ustration: "Under the beautiful colonnade of the
Cathedral"]

She had thought to press the matter, to represent to him his own
short-sightedness, his misapprehension of his own best good; but she
found it impossible to urge her case. She felt herself confronted with a
will so much stronger than her own that she had not a word to say. She
only murmured: "I am very sorry about it," and was turning dejectedly
away, when Nanni's voice arrested her.

"Signorina," he cried, "Signorina, will you not forgive me?"

She turned, and there was a look of entreaty, a touch of real emotion in
his face which startled her.

"Why, Nanni," she said; "there is nothing to forgive. You know best."
She had not often said those three words in the easy self-confidence of
her youth. "You know best," she said. "It is I who should beg pardon for
thinking I knew."

She held out her hand to him, as naturally as she would have done to
Geoffry Daymond, and Nanni, stooping, lifted it to his lips.

The child did not know that it was the universal custom of his class;
that there was nothing else to be done when a gentlewoman extended her
hand to a gondolier. She only knew it was the first time in her life
that such a thing had happened to her, and she turned away in much
perturbation.

She found herself face to face with Geoffry Daymond, who was coming
along the bank in search of her.

"Ah, here you are," he cried gaily. "We thought we might have made a
mistake and fed you to the populace! The little brutes have eaten every
edible crumb we had, and seemed to want to try their appetites on the
table-cloth. Now we are all going up the tower of the cathedral to have
a look at things."

She wondered whether Daymond had seen that strange and rather dreadful
thing that had happened. Had she known him better, she would have been
sure that his burst of eloquence could have but one interpretation. He
had seen and wondered; two facts which must be suppressed.

As May and Geof came up the path, Kenwick, who was sitting in the stone
chair which is accredited to the ancient Attila, observed the look of
slowly subsiding emotion in the young girl's face, and a sudden pang
seized him, whether of friendly concern or of selfish annoyance, he
would have been the last to inquire. That they should have passed him
by, in his picturesque situation, without a word, thus cutting him off
from the delivery of a witticism which he had concocted for their
edification, w