"Darling Kitty,—Will you join us to-night in an expedition? You know that Princess Margherita is staying on the Grand Canal?—in one of the Mocenigo palaces. There is to be a serenata in her honor to-night—not one of those vulgar affairs which the hotels get up, but really good music and fine voices—money to be given to some hospital or other. Do come with us. I suppose you have your own gondola, as we have. The gondolas who wish to follow meet at the Piazzetta, weather permitting, eight o'clock. I know, of course, that you are not going out. But this is only music!—and for a charity. One just sits in one's gondola, and follows the music up the canal. Send word by bearer. Your fond mother,

"Marguerite d'Estrées."

Kitty tossed the note over to Ashe. "Aren't you dining out somewhere to-night?"

Her voice was listless. And as Ashe lifted his head from the cabinet papers which had just reached him by special messenger, his attention was disagreeably recalled from high matters of state to the very evident delicacy of his wife. He replied that he had promised to dine with Prince S—— at Danieli's, in order to talk Italian politics. "But I can throw it over in a moment, if you want me. I came to Venice for you, darling," he said, as he rose and joined her on the balcony which commanded a fine stretch of the canal.

"No, no! Go and dine with your prince. I'll go with maman—Margaret and I. At least, Margaret must, of course, please herself!"

She shrugged her shoulders, and then added, "Maman's probably in the pink of society here. Venice doesn't take its cue from people like Aunt Lina!"

Ashe smiled uncomfortably. He was in truth by this time infinitely better acquainted with the incidents of Madame d'Estrées's past career than Kitty was. He had no mind whatever that Kitty should become less ignorant, but his knowledge sometimes made conversation difficult.

Kitty was perfectly aware of his embarrassment.

"You never tell me—" she said, abruptly. "Did she really do such dreadful things?"

"My dear Kitty!—why talk about it?"

Kitty flushed, then threw a flower into the water below with a defiant gesture.

"What does it matter? It's all so long ago. I have nothing to do with what I did ten years ago—nothing!"

"A convenient doctrine!" laughed Ashe. "But it cuts both ways. You get neither the good of your good nor the bad of your bad."

"I have no good," said Kitty, bitterly.

"What's the matter with you, miladi?" said Ashe, half scolding, half tender. "You growl over my remarks as though you were your own small dog with a bone. Come here and let me tell you the news."

And drawing the sofa up to the open window which commanded the marvellous waterway outside, with its rows of palaces on either hand, he made her lie down while he read her extracts from his letters.

Margaret French, who was writing at the farther side of the room, glanced at them furtively from time to time. She saw that Ashe was trying to charm away the languor of his companion by that talk of his, shrewd, humorous, vehement, well informed, which made him so welcome to the men of his own class and mode of life. And when he talked to a woman as he was accustomed to talk to men, that woman felt it a compliment. Under the stimulus of it, Kitty woke up, laughed, argued, teased, with something of her natural animation.

Presently, indeed, the voices had sunk so much and the heads had drawn so close together that Margaret French slipped away, under the impression that they were discussing matters to which she was not meant to listen.

She had hardly closed the door when Kitty drew herself away from Ashe, and holding his arm with both hands looked strangely into his eyes.

"You're awfully good to me, William. But, you know—you don't tell me secrets!"

"What do you mean, darling?"

"You don't tell me the real secrets—what Lord Palmerston used to tell to Lady Palmerston!"

"How do you know what he used to tell her?" said Ashe, with a laugh. But his forehead had reddened.

"One hears—and one guesses—from the letters that have been published. Oh, I understand quite well! You can't trust me!"

Ashe turned aside and began to gather up his papers.

"Of course," said Kitty, a little hoarsely, "I know it's my own fault, because you used to tell me much more. I suppose it was the way I behaved to Lord Parham?"

She looked at him rather tremulously. It was the first time since her illness began that she had referred to the incidents at Haggart.

"Look here!" said Ashe, in a tone of decision; "I shall really give up talking politics to you if it only reminds you of disagreeable things."

She took no notice.

"Is Lord Parham behaving well to you—now—William?"

Ashe colored hotly. As a matter of fact, in his own opinion, Lord Parham was behaving vilely. A measure of first-rate importance for which he was responsible was already in danger of being practically shelved, simply, as it seemed to him, from a lack of elementary trustworthiness in Lord Parham. But as to this he had naturally kept his own counsel with Kitty.

"He is not the most agreeable of customers," he said, gayly. "But I shall get through. Pegging away does it."

"And then to see how our papers flatter him!" cried Kitty. "How little people know, who think they know! It would be amusing to show the world the real Lord Parham."

She looked at her husband with an expression that struck him disagreeably. He threw away his cigarette, and his face changed.

"What we have to do, my dear Kitty, is simply to hold our tongues."

Kitty sat up in some excitement.

"That man never hears the truth!"

Ashe shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to him incredible that she should pursue this particular topic, after the incidents at Haggart.

"That's not the purpose for which Prime Ministers exist. Anyway, we can't tell it him."

Undaunted, however, by his tone, and with what seemed to him extraordinary excitability of manner, Kitty reminded him of an incident in the life of a bygone administration, when the near relative of an English statesman, staying at the time in the statesman's house, had sent a communication to one of the quarterlies attacking his policy and belittling his character, by means of information obtained in the intimacy of a country-house party.

"One of the most treacherous things ever done!" said Ashe, indignantly. "Fair fight, if you like! But if that kind of thing were to spread, I for one should throw up politics to-morrow."

"Every one said it did a vast deal of good," persisted Kitty.

"A precious sort of good! Yes—I believe Parham in particular profited by it—more shame to him! If anybody ever tried to help me in that sort of way—anybody, that is, for whom I felt the smallest responsibility—I know what I should do."

"What?" Kitty fell back on her cushions, but her eye still held him.

"Send in my resignation by the next post—and damn the fellow that did it! Look here, Kitty!" He came to stand over her—a fine formidable figure, his hands in his pockets. "Don't you ever try that kind of thing—there's a darling."

"Would you damn me?"

She smiled at him—with a tremor of the lip.

He caught up her hand and kissed it. "Blow out my own brains, more like," he said, laughing. Then he turned away. "What on earth have we got into this beastly conversation for? Let's get out of it. The Parhams are there—male and female—aren't they?—and we've got to put up with them. Well, I'm going to the Piazza. Any commissions? Oh, by-the-way"—he looked back at a letter in his hands—"mother says Polly Lyster will probably be here before we go—she seems to be touring around with her father."

"Charming prospect!" said Kitty. "Does mother expect me to chaperon her?"

Ashe laughed and went. As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang from the sofa, and walked up and down the room in a passionate preoccupation. A tremor of great fear was invading her; an agony of unavailing regret.

"What can I do?" she said to herself, as her upper lip twisted and tortured the lower one.

Presently she caught up her purse, went to her room, where she put on her walking things without summoning Blanche, and stealing down the stairs, so as to be unheard by Margaret, she made her way to the back gate of the Palazzo, and so to the streets leading to the Piazza. William had taken the gondola to the Piazzetta, so she felt herself safe.

She entered the telegraphic office at the western end of the Piazza, and sent a telegram to England that nearly emptied her purse of francs. When she came out she was as pale as she had been flushed before—a little, terror-stricken figure, passing in a miserable abstraction through the intricate backways which took her home.

"It won't be published for ten days. There's time. It's only a question of money," she said to herself, feverishly—"only a question of money!"

All the rest of the day, Kitty was at once so restless and so languid that to amuse her was difficult. Ashe was quite grateful to his amazing mother-in-law for the plan of the evening.

As night fell, Kitty started at every sound in the old Palazzo. Once or twice she went half-way to the door—eagerly—with hand out-stretched—as though she expected a letter.

"No other English post to-night, Kitty!" said Ashe, at last, raising his head from the finely printed Poetæ Minores he had just purchased at Ongania's. "You don't mean to say you're not thankful!"

The evening arrived—clear and mild, but moonless. Ashe went off to dine with his prince, in the ordinary gondola of commerce, hired at the Traghetto; while Margaret and Kitty followed a little later in one which had already drawn the attention of Venice, owing to the two handsome gondoliers, habited in black from head to foot, who were attached to it. They turned towards the Piazzetta, where they were to meet with Madame d'Estrées' party.

Kitty, in her deep mourning, sank listlessly into the black cushions of the gondola. Yet almost as they started, as the first strokes carried them past the famous palace which is now the Prefecture, the spell of Venice began to work.

City of rest!—as it seems to our modern senses—how is it possible that so busy, so pitiless, and covetous a life as history shows us should have gone to the making and the fashioning of Venice! The easy passage of the gondola through the soft, imprisoned wave; the silence of wheel and hoof, of all that hurries and clatters; the tide that comes and goes, noiseless, indispensable, bringing in the freshness of the sea, carrying away the defilements of the land; the narrow winding ways, now firm earth, now shifting sea, that bind the city into one social whole, where the industrial and the noble alike are housed in palaces, equal often in beauty as in decay; the marvellous quiet of the nights, save when the northeast wind, Hadria's stormy leader, drives the furious waves against the palace fronts in the darkness, with the clamor of an attacking host; the languor of the hot afternoons, when life is a dream of light and green water, when the play of mirage drowns the foundations of the lidi in the lagoon, so that trees and buildings rise out of the sea as though some strong Amphion-music were but that moment calling them from the deep; and when day departs, that magic of the swiftly falling dusk, and that white foam and flower of St. Mark's upon the purple intensity of the sky!—through each phase of the hours and the seasons, rest is still the message of Venice, rest enriched with endless images, impressions, sensations, that cost no trouble and breed no pain.

It was this spell of rest that descended for a while on Kitty as they glided downward to the Piazzetta. The terror of the day relaxed. Her telegram would be in time; or, if not, she would throw herself into William's arms, and he must forgive her!—because she was so foolish and weak, so tired and sad. She slipped her hand into Margaret's; they talked in low voices of the child, and Kitty was all appealing melancholy and charm.

At the Piazzetta there was already a crowd of gondolas, and at their head the barca, which carried the musicians.

"You are late, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrées, waving to them. "Shall we draw out and come to you?—or will you just join on where you are?"

For the Vercelli gondola was already wedged into a serried line of boats in the wake of the barca.

"Never mind us," said Kitty. "We'll tack on somehow."

And inwardly she was delighted to be thus separated from her mother and the chattering crowd by which Madame d'Estrées seemed to be surrounded. Kitty and Margaret bade their men fall in, and they presently found themselves on the Salute side of the floating audience, their prow pointing to the canal.

The barca began to move, and the mass of gondolas followed. Round them, and behind them, other boats were passing and repassing, each with its slim black body, its swanlike motion, its poised oarsman, and its twinkling light. The lagoon towards the Guidecca was alive with these lights; and a magnificent white steamer adorned with flags and lanterns—the yacht, indeed, of a German prince—shone in the mid-channel.

On they floated. Here were the hotels, with other illuminated boats in front of their steps, whence spoiled voices shouted, "Santa Lucia," till even Venice and the Grand Canal became a vulgarity and a weariness. These were the "serenate publiche," common and commercial affairs, which the private serenata left behind in contempt, steering past their flaring lights for the dark waters of romance which lay beyond.

Suddenly Kitty's sadness gave way; her starved senses clamored; she woke to poetry and pleasure. All round her, stretching almost across the canal, the noiseless flock of gondolas—dark, leaning figures impelling them from behind, and in front the high prows and glow-worm lights; in the boats, a multitude of dim, shrouded figures, with not a face visible; and in their midst the barca, temple of light and music, built up of flowers, and fluttering scarves, and many-colored lanterns, a sparkling fantasy of color, rose and gold and green, shining on the bosom of the night. To either side, the long, dark lines of thrice-historic palaces; scarcely a poor light here and there at their water-gates; and now and then the lamps of the Traghetti.... Otherwise, darkness, soundless motion, and, overhead, dim stars.

"Margaret! Look!"

Kitty caught her companion's arm in a mad delight.

Some one for the amusement of the guests of Venice was experimenting on the top of the campanile of St. Mark's with those electric lights which were then the toys of science, and are now the eyes and tools of war. A search-light was playing on the basin of St. Mark's and on the mouth of the canal. Suddenly it caught the Church of the Salute—and the whole vast building, from the Queen of Heaven on its topmost dome down to the water's brim, the figures of saints and prophets and apostles which crowd its steps and ledges, the white whorls, like huge sea-shells, that make its buttresses, the curves and volutes of its cornices and doorways, rushed upon the eye in a white and blinding splendor, making the very darkness out of which the vision sprang alive and rich. Not a Christian church, surely, but a palace of Poseidon! The bewildered gazer saw naiads and bearded sea-gods in place of angels and saints, and must needs imagine the champing of Poseidon's horses at the marble steps, straining towards the sea.

The vision wavered, faded, reappeared, and finally died upon the night. Then the wild beams began to play on the canal, following the serenata, lighting up now the palaces on either hand, now some single gondola, revealing every figure and gesture of the laughing English or Americans who filled it, in a hard white flash.

"Oh! listen, Kitty!" said Margaret. "Some one is going to sing 'Ché faro.'"

Miss French was very musical, and she turned in a trance of pleasure towards the barca whence came the first bars of the accompaniment.

She did not see meanwhile that Kitty had made a hurried movement, and was now leaning over the side of the gondola, peering with arrested breath into the scattered group of boats on their left hand. The search-light flashed here and there among them. A gondola at the very edge of the serenata contained one figure beside the gondolier, a man in a large cloak and slouch hat, sitting very still with folded arms. As Kitty looked, hearing the beating of her heart, their own boat was suddenly lit up. The light passed in a second, and while it lasted those in the flash could see nothing outside it. When it withdrew all was in darkness. The black mass of boats floated on, soundless again, save for an occasional plash of water or the hoarse cry of a gondolier—and in the distance the wail for Eurydice.

Kitty fell back in her seat. An excitement, from which she shrank in a kind of terror, possessed her. Her thoughts were wholly absorbed by the gondola and the figure she could no longer distinguish—for which, whenever a group of lamps threw their reflections on the water, she searched the canal in vain. If what she madly dreamed were true, had she herself been seen—and recognized?

The serenata in honor of Italy's beautiful princess duly made its way to the Grand Canal. The princess came to her balcony, while the "Jewel Song" in "Faust" was being sung below, and there was a demonstration which echoed from palace to palace and died away under the arch of the Rialto. Then the gondolas dispersed. That of Lady Kitty Ashe had some difficulty in making its way home against a force of wind and tide coming from the lagoon.

Kitty was apparently asleep when Ashe returned. He had sat late with his hosts—men prominent in the Risorgimento and in the politics of the new kingdom—discussing the latest intricacies of the Roman situation and the prospects of Italian finance. His mind was all alert and vigorous, ranging over great questions and delighting in its own strength. To come in contact with these able foreigners, not as the mere traveller but as an important member of an English government, beginning to be spoken of by the world as one of the two or three men of the future—this was a new experience and a most agreeable one. Doors hitherto closed had opened before him; information no casual Englishman could have commanded had been freely poured out for him; last, but not least, he had at length made himself talk French with some fluency, and he looked back on his performance of the evening with a boy's complacency.

For the rest, Venice was a mere trial of his patience! As his gondola brought him home, struggling with wind and wave, Ashe had no eye whatever for the beauty of this Venice in storm. His mind was in England, in London, wrestling with a hundred difficulties and possibilities. The old literary and speculative habit was fast disappearing in the stress of action and success. His well-worn Plato or Horace still lay beside his bedside; but when he woke early, and lit a candle carefully shaded from Kitty, it was not to the poets and philosophers that he turned; it was to a heap of official documents and reports, to the letters of political friends, or an unfinished letter of his own, the phrases of which had perhaps been running through his dreams. The measures for which he was wrestling against the intrigues of Lord Parham and Lord Parham's clique filled all his mind with a lively ardor of battle. They were the children—the darlings—of his thoughts.

Nevertheless, as he entered his wife's dim-lit room the eager arguments and considerations that were running through his head died away. He stood beside her, overwhelmed by a rush of feeling, alive through all his being to the appeal of her frail sweetness, the helplessness of her sleep, the dumb significance of the thin, blue-veined hand—eloquent at once of character and of physical weakness—which lay beside her. Her face was hidden, but the beautiful hair with its childish curls and ripples drew him to her—touched all the springs of tenderness.

It was a loveliness so full, it seemed, of meaning and of promise. Hand, brow, mouth—they were the signs of no mere empty and insipid beauty. There was not a movement, not a feature, that did not speak of intelligence and mind.

And yet, were he to wake her now and talk to her of the experience of his evening, how little joy would either get out of it.

Was it because she had no intellectual disinterestedness? Well, what woman had! But other women, even if they saw everything in terms of personality, had the power of pursuing an aim, steadily, persistently, for the sake of a person. He thought of Lady Palmerston—of Princess Lieven fighting Guizot's battles—and sighed.

By Jove! the women could do most things, if they chose. He recalled Kitty's triumph in the great party gathered to welcome Lord Parham, contrasting it with her wilful and absurd behavior to the man himself. There was something bewildering in such power—combined with such folly. In a sense, it was perfectly true that she had insulted her husband's chief, and jeopardized her husband's policy, because she could not put up with Lord Parham's white eyelashes.

Well, let him make his account with it! How to love her, tend her, make her happy—and yet carry on himself the life of high office—there was the problem! Meanwhile he recognized, fully and humorously, that she had married a political sceptic—and that it was hard for her to know what to do with the enthusiast who had taken his place.

Poor, pretty, incalculable darling! He would coax her to stay abroad part of the Parliamentary season—and then, perhaps, lure her into the country, with the rebuilding and refurnishing of Haggart. She must be managed and kept from harm—and afterwards indulged and spoiled and fêted to her heart's content.

If only the fates would give them another child!—a child brilliant and lovely like herself, then surely this melancholy which overshadowed her would disperse. That look—that tragic look—she had given him on the day of the fête, when she spoke of "separation"! The wild adventure with the lamp had been her revenge—her despair. He shuddered as he thought of it.

He fell asleep, still pondering restlessly over her future and his own. Amid all his anxieties he never stooped to recollect the man who had endangered her name and peace. His optimism, his pride, the sanguine perfunctoriness of much of his character were all shown in the omission.

Kitty, however, was not asleep while Ashe was beside her. And she slept but little through the hours that followed. Between three and four she was finally roused by the sounds of storm in the canal. It was as though a fleet of gigantic steamers—in days when Venice knew but the gondola—were passing outside, sending a mountainous "wash" against the walls of the old palace in which they lodged. In this languid autumnal Venice the sudden noise and crash were startling. Kitty sprang softly out of bed, flung on a dressing-gown and fur cloak, and slipped through the open window to the balcony.

A strange sight! Beneath, livid waves, lashing the marble walls; above, a pale moonlight, obscured by scudding clouds. Not a sign of life on the water or in the dark palaces opposite. Venice looked precisely as she might have looked on some wild sixteenth-century night in the years of her glorious decay, when her palaces were still building and her state tottering. Opposite, at the Traghetto of the Accademia, there were lamps, and a few lights in the gondolas; and through the storm-noises one could hear the tossed boats grinding on their posts.

The riot of the air was not cold; there was still a recollection of summer in the gusts that beat on Kitty's fair hair and wrestled with her cloak. As she clung to the balcony she pictured to herself the tumbling waves on the Lido; the piled storm-clouds parting like a curtain above a dead Venice; and behind, the gleaming eternal Alps, sending their challenge to the sea—the forces that make the land, to the forces that engulf it.

Her wild fancy went out to meet the tumult of blast and wave. She felt herself, as it were, anchored a moment at sea, in the midst of a war of elements, physical and moral.

Yes, yes!—it was Geoffrey. Once, under the skipping light, she had seen the face distinctly. Paler than of old—gaunt, unhappy, absent. It was the face of one who had suffered—in body and mind. But—she trembled through all her slight frame!—the old harsh power was there unchanged.

Had he seen and recognized her—slipping away afterwards into the mouth of a side canal, or dropping behind in the darkness? Was he ashamed to face her—or angered by the reminder of her existence? No doubt it seemed to him now a monstrous absurdity that he should ever have said he loved her! He despised her—thought her a base and coward soul. Very likely he would make it up with Mary Lyster now, accept her nursing and her money.

Her lip curled in scorn. No, that she didn't believe! Well, then, what would be his future? His name had been but little in the newspapers during the preceding year; the big public seemed to have forgotten him. A cloud had hung for months over the struggle of races and of faiths now passing in the Balkans. Obscure fighting in obscure mountains; massacre here, revolt there; and for some months now hardly an accredited voice from Turk or Christian to tell the world what was going on.

But Geoffrey had now emerged—and at a moment when Europe was beginning perforce to take notice of what she had so far wilfully ignored. À lui la parole! No doubt he was preparing it, the bloody, exciting story which would bring him before the foot-lights again, and make him once more the lion of a day. More social flatteries, more doubtful love-affairs! Fools like herself would feel his spell, would cherish and caress him, only to be stung and scathed as she had been. The bitter lines of his "portrait" rung in her ears—blackening and discrowning her in her own eyes.

She abhorred him!—but the thought that he was in Venice burned deep into senses and imagination. Should she tell William she had seen him? No, no! She would stand by herself, protect herself!

So she stole back to bed, and lay there wakeful, starting guiltily at William's every movement. If he knew what had happened!—what she was thinking of! Why on earth should he? It would be monstrous to harass him on his holiday—with all these political affairs on his mind.

Then suddenly—by an association of ideas—she sat up shivering, her hands pressed to her breast. The telegram—the book! Oh, but of course she had been in time!—of course! Why, she had offered the man two hundred pounds! She lay down laughing at herself—forcing herself to try and sleep.