Canal in Venice, and
decided to stay long enough to note the first effect of the air and the
baths, and to look up a doctor to leave her with.

This took something more than a week, which could not all be spent in
Mrs. Lander's company, much as she wished it. There were hours which he
gave to going about in a gondola with Clementina, whom he forbade to be
always at the invalid's side. He tried to reassure her as to Mrs.
Lander's health, when he found her rather mute and absent, while they
drifted in the silvery sun of the late April weather, just beginning to
be warm, but not warm enough yet for the tent of the open gondola. He
asked her about Mrs. Lander's family, and Clementina could only tell him
that she had always said she had none. She told him the story of her own
relation to her, and he said, "Yes, I heard something of that from Miss
Milray." After a moment of silence, during which he looked curiously into
the girl's eyes, "Do you think you can bear a little more care, Miss
Claxon?"

"I think I can," said Clementina, not very courageously, but patiently.

"It's only this, and I wouldn't tell you if I hadn't thought you equal to
it. Mrs. Lander's case puzzles me: But I shall leave Dr. Tradonico
watching it, and if it takes the turn that there's a chance it may take,
he will tell you, and you'd better find out about her friends, and--let
them know. That's all."

"Yes," said Clementina, as if it were not quite enough. Perhaps she did
not fully realize all that the doctor had intended; life alone is
credible to the young; life and the expectation of it.

The night before he was to return to Florence there was a full moon; and
when he had got Mrs. Lander to sleep he asked Clementina if she would not
go out on the lagoon with him. He assigned no peculiar virtue to the
moonlight, and he had no new charge to give her concerning his patient
when they were embarked. He seemed to wish her to talk about herself, and
when she strayed from the topic, he prompted her return. Then he wished
to know how she liked Florence, as compared with Venice, and all the
other cities she had seen, and when she said she had not seen any but
Boston and New York, and London for one night, he wished to know whether
she liked Florence as well. She said she liked it best of all, and he
told her he was very glad, for he liked it himself better than any place
he had ever seen. He spoke of his family in America, which was formed of
grownup brot