tinction. There were flower-boxes in the balcony, and other signs of
habitation, and the Colonel, quite as if he were rousing from a reverie,
and casting about for something to say, turned half-way toward the
gondolier and asked: "The Signora Daymond, is she here this season?"

[Illustration: "They were passing the charming little
Gothic palace known as the House
of Desdemona"]

"Si, Signore; and her Signor son is also in Venice."

This last statement formed a new departure, the "Signor son" having been
absent on the occasion of the Colonel's more recent visits. The
announcement excited in him a curious and quite unfounded resentment.
Indeed, so disturbing was it, not because of any inherent
objectionableness, but because of its implication of a change, that the
Colonel found himself quite thrown out of his accustomed line of
procedure. That this was the case was made manifest by the fact that he
did not adhere so far to established precedent as to wait until after
they had passed under the iron bridge before looking quite round into
Vittorio's face and asking: "All is well at the little red house? The
wife and the children?"

"All well, Signore; only the mother died last winter."

"Your wife's mother, I think it was?"

"Si, Signore; she died in February."

One less mouth to feed, the Colonel thought to himself; and perhaps the
thought was apparent to the quick perception of the gondolier, although
the _padrone_ only remarked: "An old woman she must have been."

For Vittorio's face grew wistful, and there was a tone of gentle
reproach in his voice, as he said: "We should like well to have the
mother with us again."

"Of course, of course!" the Colonel assented, eager to disclaim his
unspoken disloyalty. "And Nanni? What do you hear from him?"

"He is paying us a visit, the first in three years. He does not forget
the old life, and when the Milan doctors told him he must take a long
rest, that he needed a change, he said: 'I know it; I need to feel an
oar in my hand and the leap of the gondola under my feet.'"

"And does he row?"

"Si, Signore. He has an old tub of a gondola and he paddles about in it
all day long and is content as the king. More content, for he is doing
what he pleases, and the king,--it is said that he cannot always do as
he pleases. If he could we should be better governed."

A puzzled scowl contracted the fine open brow of the gondolier. That a
king should not do as he pleased was as