As the summer months advanced, the transformation of the Venetian
palace into the modern hotel proceeded rapidly towards completion.
The outside of the building, with its fine Palladian front looking on
the canal, was wisely left unaltered. Inside, as a matter of necessity,
the rooms were almost rebuilt—so far at least as the size and the
arrangement of them were concerned. The vast saloons were partitioned
off into “apartments” containing three or four rooms each. The broad
corridors in the upper regions afforded spare space enough for rows of
little bedchambers, devoted to servants and to travellers with limited
means. Nothing was spared but the solid floors and the finely-carved
ceilings. These last, in excellent preservation as to workmanship,
merely required cleaning, and regilding here and there, to add greatly
to the beauty and importance of the best rooms in the hotel. The only
exception to the complete re-organization of the interior was at one
extremity of the edifice, on the first and second floors. Here there
happened, in each case, to be rooms of such comparatively moderate
size, and so attractively decorated, that the architect suggested
leaving them as they were. It was afterwards discovered that these were
no other than the apartments formerly occupied by Lord Montbarry (on
the first floor), and by Baron Rivar (on the second). The room in which
Montbarry had died was still fitted up as a bedroom, and was now
distinguished as Number Fourteen. The room above it, in which the Baron
had slept, took its place on the hotel-register as Number Thirty-Eight.
With the ornaments on the walls and ceilings cleaned and brightened up,
and with the heavy old-fashioned beds, chairs, and tables replaced by
bright, pretty, and luxurious modern furniture, these two promised to
be at once the most attractive and the most comfortable bedchambers in
the hotel. As for the once-desolate and disused ground floor of the
building, it was now transformed, by means of splendid dining-rooms,
reception-rooms, billiard-rooms, and smoking-rooms, into a palace by
itself. Even the dungeon-like vaults beneath, now lighted and
ventilated on the most approved modern plan, had been turned as if by
magic into kitchens, servants’ offices, ice-rooms, and wine cellars,
worthy of the splendour of the grandest hotel in Italy, in the now
bygone period of seventeen years since.
Passing from the lapse of the summer months at Venice, to the lapse of
the summer months in Ireland, it is next to be recorded that Mrs.
Rolland obtained the situation of attendant on the invalid Mrs.
Carbury; and that the fair Miss Haldane, like a female Caesar, came,
saw, and conquered, on her first day’s visit to the new Lord
Montbarry’s house.
The ladies were as loud in her praises as Arthur Barville himself. Lord
Montbarry declared that she was the only perfectly pretty woman he had
ever seen, who was really unconscious of her own attractions. The old
nurse said she looked as if she had just stepped out of a picture, and
wanted nothing but a gilt frame round her to make her complete. Miss
Haldane, on her side, returned from her first visit to the Montbarrys
charmed with her new acquaintances. Later on the same day, Arthur
called with an offering of fruit and flowers for Mrs. Carbury, and with
instructions to ask if she was well enough to receive Lord and Lady
Montbarry and Miss Lockwood on the morrow. In a week’s time, the two
households were on the friendliest terms. Mrs. Carbury, confined to the
sofa by a spinal malady, had been hitherto dependent on her niece for
one of the few pleasures she could enjoy, the pleasure of having the
best new novels read to her as they came out. Discovering this, Arthur
volunteered to relieve Miss Haldane, at intervals, in the office of
reader. He was clever at mechanical contrivances of all sorts, and he
introduced improvements in Mrs. Carbury’s couch, and in the means of
conveying her from the bedchamber to the drawing-room, which alleviated
the poor lady’s sufferings and brightened her gloomy life. With these
claims on the gratitude of the aunt, aided by the personal advantages
which he unquestionably possessed, Arthur advanced rapidly in the
favour of the charming niece. She was, it is needless to say, perfectly
well aware that he was in love with her, while he was himself modestly
reticent on the subject—so far as words went. But she was not equally
quick in penetrating the nature of her own feelings towards Arthur.
Watching the two young people with keen powers of observation,
necessarily concentrated on them by the complete seclusion of her life,
the invalid lady discovered signs of roused sensibility in Miss
Haldane, when Arthur was present, which had never yet shown themselves
in her social relations with other admirers eager to pay their
addresses to her. Having drawn her own conclusions in private, Mrs.
Carbury took the first favourable opportunity (in Arthur’s interests)
of putting them to the test.
“I don’t know what I shall do,” she said one day, “when Arthur goes
away.”
Miss Haldane looked up quickly from her work. “Surely he is not going
to leave us!” she exclaimed.
“My dear! he has already stayed at his uncle’s house a month longer
than he intended. His father and mother naturally expect to see him at
home again.”
Miss Haldane met this difficulty with a suggestion, which could only
have proceeded from a judgment already disturbed by the ravages of the
tender passion. “Why can’t his father and mother go and see him at Lord
Montbarry’s?” she asked. “Sir Theodore’s place is only thirty miles
away, and Lady Barville is Lord Montbarry’s sister. They needn’t stand
on ceremony.”
“They may have other engagements,” Mrs. Carbury remarked.
“My dear aunt, we don’t know that! Suppose you ask Arthur?”
“Suppose you ask him?”
Miss Haldane bent her head again over her work. Suddenly as it was
done, her aunt had seen her face—and her face betrayed her.
When Arthur came the next day, Mrs. Carbury said a word to him in
private, while her niece was in the garden. The last new novel lay
neglected on the table. Arthur followed Miss Haldane into the garden.
The next day he wrote home, enclosing in his letter a photograph of
Miss Haldane. Before the end of the week, Sir Theodore and Lady
Barville arrived at Lord Montbarry’s, and formed their own judgment of
the fidelity of the portrait. They had themselves married early in
life—and, strange to say, they did not object on principle to the early
marriages of other people. The question of age being thus disposed of,
the course of true love had no other obstacles to encounter. Miss
Haldane was an only child, and was possessed of an ample fortune.
Arthur’s career at the university had been creditable, but certainly
not brilliant enough to present his withdrawal in the light of a
disaster. As Sir Theodore’s eldest son, his position was already made
for him. He was two-and-twenty years of age; and the young lady was
eighteen. There was really no producible reason for keeping the lovers
waiting, and no excuse for deferring the wedding-day beyond the first
week in September. In the interval, while the bride and bridegroom
would be necessarily absent on the inevitable tour abroad, a sister of
Mrs. Carbury volunteered to stay with her during the temporary
separation from her niece. On the conclusion of the honeymoon, the
young couple were to return to Ireland, and were to establish
themselves in Mrs. Carbury’s spacious and comfortable house.
These arrangements were decided upon early in the month of August.
About the same date, the last alterations in the old palace at Venice
were completed. The rooms were dried by steam; the cellars were
stocked; the manager collected round him his army of skilled servants;
and the new hotel was advertised all over Europe to open in October.