d owed his life to Nevil, this Englishman proud of a
French name--Nevil Beauchamp. If there was any warm feeling below the
unruffled surface of the girl's deliberate eyes while gazing on him, it
was that he who had saved her brother must be nearly brother himself, yet
was not quite, yet must be loved, yet not approached. He was her
brother's brother-in-arms, brother-in-heart, not hers, yet hers through
her brother. His French name rescued him from foreignness. He spoke her
language with a piquant accent, unlike the pitiable English. Unlike them,
he was gracious, and could be soft and quick. The battle-scarlet,
battle-black, Roland's tales of him threw round him in her imagination,
made his gentleness a surprise. If, then, he was hers through her
brother, what was she to him? The question did not spring clearly within
her, though she was alive to every gradual change of manner toward the
convalescent necessitated by the laws overawing her sex.

Venice was the French girl's dream. She was realizing it hungrily,
revelling in it, anatomizing it, picking it to pieces, reviewing it,
comparing her work with the original, and the original with her first
conception, until beautiful sad Venice threatened to be no more her
dream, and in dread of disenchantment she tried to take impressions
humbly, really tasked herself not to analyze, not to dictate from a
French footing, not to scorn. Not to be petulant with objects
disappointing her, was an impossible task. She could not consent to a
compromise with the people, the merchandize, the odours of the city.
Gliding in the gondola through the narrow canals at low tide, she leaned
back simulating stupor, with one word--'Venezia!' Her brother was
commanded to smoke: 'Fumez, fumez, Roland!' As soon as the steel-crested
prow had pushed into her Paradise of the Canal Grande, she quietly
shrouded her hair from tobacco, and called upon rapture to recompense her
for her sufferings. The black gondola was unendurable to her. She had
accompanied her father to the Accademia, and mused on the golden Venetian
streets of Carpaccio: she must have an open gondola to decorate in his
manner, gaily, splendidly, and mock at her efforts--a warning to all that
might hope to improve the prevailing gloom and squalor by levying
contributions upon the Merceria! Her most constant admiration was for the
English lord who used once to ride on the Lido sands and visit the
Armenian convent--a lord and a poet. [Lord Byr