and her pinched and tragic face showed her repulsion and
irritation. She had endeavored in vain to dissuade Kitty from coming;
but in the end she had insisted on accompanying her. Possibly, as the
boat glided over the water amid a crowd of laughing, chattering
Italians, the silent Englishwoman was asking herself what was to be the
future of the trust she had taken on herself. Kitty in her extremity had
remembered her half-sister's promise, and had thrown herself upon it.
But a few weeks' experience had shown that they were strange and
uncongenial to each other. There was no true affection between
them--only a certain haunting instinct of kindred. And even this was
weakened or embittered by those memories in Alice's mind which Kitty
could never approach and Alice never forget. What was she to do with her
half-sister, stranded and dishonored as she was?--How content or comfort
her?--How live her own life beside her?

Kitty sat silent, her eyes fixed upon the barca which held the coffin
under its pall. Her mind was the scene of an infinite number of floating
and fragmentary recollections; of the day when she and Cliffe had
followed the <i>murazzi</i> towards the open sea; of the meeting at Verona;
of the long winter, with its hardship and its horror; and that hatred
and contempt which had sprung up between them. Could she love no one,
cling faithfully to no one? And now the restless brain, the vast
projects, the mixed nature, the half-greatness of the man had been
silenced--crushed--in a moment, by the stroke of a knife. He had been
killed by a jealous woman--because of his supposed love for another
woman, whose abhorrence, in truth, he had earned in a few short weeks.
There was something absurd mingled with the horror--as though one
watched the prank of a demon.

Her sensuous nature was tormented by the thought of the last moment. Had
he had time to feel despair--the thirst for life? She prayed not. She
thought of the Sunday afternoon at Grosville Park when they had tried to
play billiards, and Lord Grosville had come down on them; or she saw him
sitting opposite to her, at supper, on the night of the fancy ball, in
the splendid Titian dress, while she gloated over the thoughts of the
trick she had played on Mary Lyster--or bending over her when she woke
from her swoon at Verona. Had she ever really loved him for one
hour?--and if not, what possible excuse, before gods or men, was there
for this ugly, self-woven tragedy