htly-booted feet;
pausing on the threshold to say: "From the first it was hopeless,"
before he disappeared through the glass doors.

A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick's mind: there was
something quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient
Mr. Buttles reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what
a painful surprise to the Hickses to be thus suddenly deprived of the
secretary who possessed "the foreign languages"! Mr. Beck kept the
accounts and settled with the hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles's
loftier task to entertain in their own tongues the unknown geniuses who
flocked about the Hickses, and Nick could imagine how disconcerting his
departure must be on the eve of their Grecian cruise which Mrs. Hicks
would certainly call an Odyssey.

The next moment the vision of Coral's hopeless suitor had faded, and
Nick was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own woes.
The night before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from a little
restaurant close to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often patronized, he had
done so with the firm intention of going away for a day or two in order
to collect his wits and think over the situation. But after his letter
had been entrusted to the landlord's little son, who was a particular
friend of Susy's, Nick had decided to await the lad's return. The
messenger had not been bidden to ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing
the friendly and inquisitive Italian mind, was almost sure that the boy,
in the hope of catching a glimpse of Susy, would linger about while the
letter was carried up. And he pictured the maid knocking at his wife's
darkened room, and Susy dashing some powder on her tear-stained face
before she turned on the light--poor foolish child!

The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he had
brought no answer, but merely the statement that the signora was out:
that everybody was out.

"Everybody?"

"The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace. They
all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to
whom I could give the note but the gondolier on the landing, for the
signora had said she would be very late, and had sent the maid to bed;
and the maid had, of course, gone out immediately with her innamorato."

"Ah--" said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy's hand, and walking
out of the restaurant.

Susy had gone out--gone out with their usual band, as she did every
night in thes