That evening Mr. Churchill dined with his cousin and Mrs. Graham at their
hotel, and afterward sat with his cousin in their balcony.
He found Edith wonderfully improved. She was either prettier, or her
educated taste made her look so. She knew how to dress now, and her manner
was better. She was cheerful, and she carried her head higher. The hair he
once had thought red he knew now was the color the Venetian painters loved,
and he looked admiringly at the rich coils that crowned her graceful head.
Besides, there was no sign of that too evident love which had driven him
from her. She looked at him calmly, and spoke with a familiarity which had
an undefined coolness in it.
While they sat there alone, talking pleasantly, a servant brought a note
for Mr. Churchill. It had been taken to his house and forwarded to him.
Excusing himself, he went into the room to read it by the shaded lamp.
His cousin turned her head, and watched him unseen. She saw his face grow
crimson as he read, the veins standing out on his forehead, then grow pale
again. She had thought while they sat at dinner that he was looking pale.
He stood bent down, with his eyes fixed on the page, and, without turning
the leaf, gazing at what he had read as if he did not understand it.
"My dear friend," Mrs. Lindsay had written, "after a certain conversation
which we had some time ago, I think I ought to tell you my news without
delay. The Duke of Sassovivo is with us, and this evening he has presented
Aurora to us as his future wife."
He stood so long gazing at the words that his cousin went to him.
"Excuse me, Edith, I must go out," he said, in a stifled voice.
"Good-night, Edward," she said, and asked no questions, but held out her
hand.
The hand that took hers was cold, and her good-night received not a word
of response.
He went out and called a gondola.
"Where to?" the gondolier asked.
"Anywhere!"
They went up and down, and across to the Giudecca, and down again, and
turned the point of the Public Garden, and the gondolier was about
returning, when for the first time his passenger spoke:
"Go round by San Pietro and inside by San Daniele. Go where it is dark."
"He is disappointed in love, or jealous," the man thought as they threaded
the inner ways of the city, now by a lighted piazza, now under shadowing
bridges, or along the gloomy, silent walls of palaces that shut them in.
"Where shall I go now?" he ventured to ask, when they had gone the whole
length of the city. "We are in the Cannareggio."
The passenger raised himself. He had sat all the time with his head bowed
down. "Let her drop down the canal," he said, his voice grown gentler.
"Keep well to the left."
They went out into the canal and downward. Passing under the Rialto, there
rose a deep sigh from the gondola, and the echoing arch whispered back a
sigh.
The passenger was alert now, looking at all the palaces at the left, as
though he had never seen them before. As they passed Palazzo Pesaro a
gondola touched its steps, and a lady and gentleman got out and walked up
to the portone. The moonlight sparkled on, the uniform of one and on the
gilded fan of the other. They had been out together, and alone, drawing
sweetness from the same air where he had breathed in bitterness.
"Well, it is fitting," he sighed. "Her head was made to wear a coronet.
God bless her!--and him."
He looked at them standing in the archway of the palace saying good-night
till distance hid them from him. He was in front of his cousin's hotel,
and, looking up, he saw her still sitting in the balcony where he had left
her.
Late as it was, he landed and went up to her again. She recognized him
when he stepped out of the gondola, and was not too much surprised when he
appeared. He seated himself beside her, and looked out over the water
without saying a word.
"Are you not well?" she asked at length, timidly.