s, so she made no response.

"What a beautiful palace!" she cried presently, pointing to a house in
darkness, not far from the house of Petrarch. It was only the interior
of the house that was in darkness. The moon poured broadly upon it. The
leaning gondola-posts stood like sleeping sentinels, and the tide
murmured over the marble steps.

Pompeo, seeing Kitty's gesture and not understanding her words, swung
the gondola diagonally across the canal.

"No, no, Pompeo!" La Signorina spoke in Italian. "I have told you never
to go near that house without express orders. Straight ahead."

The gondola at once resumed its former course. Never did Pompeo take a
tourist down the Grand Canal that he did not exalt in his best Italian
and French the beauties of yonder empty palace. Had he not spent his
youth in the service of the family? It was only of late years that
Pompeo had become a public gondolier, with his posts in the stand
fronting the Hotel de l'Europe.

"_A-oel!_ Look out!" he called suddenly. Another gondola scraped
alongside and passed on.

"Who lives there?" asked Kitty.

"Nobody," answered La Signorina. "Though once it was the palace of a
great warrior. How picturesque the gondolas look, with their dancing
double lights! Those without numbers are private."

"The old palace interests me more than the gondolas," declared Kitty.

But La Signorina was not to be trapped.

Presently they passed the row of great hotels, with their balconies
hanging over the water and their steps running down into it. Kitty eyed
them all regretfully. She saw men and women in evening dress, and she
was sure that they had dined well and were happy. Without doubt there
were persons who knew her by name and had seen her act. From the Grand
Canal they came out into the great Canal of San Marco, the beginning of
the lagoon. Here Kitty forgot for the moment her troubles; her
dream-Venice had returned. There were private yachts, Adriatic liners,
all brilliant with illumination, and hundreds of gondolas, bobbing,
bobbing, like captive leviathans, bunched round the gaily-lanterned
barges of the serenaders. There was only one flaw to this perfect dream:
the shrill whistle of the ferry-boats. They had no place here, and their
presence was an affront.

"How I hate them!" said La Signorina. "The American influence! Some day
they will be filling up the canals and running trams over them. What is
beauty and silence if there be profit in uglines