, and she told me that she counted
on retaining her jointure."

* * * * *

On the night following her interview with Lady Tranmore, Kitty went from
one restless, tormented dream into another, but towards morning she fell
into one of a different kind. She dreamed she was in a country of great
mountains. The peaks were snow-crowned, vast glaciers filled the chasms
on their flanks, forests of pines clothed the lower sides of the hills,
and the fields below were full of spring flowers. She saw a little
Alpine village, and a church with an old and slender campanile. A plain
stone building stood by--it seemed to be an inn of the old-fashioned
sort--and she entered it. The dinner-table was ready in the low-roofed
<i>salle-a-manger</i>, and as she sat down to eat she saw that two other
guests were at the same table. She glanced at them, and perceived that
one was William and the other her child, Harry, grown older--and
transfigured. Instead of the dull and clouded look which had wrung her
heart in the old days, against which she had striven, patiently and
impatiently, in vain, the blue eyes were alive with mind and affection.
It was as if the child beheld his mother for the first time and she him.
As he recognized her he gave a cry of joy, waving one hand towards her
while with the other he touched his father on the arm. William raised
his head. But when he saw his wife his face changed. He rose from his
seat, and drawing the little boy into his arms he walked away. Kitty saw
them disappear into a long passage, indeterminate and dark. The child's
face over his father's shoulder was turned in longing towards his
mother, and as he was carried away he stretched out his little hands to
her in lamentation.

Kitty woke up bathed in tears. She sprang out of bed and threw the
window nearest to her open to the night. The winter night was mild, and
a full moon sailed the southern sky. Not a sound on the water, not a
light in the palaces; a city of ebony and silver, Venice slept in the
moonlight. Kitty gathered a cloak and some shawls round her, and sank
into a low chair, still crying and half conscious. At his inn, some few
hundred yards away, between her and the Piazzetta, was Geoffrey Cliffe
waking too?--making his last preparations? She knew that all his stores
were ready, and that he proposed to ship them and the twenty young
fellows, Italians and Dalmatians, who were going with him to join the