the first; and as for me—I’ve had a windfall, and am blowing it in on the ladies.”
Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point. But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It was plain that Vanderlyn’s protest had been merely formal: like most of the wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented to the poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed Vanderlyn’s attention.
“A windfall?” he gaily repeated.
“Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of you,” said Strefford imperturbably.
Vanderlyn’s look immediately became interested and sympathetic. “What—the scene of the honeymoon?” He included Nick and Susy in his friendly smile.
“Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will you, old man, I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse luck—and I don’t mind telling you that Ellie’s no judge of tobacco, and that Nick’s too far gone in bliss to care what he smokes,” Strefford grumbled, stretching a hand toward his host’s cigar-case.
“I do like jewellery best,” Clarissa murmured, hugging her father.
Nelson Vanderlyn’s first word to his wife had been that he had brought her all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with appropriate enthusiasm. In fact, to the lookers-on her joy at seeing him seemed rather too patently in proportion to her satisfaction at getting her clothes. But no such suspicion appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn’s happiness in being, for once, and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same roof with his wife and child. He did not conceal his regret at having promised his mother to join her the next day; and added, with a wistful glance at Ellie: “If only I’d known you meant to wait for me!”
But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady to whom he owed his being. “Mother cares for so few people,” he used to say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness, “that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable”; and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should be ready to start the next evening.
“And meanwhile,” he concluded, “we’ll have all the good time that’s going.”
The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn had despatched a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy should carry him off for a tea-picnic at Torcello. They did not even suggest that Strefford or Nick should be of the party, or that any of the other young men of the group should be summoned; as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his harem. And Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.
“Well—that’s what you call being married!” Strefford commented, waving his battered Panama at Clarissa.
“Oh, no, I don’t!” Lansing laughed.
“He does. But do you know—” Strefford paused and swung about on his companion—“do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I don’t care to be there. I believe there’ll be some crockery broken.”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered away to his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his pipe.
Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn’t, except poor old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing because so typical; now, it rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn should be so complete an ass. But he would be off the next day, and so would Ellie, and then, for many enchanted weeks, the palace would once more be the property of Nick and Susy. Of all the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones who appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and that made it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it became easy to regard the Vanderlyns as mere transient intruders.
Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut himself up with his book. He had returned to it with fresh energy after his few weeks of holiday-making, and was determined to finish it quickly. He did not expect that it would bring in much money; but if it were moderately successful it might give him an opening in the reviews and magazines, and in that case he meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since it was only as a purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a living for himself and Susy.
Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of doors. He loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the bruised peach-tints of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of sunlight on dark green canals, the smell of half-decayed fruits and flowers thickening the languid air. What visions he could build, if he dared, of being tucked away with Susy in the attic of some tumble-down palace, above a jade-green waterway, with a terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected garden—and cheques from the publishers dropping in at convenient intervals! Why should they not settle in Venice if he pulled it off!
He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing open the leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of rose-and-lemon angels in Tiepolo’s great vault. It was not a church in which one was likely to run across sight-seers; but he presently remarked a young lady standing alone near the choir, and assiduously applying her field-glass to the celestial vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an open manual.
As Lansing’s step sounded on the pavement, the young lady, turning, revealed herself as Miss Hicks.
“Ah—you like this too? It’s several centuries out of your line, though, isn’t it!” Nick asked as they shook hands.
She gazed at him gravely. “Why shouldn’t one like things that are out of one’s line?” she answered; and he agreed, with a laugh, that it was often an incentive.
She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two remarks about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her way toward a subject of more personal interest.
“I’m glad to see you alone,” she said at length, with an abruptness that might have seemed awkward had it not been so completely unconscious. She turned toward a cluster of straw chairs, and signed to Nick to seat himself beside her.
“I seldom do,” she added, with the serious smile that made her heavy face almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time to protest: “I wanted to speak to you—to explain about father’s invitation to go with us to Persia and Turkestan.”
“To explain?”
