ttorio, which way is the Lido?" she asked presently, in her crispest
Italian. She was sitting on the carpeted steps at the prow, whence she
had been regarding, with a quite impersonal interest, the swaying motion
of the supple, picturesque figure at the oar. She was not sure that she
altogether approved of the broad white straw hat, with fluttering ends
of blue ribbon, nor of the blue woollen sash with its white fringe which
waved back and forth as its wearer trod the deck; but these were minor
details, and the total effect was undeniably good.

Vittorio, accustomed to that particular kind of attention which the
tourist bestows impartially upon man or gondola, the _briccoli_ whose
clustering posts mark the channels in the lagoon, or the towers of the
mad-house rising from yonder island,--had continued his unswerving gaze
straight over the head of the Signorina. At the sound of his name his
bearing changed. Lifting his hat, he took a step forward, and, still
plying the oar with his right hand, he said: "Over yonder is Sant'
Elisabetta del Lido, where the tourists go. But the Lido reaches for
miles between us and the sea,--as the Signore will tell you," he added,
with the careful deference that the Colonel knew so well.

The familiar voice of the gondolier, striking across his meditations,
had a singular effect upon the Colonel. It made him aware that this was
a different Venice from the one which Vittorio had been wont to show
him. What had become of the pensive quality of the atmosphere, the
brooding melancholy of its impression upon him? Where, he wondered,
half-resentfully, was the dim oppression, the subtle pain he had
heretofore associated with these tranquil water spaces? What witch-work
were those girls playing with the traditions of twenty-five years? He
glanced from one to the other of their unconscious faces, each absorbed
after its own fashion. After all, it was pleasant to look upon the world
through young eyes. No fear but the old preoccupation would reassert
itself in due time. But somehow his mind declined to concern itself with
that just now, and with a half-humorous deprecation, he resumed his
contemplation of his two Pollys.

His claim to such a unique possession formed in itself an achievement
upon which the Colonel prided himself not a little. He often recalled
his chagrin when his sister Mary,--Polly as he, and he alone had called
her,--failed to give her eldest daughter her own name. How could he,