s. The last few years there had not been many presents; she
could not think what to make, and her aunt had lost her interest and
never suggested. But the people came all the same; if the Venetians
liked you once they liked you forever.

There was something affecting in the good faith of this sketch of former
social glories; the picnic at the Lido had remained vivid through the
ages, and poor Miss Tita evidently was of the impression that she had
had a brilliant youth. She had in fact had a glimpse of the Venetian
world in its gossiping, home-keeping, parsimonious, professional walks;
for I observed for the first time that she had acquired by contact
something of the trick of the familiar, soft-sounding, almost infantile
speech of the place. I judged that she had imbibed this invertebrate
dialect from the natural way the names of things and people--mostly
purely local--rose to her lips. If she knew little of what they
represented she knew still less of anything else. Her aunt had drawn
in--her failing interest in the table mats and lampshades was a sign of
that--and she had not been able to mingle in society or to entertain
it alone; so that the matter of her reminiscences struck one as an old
world altogether. If she had not been so decent her references would
have seemed to carry one back to the queer rococo Venice of Casanova.
I found myself falling into the error of thinking of her too as one of
Jeffrey Aspern's contemporaries; this came from her having so little in
common with my own. It was possible, I said to myself, that she had not
even heard of him; it might very well be that Juliana had not cared to
lift even for her the veil that covered the temple of her youth. In this
case she perhaps would not know of the existence of the papers, and I
welcomed that presumption--it made me feel more safe with her--until
I remembered that we had believed the letter of disavowal received by
Cumnor to be in the handwriting of the niece. If it had been dictated
to her she had of course to know what it was about; yet after all the
effect of it was to repudiate the idea of any connection with the poet.
I held it probable at all events that Miss Tita had not read a word of
his poetry. Moreover if, with her companion, she had always escaped the
interviewer there was little occasion for her having got it into her
head that people were "after" the letters. People had not been after
them, inasmuch as they had not heard of them; and Cu