Immediately afterward, however, she sat down on the shingle and began to cry. It was too vexatious: what on earth was I to do?

"Do you understand English?" I asked, despairingly.

She shook her head, but sobbed out that she spoke French; so I proceeded to address her in that language.

"Signorina, if you do not get up and control your emotion, I will not be answerable for the consequences. We are surrounded by dangers of the most—compromising description; and every moment of delay must add to them. I know that the officers often come out here to bathe in the morning; so do many of the English people from Danielli's. If we are discovered together there will be such a scandal as never was, and you will most assuredly not become Countess von Rosenau. Think of that, and it will brace your nerves. What you have to do is to come directly with me to the boat which is all ready to take us to Mestre. Allow me to carry your hand-bag."

Not a bit of it! The signorina refused to stir.

"What is it? Where is Alberto? What has happened?" she cried. "You have told me nothing."

"Well, then, I will explain," I answered, impatiently. And I explained accordingly.

But, dear me, what a fuss she did make over it all! One would have supposed, to hear her, that I had planned this unfortunate complication for my own pleasure, and that I ought to have been playing the part of a suppliant instead of that of a sorely tried benefactor. First she was so kind as to set me down as an imposter, and was only convinced of my honesty when I showed her a letter in the beloved Alberto's handwriting. Then she declared that she could not possibly go off with a total stranger. Then she discovered that, upon further consideration, she could not abandon poor dear papa in his old age. And so forth, and so forth, with a running accompaniment of tears and sobs. Of course she consented at last to enter the boat; but I was so exasperated by her silly behaviour that I would not speak to her, and had really scarcely noticed whether she was pretty or plain till we were more than half-way to Mestre. But when we had hoisted our sail, and were running before a fine, fresh breeze toward the land, and our four men had shipped their oars and were chattering and laughing under their breath in the bows, and the first perils of our enterprise seemed to have been safely surmounted, my equanimity began to return to me, and I stole a glance at the partner of my flight, who had lifted her veil, and showed a pretty, round, childish face, with a clear, brown complexion, and a pair of the most splendid dark eyes it has ever been my good fortune to behold. There were no tears in them now, but a certain half-frightened, half-mischievous light instead, as if she rather enjoyed the adventure, in spite of its inauspicious opening. A very little encouragement induced her to enter into conversation, and ere long she was prattling away as unrestrainedly as if we had been friends all our lives. She asked me a great many questions. What was I doing in Venice? Had I known Alberto long? Was I very fond of him? Did I think that the old Count von Rosenau would be very angry when he heard of his son's marriage? I answered her as best I could, feeling very sorry for the poor little soul, who evidently did not in the least realise the serious nature of the step which she was about to take; and she grew more and more communicative. In the course of a quarter of an hour I had been put in possession of all the chief incidents of her uneventful life.

I had heard how she had lost her mother when she was still an infant; how she had been educated partly by two maiden aunts, partly in a convent at Verona; how she had latterly led a life of almost complete seclusion in the old Venetian palace; how she had first met Alberto; and how, after many doubts and misgivings, she had finally been prevailed upon to sacrifice all for his sake, and to leave her father, who,—stern, severe, and suspicious, though he had always been generous to her,—had tried to give her such small pleasures as his means and habits would permit. She had a likeness of him with her, she said,—perhaps I might like to see it. She dived into her travelling-bag as she spoke, and produced from thence a full-length photograph of a tall, well-built gentleman of sixty or thereabouts, whose gray hair, black moustache, and intent, frowning gaze made up an ensemble more striking than attractive.

"Is he not handsome—poor papa?" she asked.

I said the marchese was certainly a very fine-looking man, and inwardly thanked my stars that he was safely at Padua; for looking at the breadth of his chest, the length of his arm, and the somewhat forbidding cast of his features, I could not help perceiving that "poor papa" was precisely one of those persons with whom a prudent man prefers to keep friends than to quarrel.

And so, by the time that we reached Mestre, we had become quite friendly and intimate, and had half forgotten, I think, the absurd relation in which we stood toward each other. We had rather an awkward moment when we left the boat and entered our travelling-carriage; for I need scarcely say that both the boatmen and the grinning vetturino took me for the bridegroom whose place I temporarily occupied, and they were pleased to be facetious in a manner which was very embarrassing to me, but which I could not very well check. Moreover, I felt compelled so far to sustain my assumed character as to be specially generous in the manner of a buona mano to those four jolly watermen, and for the first few miles of our drive I could not help remembering this circumstance with some regret, and wondering whether it would occur to Von Rosenau to reimburse me.

Probably our coachman thought that, having a runaway couple to drive, he ought to make some pretence, at least, of fearing pursuit; for he set off at such a furious pace that our four half-starved horses were soon beat, and we had to perform the remainder of the long, hot, dusty journey at a foot's pace. I have forgotten how we made the time pass. I think we slept a good deal. I know we were both very tired and a trifle cross when in the evening we reached Longarone, a small, poverty-stricken village, on the verge of that dolomite region which, in these latter days, has become so frequented by summer tourists.

Tourists usually leave in their wake some of the advantages as well as the drawbacks of civilisation; and probably there is now a respectable hotel at Longarone. I suppose, therefore, that I may say, without risk of laying myself open to an action for slander, that a more filthy den than the osteria before which my charge and I alighted no imagination, however disordered, could conceive. It was a vast, dismal building, which had doubtless been the palace of some rich citizen of the republic in days of yore, but which had now fallen into dishonoured old age. Its windows and outside shutters were tightly closed, and had been so, apparently, from time immemorial; a vile smell of rancid oil and garlic pervaded it in every part; the cornices of its huge, bare rooms were festooned with blackened cobwebs, and the dust and dirt of ages had been suffered to accumulate upon the stone floors of its corridors. The signorina tucked up her petticoats as she picked her way along the passages to her bedroom, while I remained behind to order dinner of the sulky, black-browed padrona to whom I had already had to explain that my companion and I were not man and wife, and who, I fear, had consequently conceived no very high opinion of us. Happily the priest had already been warned by telegram that his service would not be required until the morrow; so I was spared the nuisance of an interview with him.

After a time we sat down to our tete-a-tete dinner. Such a dinner! Even after a lapse of all these years I am unable to think of it without a shudder. Half famished though we were, we could not do much more than look at the greater part of the dishes which were set before us; and the climax was reached when we were served with