ngle flight in pursuit, and all I could
do was to return to my room and register a vow within my own heart that
I would have nothing to do with this preposterous scheme.

Looking back upon what followed across the interval of fifteen years, I
find that I can really give no satisfactory reason for my having failed
to adhere to this wise resolution. I had no particular feeling of
friendship for Von Rosenau; I did not care two straws about the
Signorina Bianca, whom I had never seen; and certainly I am not, nor
ever was, the sort of person who loves romantic adventures for their
own sake. Perhaps it was good-nature, perhaps it was only an indolent
shrinking from disobliging anybody, that influenced me--it does not
much matter now. Whatever the cause of my yielding may have been, I did
yield. I prefer to pass over in silence the doubts and hesitations which
beset me for the remainder of the day; the arrival, toward evening,
of the piteous note from Von Rosenau, which finally overcame my
weak resistance to his will; and the series of circumstantial false
statements (I blush when I think of them) by means of which I accounted
to my sister for my proposed sudden departure.

Suffice it to say that, very early on the following morning, there might
have been seen, pacing up and down the shore on the seaward side of
the Lido, and peering anxiously about him through an eyeglass, as if in
search of somebody or something, the figure of a tall, spare Englishman,
clad in a complete suit of shepherd's tartan, with a wide-awake on his
head, a leather bag slung by a strap across his shoulder, and a light
coat over his arm. Myself, in point of act, in the travelling-costume of
the epoch.

I was kept waiting a long time--longer than I liked; for, as may be
supposed, I was most anxious to be well away from Venice before the rest
of the world was up and about; but at length there appeared, round the
corner of a long white wall which skirted the beach, a little lady,
thickly veiled, who, on catching sight of me, whisked round, and
incontinently vanished. This was so evidently the fair Bianca that I
followed her without hesitation, and almost ran into her arms as I swung
round the angle of the wall behind which she had retreated. She gave
a great start, stared at me, for an instant, like a startled fawn, and
then took to her heels and fled. It was rather ridiculous; but there was
nothing for me to do but to give chase. My legs are long, and I