"By-the-way,
do you know that Geoffrey Cliffe is in Venice?"

Madame d'Estrees opened her eyes. "Est-il possible? Oh! but Kitty has
forgotten all about him."

"Of course," said Harman. "I am told he has been seen with the Ricci."

Madame d'Estrees raised her shoulders this time in addition to her eyes.
Then her face clouded.

"I believe," she said, slowly, "that woman may come here this
afternoon."

"Is she a friend of yours?" Harman's tone expressed his surprise.

"I knew her in Paris," said Madame d'Estrees, with some hesitation,
"when she was a student at the Conservatoire. She and I had some common
acquaintance. And now--frankly, I daren't offend her. She has the most
appalling temper!--and she sticks at nothing."

Harman wondered what the exact truth of this might be, but did not
inquire. And as guests--including Colonel Warington--began to arrive,
and Donna Laura appeared and began to dispense tea, the <i>tete-a-tete</i>
was interrupted.

Donna Laura's <i>salon</i> was soon well filled, and Harman watched the
gathering with curiosity. As far as it concerned Madame d'Estrees--and
she was clearly the main attraction which had brought it together--it
represented, he saw, a phase of social recovery. A few prominent
Englishmen, passing through Venice, came in without their wives, making
perfunctory excuse for the absence of these ladies. But the
cosmopolitans of all kinds, who crowded in--Anglo-Italians, foreign
diplomats, travellers of many sorts, and a few restless Venetians,
bearing the great names of old, to whom their own Venice was little more
than a place of occasional sojourn--made satisfactory amends for these
persons of too long memories. In all these travellers' towns, Venice,
Rome, and Florence, there is indeed a society, and a very agreeable
society, which is wholly irresponsible, and asks few or no questions.
The elements of it meet as strangers, and as strangers they mostly part.
But between the meeting and the parting there lies a moment, all the
gayer, perhaps, because of its social uncertainty and freedom.

Madame d'Estrees was profiting by it to the full. She was in excellent
spirits and talk; bright-rose carnations shone in the bosom of her
dress; one white arm, bared to the elbow, lay stretched carelessly on
the fine cut-velvet which covered the gilt sofa--part of a suite of
Venetian Louis Quinze, clumsily gorgeous--on which she sat; the other
hand pulled the ears of a toy spaniel. On t