"Three sisters?"

"No; two sisters and a father. There's n.o.body left now, but these two."

It was all very like that trip on the lagoons yesterday; only, in the one case, he had seen the lagoons through the eyes of his Pollys, while to-day he seemed to be seeing his Pollys through the eyes of the woman he loved. And he found that gracious sharing of his interest a balm to the old wound, and he was soothed and beguiled into a strange new acquiescence. It would come again, the importunate trouble. He should, in a very few minutes, bring down upon himself that gentle refusal, more poignant in its kindness than scorn or misprision would have been.

As he sat there touching upon one characteristic and another of his Pollys, in the direct, soldierly fashion that cuts through ordinary modes of speech, clean and incisive as a sword-point, he vaguely felt that this was only a postponement, a respite. It could not last, this extraordinary, unaccountable resignation. He was not sure that he should approve of it if it did. But, meantime, he had not told her how the girls had enjoyed riding on the Campagna, and how they had followed the hunt one day, and not a bone broken! Nor how they had got to know their way about Rome like a book and how--really, the subject was quite inexhaustible!

The sun was shining like mad upon the palaces opposite, and as he looked across the flower-boxes in the window, he felt quite in sympathy with this high noon of light and color. A steamboat shrieked beneath the window, and the discordant sound hardly seemed an intrusion. And then, suddenly, taking him quite at unawares, a firm step resounded upon the hard, smooth conglomerate of the broad pa.s.sage-way, and--"Here is Geof!"

his mother announced. "You would hardly know him, Colonel!"

The Colonel rose to his feet and turned toward the door, guiltily conscious that he had evaded the subject of Geof. As his eye fell upon the lithe, vigorous figure coming toward him, he recognised the fact that evasion was no longer possible. An instant later he had recognised the young architect of Western proclivities whom he had taken such a liking to an hour ago.

"So you are Geof!" the Colonel exclaimed. "I might have known it, too, though I had quite forgotten that you were grown up."

"And you are Colonel Steele! Why, this is great! You used to be first-rate to me when I was a little chap. Were those your daughters in the gallery?"

"No, my nieces," said the Colonel, and his spirits went up like a cork.

He knew the Signora was great friends with her son, but she evidently understood where to draw the line!

"And I may bring them to see you, Signora?"

"The sooner the better. Why not this afternoon? We can have tea early and get a couple of hours on the lagoon in the pretty light. I'm afraid you have an engagement, haven't you, Geof?"

"Oh, I don't mind throwing Kenwick over. He'll keep," and the young man stepped to the other window and flung it open.

Geoffry Daymond went down to the door with his mother's old friend, but he had the tact not to offer him a hand across the plank to the gondola; an act of forbearance which was not lost upon the Colonel.

"Not a bit like his mother," the Colonel was saying to himself. "Not a bit. Wonder if he takes after his father. The kind of man that would stick in a woman's memory, I should say."

And then, just as the gondola was pa.s.sing the house where the little stone girls keep their uncomprehending outlook upon the world, a sharp pang took him, followed by a strange--was it a disloyal?--sense of relief, and he exclaimed, under his breath, "I never asked her!"

VI

A Festa

"You didn't tell us what a beauty Mrs. Daymond was, Uncle Dan," said May, as they sat at dinner that evening.

They had a small table to themselves, close by one of the long gla.s.s doors opening out into the garden. It was a warm evening, and sweet, vagrant perfumes came straying in at the open door, and in the momentary hush which sometimes falls upon the noisiest _table d'hote_, pretty plashing sounds could be heard in the Ca.n.a.l beyond the garden.

"Not a very easy thing to do," said Uncle Dan, setting down his gla.s.s of claret, with a wry face. He felt sure that the wine had been kept on ice. Ugh!

"Have you known her a long time?"

"Yes, Polly; since before you were born."

"What an age!" cried May. "And you never told us a word about her!"

"Fact is," Uncle Dan explained, "I haven't seen her more than once in five or six years, and then only over here. You'll find people don't want to hear about your travels."

Really quite an ingenious turn, the Colonel flattered himself,--to account for the pa.s.sion of a life-time as an incident of travel! He was so exhilarated over this feat that he was emboldened to pursue the subject. Besides, big Polly had not spoken, and he could not suffer any tribute to the lady of his allegiance to go by default.

"What did you think of her, Polly?" he asked.

"I can only say," Pauline declared, with an earnestness of conviction that was even more expressive than her sister's encomiums, "that if she had not invited us girls to go in her gondola it would have spoiled the afternoon."

"But the son is very nice; didn't you think so?" asked May, seized, in her turn, with the spirit of investigation. "He didn't even seem conceited, which clever people usually are."

"Yes, indeed! he is very nice; how did you like him, Uncle Dan?"

"Geof?" Uncle Dan repeated, rather absently; "How did I like Geof? Oh, I should say he was turning out very well. But I thought you girls had the best of it"; whence it may be gathered that Mrs. Daymond had not only borrowed the two girls, but had offered her son as compensation to the Colonel.

"How pretty the two gondolas will look going about together when we get our new flags," said May. "It will be a regular little flotilla."

"Aren't you expecting a good deal of Mrs. Daymond?" Pauline demurred.

"Why of course we shall go about together. She said she hoped to see a great deal of us while we were here."

The Colonel emptied his claret-gla.s.s, while a sense of warmth and well-being stole through his veins, that made him think he must have been mistaken about that ice.

"Are you going to fly the Stars and Stripes?" he asked. He had never considered the prow of a gondola a very fitting situation for the flag he had fought for,--but perhaps the Pollys knew best.

"No, indeed," said May. "We are going to have something ever so much prettier than that."

"Ah, Polly! There's nothing prettier than the Stars and Stripes," the Colonel protested.

"May means more original," said Pauline. "She has had one of her happy thoughts."

"You see, Uncle Dan," May explained, "there are such a lot of national flags on the gondolas, and it seems so stupid not to have something different. So Mr. Daymond and I have concocted quite a new scheme,--or rather the idea was mine and he is going to paint them. We are going to have a sea-horse painted on red bunting, in tawny colors, golds and browns; and Mr. Daymond thinks he shall make one for their gondola on a dark blue ground. Shan't you feel proud to sail the Venetian lagoons with a sea-horse at the mast-head?"

"Proud as a peac.o.c.k! And the young man is going to paint it for you?"

"Yes; isn't that good of him? And shan't we look pretty?"

"Never saw the time you didn't," Uncle Dan was tempted to say. But he flattered himself that he never spoiled his nieces, and so he remarked instead, with his most crafty grimace: "No, you'll probably look like frights"; which, if the girls had not been quite case-hardened against his thinly disguised compliments, might have had just the disastrous effect he wished to avoid.

Truth to tell, they were neither of them very susceptible to flattery, for neither of them was in the least self-centred. Even May, who was far from sharing her sister's mellow warmth of interest in other people,--even May, with all the crudities and shortcomings of youth still in the ascendant, was too much occupied with her rapidly acquired views of the phenomena about her, to pay much attention to the perhaps equally interesting phenomenon of her own personality. The impression left upon the two girls by their half hour's talk with Geoffry Daymond was characteristic of each. May approved of him because he had been interested in her ideas; and Pauline liked him because he had been interested in her sister.

Whatever the young man's impressions may have been, it may as well be stated at once, that in the course of that tea-drinking he made up his mind that his mother really had a right to expect him to stay with her for the next week or two, and that he should tell Oliver Kenwick to-morrow, that he would have to get somebody else for that tramp through the t.i.tian country. What did he care about the t.i.tian country anyway? Here was t.i.tian himself here in Venice, and lots besides. He would pitch into those flags to-morrow. That was really a very happy thought of the talkative one. He wondered if the quiet one would say more if she got a chance; she did not look stupid. And that reflection had struck him as so preposterous, that he had almost interrupted her sister in her expression of opinion on the subject of the famous bronze chargers that seem always on the point of plunging down from the front of San Marco into the Piazza, to the destruction of the babies and pigeons there a.s.sembled, to ask: "Miss Beverly what do you like best in Venice?"

"The gondola," said Pauline, after an instant's reflection--a little pause which proved to be one of her idiosyncrasies.

"The gondola?" he repeated, doubtfully. "The gondola isn't very much by itself."

"But the gondola never is by itself. It's the centre of everything. It's all Venice and a living creature besides--something like a person's heart. Of course I don't mean the gondolas on the souvenir spoons!" she added, with the little ripple, that was so much prettier than a definite smile. Decidedly, Miss Beverly was not stupid.