t so much as touching an officer
with the hem of one's garment; and, a little later, when the band ceased
playing, she should go with the other Italians and possess the Piazza
for one blessed hour. In the mean time, the Paronsina had a sharp little
tongue; and, after she had flattered the landscape, and had, from her
true heart, once for all, saluted the promenaders as brothers and
sisters in Italy, she did not mind making fun of their peculiarities of
dress and person. She was signally sarcastic upon such ladies as Tonelli
chanced to admire, and often so stung him with her jests that he was
glad when Pennellini appeared, as he always did exactly at nine o'clock,
and joined the ladies in their promenade, asking and answering all those
questions of ceremony which form Venetian greeting. He was a youth of
the most methodical exactness in his whole life, and could no more have
arrived on the Molo a moment before or after nine than the bronze
giants on the clock-tower could have hastened or lingered in striking
the hour. Nature, which had made him thus punctual and precise, gave him
also good looks, and a most amiable kindness of heart. The Paronsina
cared nothing at all for him in his quality of handsome young fellow;
but she prized him as an acquaintance whom she might salute, and be
saluted by, in a city where her grandfather's isolation kept her strange
to nearly all the faces she saw. Sometimes her evenings on the Molo
wasted away without the exchange of a word save with Tonelli, for her
mother seldom talked; and then it was quite possible her teasing was
greater than his patience, and that he grew taciturn under her tongue.
At such times she hailed Pennellini's appearance with a double delight;
for, if he never joined in her attacks upon Tonelli's favorites, he
always enjoyed them, and politely applauded them. If his friend
reproached him for this treason, he made him every amend in answering,
"She is jealous, Tonelli,"--a wily compliment, which had the most
intense effect in coming from lips ordinarily so sincere as his.

The signora was weary of the promenade long before the Austrian music
ceased in the Piazza, and was very glad when it came time for them to
leave the Molo, and go and sit down to an ice at the Caffe Florian.
This was the supreme hour to the Paronsina, the one heavenly excess of
her restrained and eventless life. All about her were scattered tranquil
Italian idlers, listening to the music of the strol