"Yes," said Susanna, pleasantly. "The _Fiorimondo_ takes me as far as
Venice. There I leave it for the train."

The Commendatore's faded old blue eyes flickered anxiously.

"I can't think I am dreaming," he remarked, with a kind of vague
plaintiveness; "and of course you are not serious. My dear, I don't
understand."

"Oh, I 'm as serious as mathematics," she assured him.

She gave her head a little pensive movement of affirmation, and lifted
her eyes to his, bright with an expression of trustful candour. This
was an expression she was somewhat apt to assume when her mood was a
teasing one; and it generally had the effect of breaking down the
Commendatore's gravity. "You are a witch," he would laugh, availing
himself without shame of the way-worn reproach, "a wicked, irresistible
little witch."

"The thing," she explained, "is as simple as good-day. I 'm starting
on my travels--to see the world--Paris, which I have only seen
once--London, which I have never seen--the seaports of Bohemia, the
mountains of Thule, which I have often seen from a distance, in the
mists on the horizon. The _Fiorimondo_ takes me as far as Venice.
That is one of the advantages of owning a steam-yacht. Otherwise, I
should have to go by the Austrian-Lloyd packet; and that would n't be
half so comfortable."

Her eyes, still raised to the Commendatore's, melted in a smile;--a
smile seemingly all innocence, persuasiveness, tender appeal for
approbation, but (I 'm afraid) with an undergleam that was like a
mocking challenge.

He, perforce, smiled too, though with manifest reluctance; and at the
same time he frowned.

"My dear, if it were possible, I should be angry with you. This is
scarcely an appropriate hour for mystifications."

"_That_ it is n't," agreed Susanna, heartily. And she put up her hand,
to cover a weary little yawn. "But there 's _no_ mystification. There
's a perfectly plain statement of fact. I 'm starting to-night for
Venice."

He studied her intently for a moment, fixedly, pondering something.
Then, all at once, the lines of dismay cleared from his lean old
ivory-yellow face.

"Ha! In a ball-dress," he scoffed, and pointed a finger at Susanna's
snowy confection of tulle and satin and silver embroidery, all
a-shimmer in the artificial moonlight of the electric lamps, against
the background of southern garden,--the outlines and masses, dim and
mysterious in the night, of palms and cypresses, of slender