ouses, aged women,
stiff, and slow, managed somehow to get upon their knees. The Colonel
stood, hat in hand, facing the bridge, while May glanced, with bright
interest, from one picturesque figure to another, noting the fact, in
passing, that Geoffry Daymond's hat was lifted, and Oliver Kenwick's was
not.

Pauline sat with her head bent over the sleeping child. At the sound of
the third bell, which was the signal for all that multitude to cross
themselves and rise to their feet, she lifted the chubby hand, and made
the sign of the cross with it upon the little breast. She did it as
simply and naturally as if she had been the best Catholic of them all.

A moment later, "Pickle Johnny," with the blessing upon his drowsy
little person, had been handed back to his uncle, and Vittorio was
skillfully making his way out among the thronging craft toward the
lagoon, which was swimming in a golden mist.

Pietro rowed in the other direction, and there was a friendly exchange
of greetings between the passing gondolas.

"Did you see that?" Geoffry asked, as they came out upon the broad bosom
of the Grand Canal.

"Yes; I saw it, Geof," his mother answered; "I feel as if we had all
received the benediction."

XI

At Torcello

For all the questionings and probings which May Beverly applied to the
successive phenomena of the world about her, she had passed her twenty
years as light of heart and as free of real perplexities as any
fifteenth-century maiden in her turret chamber. Prosperous and sheltered
as her youth had been, she had, up to this time, apprehended scarcely
anything of the real drama of life.

Whether it was due to a seasonable and inevitable development, or to a
quickening of the imagination caused by the potent loveliness of Venice,
it was certainly true that the young girl was passing through a new and
curiously stimulating experience. Many things had been revealed to her
of late, which as yet she only half comprehended; for whereas she had
formerly had an eye only for details, she was now beginning to combine
and interpret; and having hitherto been chiefly occupied with the
surface, she was learning to divine, if not to penetrate, the depths. It
was doubtless due to this general rousing of the imagination, to which
she perhaps owed her unalterable conviction that Vittorio's brother had,
in some mysterious way, been singled out by misfortune, that the thought
of him had come to play so large a part in