us with her great tragic eyes; so that somehow it seems as if
she might have been a mere apparition."

"I think it very likely, for I am sure she has always been there when I
have passed," said Uncle Dan, with conviction.

"I didn't see anything tragic about her eyes," May objected. "I thought
she looked rather stupid, as if she had forgotten what she came out
for."

"Which was probably the case," Uncle Dan admitted. Whence it will be
seen that Uncle Dan, gallant officer in the past and practical man of
affairs to-day, was as wax in the hands of his nieces, equally ready to
agree with each.

Yet Colonel Steele had not the appearance of a man of wax. On the
contrary, his spare, wiry figure was full of vigour, his glance was as
keen and his speech as imperative as that of the veriest martinet. He
had commanded men in his day; he had fought the stern persistent fight
of a good soldier, and if, when the great cause was won, he had hung up
his sword and sash and laid aside his uniform, he had yet never succeeded
in looking the civilian, and his military title had clung to him through
thirty years of practical life. Furthermore, if it must be admitted that
he looked somewhat older than his sixty years, that fact was not to be
accounted for by any acknowledged infirmity, unless, indeed, the stiff
leg he had brought with him from his four years' service should be
reckoned as such.

"But you like it, May?"

It was Pauline who asked, and she put the question as if she valued her
sister's opinion.

"Yes," May answered, in her most judicial manner; "I like it. As you
say, it is very much what one expected. But of course it is rather
early to judge yet."

[Illustration: "On a stone bridge, leaning against the
iron railing, stood a woman in
a sulphur shawl"]

As if to refute this cautious statement, the gondola quietly glided out
again upon the Grand Canal, in full face of a great white dome, rising
superbly from a sculptured marble octagon against a radiant sky. Sky and
dome and sculptured figure, each cast its image deep down in the tranquil
waters at its base, where, as it chanced, no passing barge or steamboat
was shivering it to fragments.

"Ah!" said Pauline, with inarticulate eloquence.

"That is the Salute," Uncle Dan remarked; while May wondered how she
liked it.

Half-a-dozen strokes of the oar brought them in among the tall,
shielding posts, close alongside the steps of the _Venezia_. As
the hotel porter