be of use to you."

"My daughter is a study, sir, you will say," said the elder lady in a
little, light, conciliating voice, and graciously accepting the drawing
again.

"I will admit," said Longueville, "that I am very inconsistent. Set it
down to my esteem, madam," he added, looking at the mother.

"That 's for you, mamma," said his model, disengaging her arm from her
mother's hand and turning away.

The mamma stood looking at the sketch with a smile which seemed to
express a tender desire to reconcile all accidents.

"It 's extremely beautiful," she murmured, "and if you insist on my
taking it--"

"I shall regard it as a great honor."

"Very well, then; with many thanks, I will keep it." She looked at the
young man a moment, while her daughter walked away. Longueville thought
her a delightful little person; she struck him as a sort of transfigured
Quakeress--a mystic with a practical side. "I am sure you think she 's a
strange girl," she said.

"She is extremely pretty."

"She is very clever," said the mother.

"She is wonderfully graceful."

"Ah, but she 's good!" cried the old lady.

"I am sure she comes honestly by that," said Longueville, expressively,
while his companion, returning his salutation with a certain scrupulous
grace of her own, hurried after her daughter.

Longueville remained there staring at the view but not especially seeing
it. He felt as if he had at once enjoyed and lost an opportunity. After
a while he tried to make a sketch of the old beggar-woman who sat there
in a sort of palsied immobility, like a rickety statue at a church-door.
But his attempt to reproduce her features was not gratifying, and he
suddenly laid down his brush. She was not pretty enough--she had a bad
profile.

CHAPTER II

Two months later Bernard Longueville was at Venice, still under the
impression that he was leaving Italy. He was not a man who made plans
and held to them. He made them, indeed--few men made more--but he
made them as a basis for variation. He had gone to Venice to spend a
fortnight, and his fortnight had taken the form of eight enchanting
weeks. He had still a sort of conviction that he was carrying out his
plans; for it must be confessed that where his pleasure was concerned he
had considerable skill in accommodating his theory to his practice. His
enjoyment of Venice was extreme, but he was roused from it by a summons
he was indisposed to resist. This consisted of a lette