ess.

"Good-bye.... I needn't say how sorry I am about all this. It was hard
lines on you being brought into it."

He was making a transparent effort after friendliness; Peter almost
smiled at it. Poor Denis; what a relief it would be to him when the
disreputable Margerisons were off the scenes.

Peter paused at the door and said, in a low, embarrassed voice, "Would
you mind telling Lord Evelyn what I told him myself last night--that
I'm horribly sorry about it--sorrier than I have ever been for
anything.... It won't make any difference to him, I know--but if you will
just tell him.... And I'm sorry it happened while you were here, too.
You've been dragged in.... Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Margerison." Denis was grave, embarrassed, restrained, and not
unkind. It was obvious that he had nothing to say about it all.

Peter left the Ca' delle Gemme.

That afternoon Hilary received a note from Lord Evelyn. It was to the
effect that Lord Evelyn had decided not to bring an action, on the
understanding that Hilary and his brother and Vyvian left Venice at once
and discontinued for ever the profession of artistic advisers. If any of
the three was discovered engaging again in that business, those who
employed them should promptly be advised of their antecedents. They were,
in fact, to consider themselves warned off the turf. There was also to be
a paragraph about them in the English art papers.

"Well," was Peggy's comment, "it hasn't been such a grand trade that we
need mind much. We'll all come back to England and keep a boarding-house
there instead, and you shall paint the great pictures, darling, and have
ever so much more fun. And we'll never need to see that Vyvian again;
there's fine news for the babies, anyhow. And I will be relieved to get
them away from the canals; one of them would have been surely drowned
before long. In London they'll have only gutters."

Hilary, who was looking tired and limp after a distressing night and day,
said, "What shall you do, Peter?"

"I don't know," said Peter. "I must find something, I suppose. Some sort
of work, you know." He pronounced the word gingerly, distastefully, as
if it were a curious, unwonted one. "Perhaps I shall be able to get a
post as door-keeper somewhere; in some museum, you know, or perhaps a
theatre, or the White City. I've always thought that might be amusing."

"You wouldn't earn much that way," Hilary said hopelessly.

"Need one earn much?" Peter wondered;