. He would put lier 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 him- 
 self, 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 mourn- 
 in s: for him.
 
 268 * THE VENETIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " AS THINGS THAT AKE NOT SHALL THESE 
 THINGS BE." 
 
 Before two o'clock next day John Vausittart 
 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 Mil- 
 bank, and flats at Chelsea; and finally, after 
 much driving to and fro in a hansom, and inter- 
 views with several house-agents, he had dis- 
 covered 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 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
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. ^ 269 
 
 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 fasci- 
 nating 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 Yansittart over the 
 rooms assured him that the house was substan- 
 tially built, and altogether satisfactor}'. 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 prepared 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 
 himself to that amount for the rest of his life. 
 Yes, even in that dim future when he should
 
 270 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 sacrifice as a 
 penance 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 ex- 
 pectant 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.
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 271 
 
 " Certainly. I shall look in upon you now and 
 tlien.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 ques- 
 tion. His choice must be perfection. It was not 
 possible for so noble a gentleman to err in taste 
 or judgment. 
 
 Fiordelisa was dressed for going out. She was 
 poorly clad in her well-worn black gown and 
 a little cheap black net bonnet, with pale pink 
 roses in it, but neater than Vansittart had seen 
 her before. La Zia had also dressed herself 
 tidily, and looked far more matronly and repu- 
 table than he would have thought possible, re- 
 membering the flaunting ruby plush and coppery 
 gold chain in Venice. The little boy had been 
 committed to the care of the landlady, 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 lake, the palace, and even the long, solemn,
 
 272 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 unbeautiful square impressed them. The magni- 
 tude of everything was so astounding after Venice. 
 The wide expanses and seemingly illimitable dis- 
 tances 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 Koad, 
 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 Vivanti," 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
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 273 
 
 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 recon- 
 cile 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 
 all weathers. My father would beat us for a 
 word or a look. It was a hard life at Biirano. 
 I don't want to go back there — ever. And your 
 name. Signer ; you have not told us that." 
 
 " My name ! Ah, true ! " 
 
 He hesitated for an instaat or so. Could he 
 trust them with the knowledge of his name and 
 surroundings ? He thought not. They were 
 women, impulsive, uneducated, therefore unin- 
 structed in the higher law of honour. 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 " My name is Smith," lie said. 
 
 " How strange ! The same as his," exclaimed 
 Lisa. 
 
 " It is a common English name." 
 
 The carriage stopped at a street corner, and 
 Yansittart led the way up the brand-new staircase 
 to the brand-new third story. Lisa and her aunt 
 were in raptures. Everythicg was so pretty, the 
 paint, the paper, the ceilings, the windows and 
 balconies, the fireplaces, 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 conveniences 
 for cooking and washing up, a kitchen as in- 
 genious in its arrangements, and almost as small 
 as the steward's cabin on a Jersey steamer. 
 
 **Now, Madame Yivanti," said Vansittart, 
 when the inspection had been made, addressing 
 Lisa with some ceremony, " if you and your aunt
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 275 
 
 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. 
 Would you like me to do this ? " 
 
 " How can you ask such a question ? Ah, you 
 are too good and generous to me. I shall 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 Yivanti in future."
 
 276 THE YENETIA??S. 
 
 Lisa pouted and looked distressed, but said 
 nothing. La Zia expressed her heartfelt grati- 
 tude, 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 various 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
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 277 
 
 you are satisfied with me, and that what I am 
 pleased and happy 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 any- 
 thing 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 Biirano, 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
 
 278 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 utter- 
 ances ; 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 Royal 
 Italian Opera, Covent Garden, as a tenant for the 
 third floor of Saltero'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 trans- 
 action. 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
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 279 
 
 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 he shut 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 off, 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, 
 infantine 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."
 
 280 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 youth- 
 ful 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 had 
 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 ready in less than a week, for 
 the furniture was of the simplest, and all ready 
 to his hand at a West End upholsterer's. He 
 had but to make his selection from a variety of 
 styles, all graceful, artistic, and inexpensive. At 
 the end of the week he sent the same 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
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 281 
 
 in your new drawing-room, and to hear if you 
 approve of my furnishing." 
 
 He received one of Lisa s ill-written letters by 
 the next 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 Vansittart. He could but feel 
 happy in seeing their happiness. He had never
 
 282 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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 learn the story of 
 that midnight in the caffe, and he wanted no 
 such Venetians in London. 
 
 " We shall find some one better than your 
 mandoline professor," he answered ; " and that 
 reminds me I have never heard you play on your 
 mandoline."
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 283 
 
 "Would you like?" asked Lisa, sparkling 
 with almost as happy a smile as he 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 Van- 
 sittart, 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. 
 
 " Bravo, 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
 
 284 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 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. Bat 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 very 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 there- 
 fore so fall 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 conscience 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-
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 285 
 
 master. An application to one of the chief 
 music publishers and concert-givers brought him 
 in relation with a Milanese musician, who played 
 the 'cello at the new Apollo Theatre, on the Em- 
 bankment — the very man Yansittart 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 excellent character 
 and recognized talent, but not one of Fortune's 
 favourites, and therefore willing to give lessons 
 on moderate terms. 
 
 This gentleman's opinion of Signora Yivanti's 
 voice was most encouraging, and his manner of 
 expressing that opinion seemed so modest and 
 conscientious that Yansittart was fain to believe 
 him. 
 
 " 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 un- 
 trained fingers than the solfeggi were for the 
 bird-like voice. All her hours unclaimed by
 
 286 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 the theatre were free for study, since la Zia bore 
 the whole burden of household cares, the market- 
 ing and cooking, and the looking after the little 
 boy. 
 
 One afternoon, shortly before Easter, Yansittart, 
 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 comestibles, 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 you ; 
 but, tell me, was there no one else to ojrieve for
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 287 
 
 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 Eugland 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 he 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 to trace 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."
 
 288 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 "But when he came first to Burano he came 
 with people — friends — you told me." 
 
 "He came with a party of Americans who 
 were staying at the Hotel de Kome. They were 
 nothing to him. They had left Venice when he 
 came 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, but 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 wake to find the morning light creep- 
 ing in through the shutters. Sometimes 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
 
 MAKING ATONEMENT. 289 
 
 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 bom 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, and that was all. 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 
 Venetian 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 
 that afternoon with his burden so far lightened 
 that he thought he might come eventually to 
 forget that he had ever taken a fellow-creature's 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 THE VENETIANS. 
 
 life, that he had ever carried about with him any- 
 guilty secret. 
 
 Easter was close at hand, and he was to spend 
 Easter at Kedwold Towers, within walking distance 
 of Eve Marchant's cottage. Easter was to decide 
 his fate, perhaps. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 LONDOK : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.