MR. AND MRS. OSBORNE, as has been mentioned, had no idea of planting themselves on Dora and her husband in their visit to Venice, and since the visit was to be thoroughly Bohemian in character, and they hoped and expected to rough it, it had seemed to them equally unsuitable to go to an hotel, where no doubt mediÆvalism would have been supplanted by modern conveniences. They both wanted, with that inexpressible elasticity and love of experience which was characteristic of them, to “behave native fashion and do like the Venetians,” as Mrs. Osborne put it, and indeed the phrase pleased her husband no less than herself. So they had taken the Palazzo Dandoli for a fortnight, at a prodigious weekly rent, which included, however, the wages of the servants and the use of the gondolas. With a view to roughing it thoroughly, Mrs. Osborne had only brought her maid with her, and her husband was completely unattended. It was to be a jaunt, a wedding trip, a renewal of old times. Probably there would be little to eat and drink, and heaven only knew what kind of a bed to sleep in, while an Italian manservant would probably not know how to fold trousers. But all these possible inconveniences were part of behaving “native-fashion,” and were not only to be expected but welcomed as being part of the genuine article.

The house stood on the eastern outskirts of Venice, with a garden facing San Michele and the lagoon, and here Dora strolled with her father-in-law on the morning after their arrival, waiting for the appearance of Mrs. Osborne, who, since they had arrived late the night before, was taking it easy, and was not expected down till lunch time at half-past twelve. Dora knew the owner of the place and had been there before, but never in these early days of summer, while yet the gardens were unscorched and the magic of spring had woven its ultimate spell. All the past was redolent in the walls of mellowed brick, the niches empty for the most part, save where a bust or two of stained Carrara marble still lingered, in the gray of the ivy-hung fountain, in the grilles of curving ironwork that gave view across the lagoon to the cypresses of San Michele, and, farther away, the dim tower of Torcello. Long alleys of cut and squared hornbeam, with hop-like flowers, led like green church aisles down the garden, and spaces of grass between them were hedged in by more compact walls of yew and privet, with its pale spires of blossom faintly sweet. Round the fountain stood three serge-coated sentinels of cypress, encrusted over with their nut-like fruits, and, flame-like against their sombre foliage, were azaleas in bright green tubs, and the swooning whiteness of orange blossom. Elsewhere, the formality of the cut hornbeam alleys and clipped hedges gave place to a gayer and more sunny quarter, though even there Italy lingered in the pavement of red and white stone that led between the more English-looking flower beds. Peach trees, in foam of pink flower, and white waterfalls of spirÆa were background here; in front of them stood rows of stiff fox-gloves and in front again a riot of phlox and columbine and snapdragon covered the beds to the edge of the path. To the left lay the rose garden, approached by a walk of tall Madonna lilies, already growing fat-budded, and prepared to receive the torch of flower-life from the roses, when their part in the race should be done, and homely pansies, with quaint, trustful faces, made a velvet-like diaper of deeper colour. Here, too, stood another fountain that from leaden pipe shed freshness on the basin below, where clumps of Japanese iris were already beginning to unfold their great butterfly flowers, imperial in purple or virginal in white, and over the green marble edge of it quick lizards flicked and vanished.

Dora had arrived at the palazzo while yet the morning was young and dewy, and, leaving word that she had come, passed through the white shady courtyard of the house and down the long alleys of the garden to look out on the lagoon from the far end of it. The tide was high and the cool water shimmered over the flats that an hour or two ago were still exposed and lay in expanse of glistening ooze, or green with fields of brilliant seaweeds. But the red-sailed fishing boats had to pass between the rows of pali that marked the channels, and a little company of them were even now going seaward. The wind blew gently from the north, tempering the heat, and to the north were visible the remote summits of snow-clad Alps. Just opposite were the orange walls and black cypresses of San Michele, but in the gaiety of the gay day even those associations were gladdened. It was good to be anything in Venice, even to be dead, and resting there in sound of the whispering lagoon.

Then came the interruption she had waited for: her name was jovially called, and down the pergola of vines which led to the grille, between the clumps of syringa and riot of rambler, came Mr. Osborne.

He had left England with the intention of roughing it and enjoying the experience, and was clad in the way that had seemed to him appropriate. He wore a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, below which his short fat calves looked like turned oak posts clad in thick worsted and set in strong brown boots. On his head he wore a felt hat with a puggaree attached to it, and round his shoulders was a strap that carried a large binocular glass. In a word, he appeared like a man deerstalking in the tropics. Like this he was equal to any foreigneering vicissitudes and provided against all accidents that might happen in a town where, instead of walking from one place to another, you went in a black sort of punt with a strange battleaxe at the prow.

“Well, dearie, and here we are,” he said, “and pleased we are to be here, I do assure you. Passed a comfortable night, too, and so I warrant you has Mrs. O., for she was asleep still when I came downstairs. But, my dear, they’ve got but a paltry notion of furnishing these rooms. We had supper last night when we got in, in a great room as big as the hall at Grote, and nothing there but a table and a few chairs and some painted canvas on the walls, and on the floor a rug or two as you could scarcely get both feet upon. However, we were hungry, and the food was good enough. Macaroni they gave us, and a bit of veal and some cheese and strawberries. And this seems a pretty bit of garden, where Mrs. O. can sit and be cool if she finds the heat oppressive. And it’s good to see you, my dear, and blooming you look.”

He gave her a loud, kind kiss, and continued to pour forth his first impressions of Venice.

“Claude met us at Milan, as he’ll have told you,” he said, “and saw us safe here last night. It’s strange, though, going to your house in a boat, and such a smell as there was at the last corner but one before we got here I never encountered. I should have had it looked into in no time if such a thing had occurred in the works at Sheffield. But it seems fine and open here, and I’ve no doubt we shall be well enough off. But to think of those old Doges with never a bathroom in their houses, nor hot water laid on nor nothing. But I enjoy that, my dear; I want to see the old life as they had it, and look at their palaces, ah! and live in one, and see their pictures, and think what manner of folk they was, being born and getting married and dying and all, in the very rooms we now occupy.”

Dora suddenly laughed.

“Oh, Dad,” she said, “you are too heavenly. But why have you put on those thick clothes? It’s going to be a roasting day. I am glad to see you. I’m sure you will find the house comfortable, and, oh! did you ever see such a morning? Look out there across the lagoon. It’s Venice, you know, Venice!”

Mr. Osborne looked out through the iron grille.

“Well, I’m sure it’s pretty enough,” he said, “and talk of sea air, why the sea’s all round you. We must have come a matter of a mile over the viaduct last night after we left the mainland. And sea air is what I want for mother; she wants a bit of setting up, and if she feels inclined to keep quiet and not look at the galleries and churches and sights every day, my dear, you’ll know it’s because she isn’t quite up to the mark. Well, well; no, I’m not anxious about her, for she takes her food, and was as pleased to come out here, such as never was, but she’s been a bit tired, and must take a rest.”

“She’s not ill?” asked Dora. “There’s nothing wrong?”

“Not a bit of it. ’Tis true, I wanted her to see the doctor before she left home, but she wouldn’t hear a word of it. Just to go to Venice, so she said, and see Claude and Dora, and not do much, that’s the prescription for me, she said. And so here we are, my dear. Lunch at half-past twelve, too; how strange it seems! But after the breakfast they gave me, just a bit of toast and an egg, I don’t doubt I shall be ready for it. But the coffee was prime, though it came up in an earthenware pot. I suppose it was that way the Doges took it. Lor’, to think of it all! Wedding the sea, too, every year. I read it in the guidebook on the journey. A curious custom that was, heathenish, you may say. It takes one back, doesn’t it?”

It was still an hour before lunch time, and at Dora’s suggestion they went out for a turn in her gondola which was waiting, since Mrs. Osborne was not to be expected down till lunch time. Mr. Osborne, still feeling the insecurity of a foreign land, refused to change into more suitable clothes, and, already perspiring profusely, embarked with a sense of being prepared for anything. As they got in Dora gave some short direction to her gondolier in Italian, and this roused his admiring curiosity.

“It’s a strange thing too,” he said, “that you say something of which I can’t understand a syllable, and round the boat goes, as if you’d said, ‘Right about turn.’ Such a bother as we had with luggage and what not, before Claude met us. But Mrs. O. saw the hang of it, and kept saying, ‘Venice, Palazzo Dandoli,’ whenever one of them brigands looked in on us, and it seemed they wanted no more than that. Brigands they looked, my dear, though I dare say they were honest men in the employment of their company. And what’s that now, that big telegraph-looking thing?”

He pointed at the huge disfiguring posts that brought the electric power into Venice.

“Oh, electric light, I think,” said Dora. “Or perhaps it’s telephone.”

“My word, and I never expected to find either here,” said Mr. Osborne. “Do you mean they have got the light and the ’phone? And why, if that’s so, aren’t they installed in the Dandoli?”

“Oh, Dad,” she said, “where do you want to telephone to?”

“No, dearie, I don’t want to telephone, but you’d have thought that in a place like that I’ve taken they’d surely have had the modern conveniences, if such were to be had. And where are we coming to now?”

Dora did not answer at once; this was one of the best places of all in that city of best places. There was a sharp turn from a narrow canal, overhung by tall red-stained walls, and they shot out into the Grand Canal just above the Rialto.

“Oh,” she said, “look, look!”

The bow-shaped bridge lay to their left, as from the huddled houses they swept into the great waterway; a troubled reflection of palaces gleamed in the tide, the curve of the Grand Canal was flung outward and onward, reeling in the heat.

Just opposite was the fish market, newly rebuilt, with columns of ornamented iron work. Mr. Osborne pointed an admiring forefinger at it.

“Well I never,” he said, “to think to see the fellow of one of Per’s designs in Venice. I shall have the laugh of Per over that, and tell him he copied them from some old courtyard of the Doges, or what not. Beautiful I call them. After all, they were wonderful old folk, weren’t they, when we think that they put up there a design that might have been made in Sheffield to-day! I assure you, dearie, they are just like Per’s drawings for No. 2 light arcade same as is in the showroom at the works.”

Dora had not been attending very closely: those who love Venice are apt to be inattentive when some new magic comes into view, and to Dora the bow-arch of the bridge with the bow-arch of the canal below grew in wonder the oftener that she saw it.

“Arches?” she asked. “Arches like one of Per’s designs? Oh, do show me.”

“Why, that open place there,” said Mr. Osborne, still immensely interested. “That arcade just opposite, with the ornamental arches in open work.”

Dora could not help laughing.

“Oh, dear Dad,” she said, “very likely they are Per’s designs. That’s the new fish market, just being rebuilt.”

And then it struck her that her laugh might sound unkindly.

“It is quite possible they are Per’s designs,” she said. “Would it not be thrilling if they were? Giovanni”—again she spoke in Italian—“just land at the market and ask some of the workmen where the iron arches came from. I see one not yet put up, wrapped in straw. There is some label on it. See if it is from Osborne, Sheffield.”

Giovanni floated the gondola to the side of the landing place with the flick of a quick-turned oar, and got out. In a moment he came back, having read the stamped label on the packing, and reported the gratifying news.

“Oh, it’s too thrilling,” cried Dora, “to think that they came from your works. Dad, you’re a perfect wizard to see that, and guess it was Per’s. You must write to him and tell him that his ironwork is going up in Venice, and that you recognized it the first moment you—you saw the Grand Canal.”

Mr. Osborne gave a little inward tremolo of laughter.

“Oh, I’m not so blind yet,” he said, “and it’s seldom you see work like Per’s. There’s something, as you may say, so individual about it. God bless the boy, how he’ll like to hear that I spotted his design right across the Grand Canal. Eh, he might have been here, my dear, and studied the style of the architecture, when one sees how it fits in with the other monuments. I’ll write to tell him that.”

Mr. Osborne remembered that Dora had told him that Venice was the most beautiful place in the world, and the Grand Canal the most beautiful thing in Venice. And he made a concession that he did not really feel.

“Not but what he hadn’t got a lot to compete against,” he said. “That bridge now? That’s a fine thing. And the curve of it looks built for strength. I warrant there’s no iron girder made that would cause it to be safer. And the houses, beautiful, I’m sure! But I don’t see any that I’d sooner take than the Palazzo Dandoli.”

Suddenly Dora felt something dry up inside her. That, at any rate, was how she mentally phrased the sensation to herself. Her father-in-law was kind and wise and good; he was anxious to please, he was anxious to be pleased. But at the concession—for so she felt it to be—that Per had had a lot to compete with, when the excruciating iron arcade of the fish market was erected within stone-throw of the Rialto and within pea-shooting distance of the wondrous canal, she felt for the moment the impossibility of herself and Mr. Osborne being together at Venice. The situation was one that she had not faced without a tremor; now, for the moment, when it was actual and accomplished, it was inconceivable.

But this mercantile discovery had delighted Mr. Osborne; it had clearly raised his previous estimate of Venice. A town that could so aptly enshrine this design of Per’s was a town that must receive the best attention. There was probably more in it than he had been at first disposed to imagine. He gave it his best attention.

A gray fussing steamboat going seaward on the tide and raising a huge wash of churned water, next engaged his admiration.

“Well, and if I didn’t think when we took so long to get to the Palazzo last night that the Italians would be wiser to build a big sea wall somewhere, and raise the level of the canal so as you could drive a horse and carriage down them!” he said. “But if you’ve got a ferry steamer that goes the pace of that—Lor’, my dear, how it makes us rock—I don’t see what there’s to complain of. And calling first on this side and then on that, same as they used to do on the Thames, what could you ask for more convenient?”

Again Dora had to enlist her sympathy on a foreign side.

“I know,” she said, “and they go right out to the Lido, where we’ll go and bathe this very afternoon, Dad. It will be awfully hot after lunch, so we’ll join the steamer at San Marco, and send the gondola out to meet us on the Lido, and take us back when it gets cooler. One gets roasted in a gondola on the lagoon when it’s as hot as this.”

Mr. Osborne was clearly a little troubled at this suggestion.

“Ah, no doubt there are sets of bathing machines,” he said at length. “A dip in the briny: very pleasant.”

Dora did not at once grasp the cause of his embarrassment.

“We’ll swim right out together,” she said. “You can swim for ever in this sea; it’s so buoyant. And then we sit on the sand and eat strawberries, while the sun dries us again.”

Then she saw that some portentous doubt on the question of propriety was in Mr. Osborne’s mind, guessed it, and hastened to remove the cause of it. “Or perhaps, coming straight out from England, you don’t want to bathe,” she said. “Besides, there’s the mater”—she had adopted this from Claude. “So we won’t bathe; we’ll take her out for a giro—a row—in the gondola and have tea out on the lagoon. Dad, you’ll love the lagoon, all gray and green. And the electric light poles cross it to the Lido.”

“Eh, that will be nice,” said Mr. Osborne quickly and appreciatively. “And here’s another bridge: why, beautiful, isn’t it? I think I like it better than that curved one. There seems more sense in it. You don’t have to mount so high.”

They had passed round the last corner of the canal, and in front of them lay the straight lower reach of it that passes into the great basin opposite St. Mark’s and the Doge’s palace. To right and left the stately houses stood up from the water side, in glimmer of rose and blue and orange beneath the smiting glory of the noonday. Since yesterday the north wind, blowing lightly from the Alps, had banished the oppression of yesterday’s heat and the glitter of the city had awoke again, pearly in the shadow and jewelled in the sun. And in the immediate foreground the only blot of disfigurement was the object of Mr. Osborne’s admiration, the flat, execrable iron bridge opposite the Accademia. There it lay, convenient and hideous and impossible. And he liked it better than the curved one! It had more sense in it!

But there was no need for Dora to rack her brains to find some response which should steer a middle way between lack of cordiality to her father-in-law on the one hand and artistic perjury on the other. Between the fish market, the iron bridge, and the vile convenient speed of the steamboats Venice was going up in his estimation by leaps and bounds, and he was delighted to find he was almost able to endorse Dora’s opinion on the town.

“Well, I call it all beautiful, my dear,” he said, “and it’s as I said to mother. ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘if Dora says Venice is a nice place, you may be sure there is something in it, and we were right to come out and have a look at it ourselves.’ But who’d have thought there was so much of modern convenience and comfort? And these gondolas too. I’m sure I’m as comfortable sitting here as in my own brougham and, except when the steamers go by, they glide as smooth as on an asphalt road. Pretty the water is too, though not clear. I should have thought that here in the south there’d have been more of blue in it. But I’m a bit surprised, my dear, that you with your eye for colour shouldn’t have done up the gondola more brightly, had some blue curtains, maybe, or picked out that handsome carved work on the prow with a touch of red. There’s a thought too much black about it for my taste. Seems to tell of a funeral, almost.”

Dora could not argue about this: she could not give Mr. Osborne eyes which should see the value of the black blots of boats against the brightness of the sky mirrored in the canal. But it was easy to find praise in his speech to which she could respond, though the praise was expressed in a way that somehow set her teeth on edge.

“Oh, they are the most comfortable things in the world,” she said, “and I even like the indignant slap they give when the wash of the steamer crosses them. Beautiful thing, with its arching neck like some great black swan! Ah, there’s twelve striking. We shall just have time to look into our house and fetch Claude and then get back to the Dandoli for lunch. I hope they’ll have put it in the garden. Oh, Dad, how this place has got into my heart! You never did such a nice thing as when you gave Claude and me a month here.”

Mr. Osborne did not think much of Dora’s water-entrance to the great gray palace of which she had the first floor, but the size of the huge sala (which she remembered to tell him was a hundred and ten feet long) was most satisfactory to him. But with its polished stone-plaster floor, and the Venetian emptiness of it, it seemed to him rather bare and comfortless.

“Well, I’m sure it’s a handsome room enough in point of size,” he said, “and in this hot weather it looks cool and restful. But it seems strange to have never a strip of carpet on the floor, and scarce a picture on the walls. Lord, my dear, don’t it make your teeth chatter to think of coming down to this of a winter’s morning, when even now it strikes so cool? But isn’t there some Tintoret now, my dear, that you could fancy, or if not that, half a dozen big photographs of the canal and the bridge you liked so much to hang on the walls? And as for the floor, to be sure, it’s a big job to cover it, but a proper carpet for that end of it where you’ve got your chairs and table, looking out over the canal, you shall have, if I have to telegraph to town for one, instead of those few rugs, or mats I should call them. Fancy advertising this as a house to be let furnished! I call it misrepresentation.”

Dora took his arm.

“Oh, Dad, you are the kindest man that ever was,” she said. “But indeed I want neither pictures nor a carpet, though it is darling of you to offer me them. I like it empty: it’s the—the right style with these rooms. You found your dining room rather emptier than you liked, you know, but in a day or two you will get more than used to it, you will see how suitable it is. And I love this great empty room. Now we’ll just go into the other rooms, and then we must get back for lunch. Claude seems to be out: I expect we shall find him at the Dandoli.”

Lunch, as they found when they got back, had been laid, as Dora hoped, in the garden, in the centre of a gravelled space sheltered from the sun by the mellow brick wall and a clump of overarching delicate-fingered acacia trees, and made cool to the ear by the plash of the fountain into its marble basin. Down the sides and at the corners of this space were tubs of orange trees, and the heaviness of their drowsy fragrance mingling with the large dilution of this tide of warm sea-scented air was translated into something exquisitely light and vigorous. Claude had already arrived and was waiting with his mother for them, who was in excellent spirits.

“Why, dearest Dora,” she said, “here we are, and ready I’m sure for lunch, to speak for myself, though it’s not gone half-past twelve yet, and in England we shouldn’t be sitting down for another hour. And Claude’s been telling me that in England now it’s not gone half-past eleven, and here we are wanting our lunch at such an hour as that. Eh, what’s that? What did he say to me? ‘Pronto,’ it sounded like.”

Guiseppe, the smiling Italian butler, had approached Mr. Osborne, and said exactly that.

“Yes, pronto,” said Dora, “it means ‘ready.’”

Mrs. Osborne beamed back at Guiseppe.

“And I’m pronto, too,” she said. “Let’s sit down.”

“Mrs. O. will be having the whole Italian language by heart before the week’s out,” said her husband. “And such a morning as I’ve had with Dora, mother. Bridges and canals and steamers and churches. Ah, and you’d never guess, so I’ll tell you without teasing you! They are rebuilding the fish market with arcades of iron pillars, very handsome, and who do you think supplies them? Osborne, Sheffield, and no other, my dear, and it’s Per’s No. 2, light arcade, same as is in the showroom, or I’m the more mistaken.”

Mrs. Osborne was as delighted as her husband.

“I’ll get a photograph of that this very afternoon,” she said, “if there’s such a thing as a photograph shop in Venice. Dora, my dear, have they a photograph shop in Venice, or hasn’t that got here yet?”

Dora threw back her head, laughing.

“Oh, mother, how divine of you!” she said. “Considering I sent you literally hundreds of picture post cards when Claude and I were here in the autumn!”

“To be sure you did, my dear,” said Mrs. Osborne cordially. “And it had gone clean out of my poor head. So a photograph of the fish market I’ll send to Per this very afternoon, if I have to turn over all their scrapbooks for it. Mr. O., you’ll never manage macaroni that way. Wrap it round your fork, my dear, as you see Claude doing, and in it goes without any bother.”

“Well, mother, you’re not so much of a hand at it yourself,” observed Mr. Osborne in self-defence. “If I’m to take pattern by Claude, you take pattern by Dora. Now, I call that an excellent dish. You couldn’t have it better done, not in your own house. What does he say to me, Dora, my dear? Banke, is it?”

“Bianco,” said Dora, “white. Will you have white wine or red?”

“That’s another word for Mrs. O.,” said her husband. “I told you she’d get it all off by heart in no time. Yes, I’ll have a go at the bianco. One wants something light and cool on a morning like this, especially if the true time is only half-past eleven.”

“I declare it makes me feel quite greedy,” said Mrs. Osborne, “but such an appetite as I have to-day I haven’t had since the middle of April. And what else have you seen this morning, Mr. Osborne? Give an account of the sights, my dear, or I shall think you’ve had no eye except for Dora.”

They waited in the cool greenness of the garden till the heat of the day began to abate, and then went all together in one gondola, at Mrs. Osborne’s particular wish, to begin the sights of Venice. It was in vain that Dora suggested that everybody would be much more comfortable if they took two gondolas, and arranged their rendezvous, for Mrs. Osborne’s heart was set on a family party and she wasn’t sure that she would trust Mr. O. with Dora alone any more that day. So, as badinage loomed on the horizon, Dora hastily and completely withdrew her opposition, and they all four squeezed into one gondola.

The plan was to row out over the lagoon, and have tea at Santa Rosa. Tea made the centre of the afternoon, round which the rest appeared to be grouped in the minds of the Osbornes. Then they were to return to Venice in time to look in at St. Mark’s, and loiter in the piazza, where Mrs. Osborne, it was hoped, would find at one of the photograph shops the representation of the fish market on which she had set her heart. Accordingly the labouring gondoliers propelled the laden craft across to the little island, tied up to the bank, and procured strawberries from the fruit farm to add to their tea. Mrs. Osborne at first had a sort of vague prejudice against them, for abroad it was impossible to tell “who hadn’t been touching them,” and, it is to be feared, it was only because the rest of the party found them remarkably good that she joined them. But she was charmed with their picnic, and saw a great similarity between the little waterway of the island and the Regent’s Park Canal.

They dined that evening at Dora’s house—meals somehow had leaped into sudden importance and preponderance since the arrival of her father-in-law in Venice, though they had no more meals than usual—and Mrs. Osborne as well as her husband was voluble over all they had seen.

“Just to think that all the floor of St. Mark’s is in marble!” said she. “Why, it seems almost a shame, doesn’t it? I’m sure there’s not a cathedral in England that’s got such a grand floor, and St. Mark’s, so you said—didn’t you, Dora?—was only Roman Catholic?”

“Well, well, mother,” said Mr. Osborne, “it’s the Church of the country, you see, just as the English Church is ours. You’d think more of the Roman, if you’d been brought up to it. But I’m surprised at their letting the floor get into that state: it was all ups and downs, and I’m sure I scarcely knew where I should be setting my foot next. So dark it was, too, that one couldn’t see as much as one would like. If I were them, I should send for some good English architect as knows when a building’s safe, and when it isn’t, and make him cut half a dozen sensible windows somewhere, or perhaps take down one of them domes, and put in a glass roof to it instead. Five domes there are, for I counted them, and that’s beyond all reason.”

Dora felt that this was too much for her: simply she could not think of any reply whatever. If somebody proposed putting a glass dome in St. Mark’s, what answer was possible? But there was no need for one. Mrs. Osborne instantly joined in again.

“And never did I think to see such shops in Venice,” she said. “Why, there was electric fittings at one I passed, beautiful they were, with nymphs and such-like holding up the globes, the same as you might get in the most superior shops in town. And I need never have brought out stationery with me, for there was a stationer’s there as I could have bought the best cream-laid at. And not expensive either, if you recollect that a lira is but tenpence, though its strange to have your silver coins worth tenpence instead of a shilling. It wants a deal of thinking back into pounds and shillings.”

“They seem to have a notion of building, too,” said Mr. Osborne. “I’m sure that great square tower they were building was as solid a piece of work as you could find anywhere. And to think that the original had stood there five hundred years. How it takes you back!”

Claude nodded at Dora.

“What did I tell you?” he said. “Didn’t I say the mater and pater would like Venice near as much as you do?”

“Yes, dear, you were quite right,” said Dora, with a sort of despairing acquiescence in even this. “And what should you like to do to-morrow, Dad?” she asked.

“Eh, there’s more yet to see, is there?” he said. “And to think that I’ve been sight-seeing all day, and not finished even now! Who would have thought there was so much in such a small town? Well, my dear, I’m in your hands, and whatever you show me I’ll be bound I shall like it, if it comes up to the sample of Venice we’ve had to-day. And what says Mrs. O.?”

“Well, there’s all the pictures we haven’t seen yet,” said she. “Perhaps Dora would take us to see the pictures in the morning, but as for the afternoon I want nothing better than to have another look at St. Mark’s and do a bit more shopping, and perhaps have a bit of a row afterward, for I declare it’s a pity not to be out up till it’s time to dress.”

The next three or four days were, it must be confessed, a sort of nightmare to Dora, for she took Venice too seriously to see anything humorous in what she had to go through. She took them to the Accademia, and the Paul Veronese of the “Marriage of Cana” had an instant and amazing success owing to its size. Mr. Osborne doubted if it would have got into the picture gallery at Grote at all, and Mrs. Osborne had no doubt whatever about it; she saw at a glance that it would not, “without you took its frame off.” Other pictures pleased for other reasons: the “Procession of the Cross,” because St. Mark’s and the Campanile came into it; the Tintoret of the “Adoration of the Doges,” because St. George was sitting by the Virgin, and he was an English saint. But before Titian’s “Assumption of the Virgin” (a picture which, unfortunately, Dora detested) criticism with regard to its dimensions and even appreciation was mute, and its size and frame passed without remark. Mrs. Osborne’s eyes filled with dear, heart-felt tears, and Mr. Osborne said, “Lor’, Maria, it was worth coming to Venice for to see this alone, my dear. Well, now, they could paint in those days!” And immediately thereon, he bought an enormous copy of it, vilely executed, which an elderly English lady was just finishing with an uncertain strippling touch. She explained in quavering tones that she was obliged to charge very high for her copies because she spent weeks in study before she began to paint, in getting at the spirit of the original. And Mr. Osborne’s alacrity in securing her work no doubt made her wish that she had charged higher yet for the spiritual tension required for its production.

On another day they went to San Rocco, for Mr. Osborne found to his amazement that it was impossible to see all the pictures in Venice in one “go,” even if you spent the whole morning at it. This seemed strange, since you could see the whole of the Royal Academy in a less time. But the remedy was simple. Why not build a new picture gallery, hang all the pictures in Venice there, charge two lire, and have them all catalogued in one book? That was the kind of suggestion that cornered Dora: it seemed scarcely worth while to say that many were in the churches, and that it would be a pity to move them since they were painted for the places which they occupied. But, trying to be patient and kind, she did say so, and Mr. Osborne was fired with the brilliant thought of having copies made for the churches. Claude thought this an excellent idea. “The Gov.’s hit the nail on the head this time,” he said, and was surprised when Dora, turning aside, said, “Oh, Claude!” to him. But apart from the pictures at San Rocco, which did not have a great success, the visit was memorable because Mrs. Osborne said “Bon giorno” to the custodian, just as if she did it every day of her life. He understood perfectly, and made a suitable reply about the loveliness of the day. That was a little beyond Mrs. Osborne, so she said “Grazie,” and her husband admiringly commented, “Lor’, you speak it like a native! I told you the mother would have it by heart in no time,” he said.

On this morning they had still an hour to spare before lunch, since the Tintorets were not interesting or beautiful, and they rowed across to the Giudecca to see a garden. The garden was fairly appreciated, though to Mrs. Osborne’s mind the borders, where the southern June was rioting, were not quite so trim as she would have had them; but the great sugar factory was found to be most attractive, and Mr. Osborne was much surprised to find that Dora did not know whether it was possible to see over it or not. However, Claude made inquiries, and found it could be shown. He took his father there next day, and they were late for lunch. But Mrs. Osborne and Dora were late too: they had been ordering a very handsome gilt frame for the copy of “The Assumption,” and the “pattern” on it wanted a lot of choosing.

Dora and Claude dined that night at the Dandoli, and Mr. Osborne announced that he and the mother had settled to stay on another week, for they were both thoroughly delighted with Venice.

“And its grateful to you, my dear, that we both are,” said Mr. Osborne, “for telling us about it, and making us feel as how we should like to see it. There’s fifty different things in Venice I should like to see a score of times, and if we’re spared, my dear, we’ll spend another month next year as per this sample.”

Now Dora did her best when this little speech was made, but Sirocco had been blowing all day, and, as usual, it had made her feel rather jerky and irritable. Also, it must be remembered, Mr. Osborne, with the best and most appreciative intention in the world, had, as may be conjectured from the foregoing details of their days, succeeded in spoiling everything for her. Who could look at and enjoy a picture while he was wondering why Tintoret hadn’t given St. John something more on, or feel the magic of the approach across the lagoon when Mrs. Osborne said that the gray shining mud-flats called to mind the Fal below Truro at low tide, and Mr. Osborne confirmed the accuracy of this impression? But Maria had such an eye for likenesses.

In consequence, Dora had a little failed in cordiality of tone on the receipt of the news, for by this plan they would leave Venice all together, and every day till their departure would be taken up with these nightmare excursions, for it was part of the plan that they should do everything together. Her words, whatever they were, had been expressive of delight at their remaining, but Claude, at any rate, had noticed the failure in tone, and on their way back after dinner he spoke about it in kindly fashion, but so, it seemed to Dora, with a matchless awkwardness.

“Sorry you’re a bit off colour, dear,” he said. “I know Sirocco always makes you feel like that.”

Dora saw the obviously tactful intention; her conscience also a little accused her, and she knew quite well what he had in his mind and was probably going to say.

“Feel like what?” she said, though she knew this to be useless fencing.

“Oh, feel like what you felt when you said you were so glad the pater and mater were going to stop here. I don’t say that they noticed, but I did. I expect I’m quicker than them at feeling what you feel. What you said was right enough; it was just the way you said it.”

He leaned forward in his seat a little, looking her full in the face. And somehow the sight of him and the proximity failed for once to make themselves felt. His presence did not mitigate what he said, or stamp it with the old magic.

“I wish you would explain,” she said.

“As if there was any need, darling,” he said. “As if you don’t understand as well as I do. You said you were delighted they were stopping, but only your voice said it. What’s wrong? There’s something up. And I thought we were having such jolly days together. Father and mother are enjoying it ever so much, and if they pretend they find it just a shade more delightful than they really do, why, it’s just to please you, and make you feel it’s a success that they do it. They settled to stop on, I believe, just for that.”

This made matters no better. Dora felt she ought to be delighted they were doing so, and ought to be touched and pleased with the reason Claude had conjectured. But she was not: Venice, as a matter of fact, or rather these days of Venice, were being spoiled for her. She would as soon, as Claude had once said to her, though with inverted meaning, have spent them at Clapham Junction if the Osbornes were to be with her. It was a great pity that they should stop on, if their motive in doing so was to gratify her. She hoped it was not that.

“Oh, I don’t think that is it, Claude,” she said. “Dad likes—likes the sun and the—oh, lots of things, Stucki’s sugar factory for instance, and your mother likes the pigeons and the shops. But it isn’t Venice they like.”

“That’s just what I say,” said he, “they stop to make you think they do. They think the world of you, you know.”

“Yes, the darlings,” said Dora quickly. “That—that makes it so pathetic.”

“Pathetic? You mean that you don’t think so highly of them?”

Dora’s heart suddenly sank. She had not meant that: she had meant only that it was a pity they stayed in Venice to please her, when in reality she was not enjoying their stay. She knew well that they were out of place in Venice ... it was hopeless to try to explain. But even if she had meant the other, it would have been a fatal error on Claude’s part to put it into words. He called this kind of frankness “getting at the bottom of the thing.” She felt he was certain to use that phrase now. He did so.

“Let’s get at the bottom of it, dear,” he said, “and as we always do, I shall speak my mind, just like you. Perhaps it will sound harsh to you: I’m sorry if it does.”

He leaned back again, but without looking at him she could see that he tilted his head back, and put his chin a little out, the identical gesture which before she had found so attractive, so fascinating, even. She had told him so, too, a hundred times: had said she loved a man to know his mind, to be firm and decided, especially with those he loved best. No doubt he remembered that at this moment: perhaps even he was doing it consciously or at least half-consciously, so as to present what he had to say in the most attractive guise. But, suddenly and disconcertingly, she found the gesture scarcely less than odious.

“I think the pater’s been awfully good to you, dear,” he said. “He’s done a lot for you, given you all sorts of things you had no reason to expect. There’s this month in Venice, to go no further than that. Well, it will stand him in a pot of money, and it’s just because he doesn’t grudge you one penny of it that I think you ought to feel rather more cordial to him about their stopping. I don’t say that you behaved not cordially, because I think what you said was all right, and neither of them noticed that anything was awry, but you hadn’t got the right feelings to back up your tongue. Wait a moment. I’ve not finished; there’s something more yet, but I want to find words that won’t hurt you, and yet will express what I mean.”

There was something in this that roused a certain sense in Dora that she knew had been often present in her mind, but which she hoped would always remain dormant. But now it began to awake; his words, kind as they were, implied an impossible attitude. He was judging, so it seemed to her, making himself jury and judge all rolled into one, and it was understood that she, put in the dock before him, would make no defence. He knew that he was right—that was what it came to—and was going to tell her, as kindly as possible, what was right. And on the instant she found herself refusing to be judged and condemned by his standards. He did not know what Venice meant to her, or how essentially his father’s attitude toward the things and the place that she loved jarred on her. And unfortunately the affair was typical of hundreds of other affairs. That Mr. Osborne had no artistic sense of any sort or kind did not matter, but what was beginning to matter was that Claude, who apparently could not see that the entire absence of it in a person with whom she was brought into day-long contact made something rather hard to bear, had put on his wig and was going to sum up on a matter about which he knew nothing. Her behaviour had never broken down; he had said that himself, and she believed it to be true; the matter was that he could not understand that she had to struggle against the disappointment of spoiled days, and was yet serenely confident that he had the complete data.

“Don’t mind about hurting me,” she said quickly. “I want you to say exactly what you feel.”

They had arrived at the water-gate of their home, without her noticing it, and Giovanni was already standing, hat in hand, to give her the support of his arm on to the steps, which were slippery with the receding tide. Claude was conscious of this first: he was quite conscious, also, of Dora’s tone.

“Not before the servants,” he said. “Get out, dear, and take Giovanni’s arm. The steps are like ice!”

Again Dora was in revolt: it seemed to her that he was advising her against a thing he might have done himself, but which she could not have dreamed of. She had been absorbed in this—this dispute was it?—had not noticed. He had noticed, and warned her against an impossible thing.

Giovanni unlocked the door for them, received orders for the next day, and they went up the stairs together in silence. And as they went up all the womanhood in Dora—and there was much of it, and it was all sweet and good—rose, flooding for the time the bitter gray mud flats that had appeared. And at the top of the stairs she turned to him.

“Oh, Claude,” she said, “we’re not quarrelling, are we?”

“Takes two to make a quarrel,” he said, “and I’m not one. But I want to say something yet, and I think you’d better hear it. I ask you to, in fact.”

She unpinned her hat, and led the way to the end of the big sala that overlooked the canal. She sat down in her accustomed chair, flinging the window open, for the night was very hot.

“Say it then,” she said.

Again Claude’s head went back: he felt perfectly certain he was right.

“Well, it’s just this. You’ve told me not to choose my words, so I won’t bother to do so. You haven’t felt right toward the pater and mater all this time here. When he wanted to go and see a factory, you wondered at him—and, yes, you despised him a bit for it. When he admired some picture you didn’t think much of, you wondered again. Now, he never wondered at you. If you wanted to sit half an hour before some adoring Doge, he never wondered, any more than I wonder, for there are lots of people in the world, and they’ve got their different tastes and every right to them. But he only said to himself: ‘Gosh, there’s something there, and she’s right, only I don’t know what it is she’s looking at.’ He never thought you wanting in perception because you didn’t admire the iron in the fish market. He only thought to himself, ‘Let’s go and see something this afternoon that Dora does like.’ How often has he gone to the National Gallery in London? Never, you bet: he doesn’t know a picture from a statue. And how often has he gone to look at some mouldy old Titian here, because you thought it worth a look? Well, isn’t that anything? It’s no use you and me not saying things straight out, and so I say it straight out. He’s been boring himself fit to burst over your Botticellis, and been trying to admire them, saying this was the biggest picture he’d ever seen, and this was the smallest. And yet dear old Dad wasn’t boring himself, because he was with you, and trying to take an interest in what you showed him. Well then, I ask you!”

There, close in front of her, was the beautiful face, the beautiful mouth which she loved, saying things which, as far as they went, her essential nature entirely approved. But at the moment his beauty did not move her. And the account he had given was correct: she had been having on her nerves the fact that Mr. Osborne took more pleasure in the steamboats than in San Rocco, in the fish market than in the Frati. He might be right: she might be right, but in any case the attitudes were incompatible. And Claude at the moment clearly took up the attitude that was incompatible with hers. There was much more, too, he did not see: he did not see that indifference on Dora’s part did not destroy his father’s pleasure in the speed of the steamboats, whereas his artistic criticisms blackened her pictures for her.

And then, womanlike again, she knew only that Claude was her man, that he was beautiful, that he loved her....

“I dare say I am quite wrong,” she said. “I dare say you are quite right. Shall we leave it, then, darling? I will try—I will try to do better. I am sorry.”

“And there speaks my darling girl,” said Claude.