n the Colonel made his fatal admission, his cause was
lost and he knew it. He was too good a soldier to fight for the sake of
fighting, but he was not a little shocked at the alacrity with which he
went over to the enemy.

Yet the step was not an unprecedented one. It was not for nothing that
he had been for years the willing slave of his Pollys, that his whole
training as uncle had tended to cultivate in him the grace of obedience.
"As the twig is bent the tree inclines," and he had been the merest twig
of an uncle, if not in years, at least in experience, when he had
yielded to the sunny persuasiveness of that first faint glimmering of a
smile in the baby face of the original Polly. His subjugation, moreover,
having hitherto proved beneficial in its results, he was the more
excusable, to-day, for letting himself be swept along by the impetus of
his tyrant's will.

There was little time for reflection; indeed, as it was, a young person
of less executive ability than May could hardly have accomplished what
she brought to pass in the few hours at her disposal. She flew from the
_Venezia_ to the Signora Canti for the first unfolding of her plan, from
the almost speechless Signora to the Merceria in search of the sulphur
shawl, and thence to the Signora Canti again, attended all the while by
Uncle Dan, whose cane struck sharply on the pavement of the narrow,
reverberating alley-ways. The business was all transacted on foot, that
even Vittorio might be kept in ignorance of the great secret. Through
the good offices of the Signor Canti the barge musicians were
interviewed, and the details of the undertaking arranged. Even a small
rehearsal was brought about in the somewhat restricted quarters of the
Canti apartment, and great was May's rejoicing, to find how many of her
favourite songs were well known to the quartette of accompanists.

As the Colonel looked back upon the afternoon, he had a bewildered sense
of having taken part in a general engagement, very brilliant in
character, but with the conduct of which he, as private, had had no
concern whatever. And now it was evening, and he was floating in the
gondola out on the broad basin of St. Mark's, awaiting, with no little
trepidation, the progress of events.

No, his nieces would not be with him, he had told Vittorio. One was gone
to Torcello, and the other had an engagement for the evening,--which
Vittorio thought _peccato_. The _padrone_ proposed to float about in the