ith her hands--removing them to say, impatiently:

"One can't go on being sorry every moment of the day. No, one can't! Why
are we made so? William would agree with me there."

"Dear Lady Kitty!" said the Dean, tenderly--"God forgives--and with Him
there is always hope, and fresh beginning."

Kitty shook her head.

"I don't know what that means," she said. "I wonder whether"--she looked
at him with a certain piteous and yet affectionate malice--"if you'd
been as deep as I, whether <i>you</i>'d know."

The Dean flushed. The hidden wound stung again. Had he, then, no right
to speak? He felt himself the elder son of the parable--and hated
himself anew.

But he was a Christian, on his Master's business. He must obey orders,
even though he could feel no satisfaction, or belief in himself--though
he seem to himself such a shallow and perfunctory person. So he did his
tender best for Kitty. He spent his loving, enthusiastic, pitiful soul
upon her; and while he talked to her she sat with her hands crossed on
her lap, and her eyes wandering through the open window to the forests
of masts outside and the dancing wavelets of the lagoon. When at last he
spoke of the further provision Ashe wished to make for her, when he
implored her to summon Margaret French, she shook her head. "I must
think what I shall do," she said, quietly; and a minute afterwards, with
a flash of her old revolt--"He cannot prevent my going to Harry's
grave!"

* * * * *

Early the following morning the murdered man was carried to the cemetery
at San Michele. In spite of some attempt on the part of the police to
keep the hour secret, half Venice followed the black-draped barca, which
bore that flawed poet and dubious hero to his rest.

It was a morning of exceeding beauty. On the mean and solitary front of
the Casa dei Spiriti there shone a splendor of light; the lagoon was
azure and gold; the main-land a mist of trees in their spring leaf;
while far away the cypresses of San Francesco, the slender tower of
Torcello, and the long line of Murano--and farther still the majestic
wall of silver Alps--greeted the eyes that loved them, as the ear is
soothed by the notes of a glorious and yet familiar music.

Amid the crowd of gondolas that covered the shallow stretch of lagoon
between the northernmost houses of Venice and the island graveyard,
there was one which held two ladies. Alice Wensleydale was there against
her will,