go.

"So you are Geof!" the Colonel exclaimed. "I might have known it, too,
though I had quite forgotten that you were grown up."

"And you are Colonel Steele! Why, this is great! You used to be
first-rate to me when I was a little chap. Were those your daughters in
the gallery?"

"No, my nieces," said the Colonel, and his spirits went up like a cork.
He knew the Signora was great friends with her son, but she evidently
understood where to draw the line!

"And I may bring them to see you, Signora?"

"The sooner the better. Why not this afternoon? We can have tea early
and get a couple of hours on the lagoon in the pretty light. I'm afraid
you have an engagement, haven't you, Geof?"

"Oh, I don't mind throwing Kenwick over. He'll keep," and the young man
stepped to the other window and flung it open.

Geoffry Daymond went down to the door with his mother's old friend, but
he had the tact not to offer him a hand across the plank to the gondola;
an act of forbearance which was not lost upon the Colonel.

"Not a bit like his mother," the Colonel was saying to himself. "Not a
bit. Wonder if he takes after his father. The kind of man that would
stick in a woman's memory, I should say."

And then, just as the gondola was passing the house where the little
stone girls keep their uncomprehending outlook upon the world, a sharp
pang took him, followed by a strange--was it a disloyal?--sense of
relief, and he exclaimed, under his breath, "I never asked her!"

VI

A Festa

"You didn't tell us what a beauty Mrs. Daymond was, Uncle Dan," said
May, as they sat at dinner that evening.

They had a small table to themselves, close by one of the long glass
doors opening out into the garden. It was a warm evening, and sweet,
vagrant perfumes came straying in at the open door, and in the momentary
hush which sometimes falls upon the noisiest _table d'hote_, pretty
plashing sounds could be heard in the Canal beyond the garden.

"Not a very easy thing to do," said Uncle Dan, setting down his glass of
claret, with a wry face. He felt sure that the wine had been kept on
ice. Ugh!

"Have you known her a long time?"

"Yes, Polly; since before you were born."

"What an age!" cried May. "And you never told us a word about her!"

"Fact is," Uncle Dan explained, "I haven't seen her more than once in
five or six years, and then only over here. You'll find people don't
want to hear about your travels."

Really quite an