emplary, and brought up long
arrears of indebtedness in that way.

"Well, what shall we do?" he asked, as he sank into a chair beside the
lounge on which Mrs. Elmore lay, her eyes closed, and a slice of lemon
placed on each of her throbbing temples with the effect of a new sort of
blinders. "Shall I go alone for her?"

She gave his hand the kind of convulsive clutch that signified,
"Impossible for you to leave me."

He reflected. "The Mortons will be pushing on to Leghorn, and somebody
_must_ meet her. How would it do for Mr. Hoskins to go?"

Mrs. Elmore responded with a clutch tantamount to "Horrors! How could
you think of such a thing?"

"Well, then," he said, "the only thing we can do is to send a _valet de
place_ for her. We can send old Cazzi. He's the incarnation of
respectability; five francs a day and his expenses will buy all the
virtues of him. She'll come as safely with him as with me."

Mrs. Elmore had applied a vividly thoughtful pressure to her husband's
hand; she now released it in token of assent, and he rose.

"But don't be gone long," she whispered.

On his way to the caffe which Cazzi frequented, Elmore fell in with the
consul.

By this time a change had taken place in the consular office. Mr.
Ferris, some months before, had suddenly thrown up his charge and gone
home; and after the customary interval of ship-chandler, the California
sculptor, Hoskins, had arrived out, with his commission in his pocket,
and had set up his allegorical figure of The Pacific Slope in the room
where Ferris had painted his too metaphysical conception of A Venetian
Priest. Mrs. Elmore had never liked Ferris; she thought him cynical and
opinionated, and she believed that he had not behaved quite well towards
a young American lady,--a Miss Vervain, who had stayed awhile in Venice
with her mother. She was glad to have him go; but she could not admire
Mr. Hoskins, who, however good-hearted, was too hopelessly Western. He
had had part of one foot shot away in the nine months' service, and
walked with a limp that did him honor; and he knew as much of a consul's
business as any of the authors or artists with whom it is the tradition
to fill that office at Venice. Besides he was at least a
fellow-American, and Elmore could not forbear telling him the trouble he
was in: a young girl coming from their town in America as far as Genoa
with friends, and expecting to be met there by the Elmores, with whom
she was to pass some