Mary pursued their way through the narrow <i>calles</i> that
led to the Piazza. Sir Richard was expatiating on Ashe's folly in
marrying such a wife.

"She looks like an actress!--and as to her conversation, she began by
telling me outrageous stories and ended by not having a word to say
about anything. The bad blood of the Bristols, it seems to me, without
their brains."

"Oh no, papa! Kitty is very clever. You haven't heard her recite. She
was tired to-night."

"Well, I don't want to flatter you, my dear!" said the old man,
testily, "but I thought it was pathetic--the way in which Ashe enjoyed
your conversation. It showed he didn't get much of it at home."

Mary smiled uncertainly. Her whole nature was still aglow from that
contact with Ashe's delightful personality. After months of depression
and humiliation, her success with him had somehow restored those
illusions on which cheerfulness depends.

How ill Kitty looked--and how conscious! Mary was impetuously certain
that Kitty had betrayed her knowledge of Cliffe's presence in Venice;
and equally certain that William knew nothing. Poor William!

Well, what can you expect of such a temperament--such a race? Mary's
thoughts travelled confusedly towards--and through--some big and
dreadful catastrophe.

And then? After it?

It seemed to her that she was once more in the Park Lane drawing-room;
the familiar Morris papers and Burne-Jones drawings surrounded her; and
she and Elizabeth Tranmore sat, hand in hand, talking of William--a
William once more free, after much folly and suffering, to reconstruct
his life....

"Here we are," said Sir Richard Lyster, moving down a dark passage
towards the brightly lit doorway of their hotel.

With a start--as of one taken red-handed--Mary awoke from her dream.

XX

Madame d'Estrees and her friend, Donna Laura, occupied the <i>mezzanin</i> of
the vast Vercelli palace. The palace itself belonged to the head of the
Vercelli family. It was a magnificent erection of the late seventeenth
century, at this moment half furnished, dilapidated, and forsaken. But
the <i>entresol</i> on the eastern side of the <i>cortile</i> was in good
condition, and comfortably fitted up for the occasional use of the
Principe. As he was wintering in Paris, he had let his rooms at an
ordinary commercial rent to his kinswoman, Donna Laura. She, a soured
and melancholy woman, unmarried in a Latin society which has small use
or kindness for sp