ry! Everybody is looking out for that," said Lily.

"Is it possible," said Elmore, with a pensive sarcasm in which an
agreeable sense of flattery lurked, "that people still remember me and
my history?"

"Yes, indeed!" cried Miss Mayhew. "Frank Halsey was talking about it the
night before I left. He couldn't seem to understand why I should be
coming to you at Venice, because he said it was a history of Florence
you were writing. It isn't, is it? You must be getting pretty near the
end of it, Professor Elmore."

"I'm getting pretty near the beginning," said Elmore sadly.

"It must be hard writing histories; they're so awfully hard to read,"
said Lily innocently. "Does it interest you?" she asked, with unaffected
compassion.

"Yes," he said, "far more than it will ever interest anybody else."

"Oh, I don't believe that!" she cried sweetly, seizing the occasion to
get in a little compliment.

Mrs. Elmore sat silent, while things were thus going against Miss
Mayhew, and perhaps she was then meditating the stroke by which she
restored the balance to her own favor as soon as she saw her husband
alone after breakfast. "Well, Owen," she said, "you've done it now."

"Done what?" he demanded.

"Oh, nothing, perhaps!" she answered, while she got on her things for
the walk with unusual gayety; and, with the consciousness of unknown
guilt depressing him, he followed the ladies upon their errand, subdued,
distraught, but gradually forgetting his sin, as he forgot everything
but his history. His wife hated to see him so miserable, and whispered
at the shop-door where they parted, "Don't be troubled, Owen! I didn't
mean anything."

"By what?"

"Oh, if you've forgotten, never mind!" she cried; and she and Miss
Mayhew disappeared within.

It was two hours later when he next saw them, after he had turned over
the book he wished to see, and had found the passage which would enable
him to go on with his work for the rest of the day at home. He was
fitting his key into the house-door when he happened to look up the
little street toward the bridge that led into it, and there, defined
against the sky on the level of the bridge, he saw Mrs. Elmore and Miss
Mayhew receiving the adieux of a distinguished-looking man in the
Austrian uniform. The officer had brought his heels together in the
conventional manner, and with his cap in his right hand, while his left
rested on the hilt of his sword, and pressed it down, he was bowing from