ssion on the girl, who
replied, "Oh, yes. I know that; it's what I always told her to do. I
didn't want it."

"You didn't want it?"

"No."

"Well!" The vice-consul stared at her, but he forbore the comment that
her indifference inspired. He said after a pause, "Then what we've got to
do is to advertise for the Michigan relations, and let 'em take any
action they want to."

"That's the only thing we could do, I presume."

This gave the vice-consul another pause. At the end of it he got to his
feet. "Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Claxon?"

She went to her portfolio and produced Mrs. Lander's letter of credit. It
had been made out for three thousand pounds, in Clementina's name as well
as her own; but she had lived wastefully since she had come abroad, and
little money remained to be taken up. With the letter Clementina handed
the vice-consul the roll of Italian and Austrian bank-notes which she had
drawn when Mrs. Lander decided to leave Venice; they were to the amount
of several thousand lire and golden. She offered them with the
insensibility to the quality of money which so many women have, and which
is always so astonishing to men. "What must I do with these?" she asked.

"Why, keep them! returned the vice-consul on the spur of his surprise.

"I don't know as I should have any right to," said Clementina. "They were
hers."

"Why, but"--The vice-consul began his protest, but he could not end it
logically, and he did not end it at all. He insisted with Clementina that
she had a right to some money which Mrs. Lander had given her during her
life; he took charge of the bank-notes in the interest of the possible
heirs, and gave her his receipt for them. In the meantime he felt that he
ought to ask her what she expected to do.

"I think," she said, "I will stay in Venice awhile."

The vice-consul suppressed any surprise he might have felt at a decision
given with mystifying cheerfulness. He answered, Well, that was right;
and for the second time he asked her if there was anything he could do
for her.

"Why, yes," she returned. "I should like to stay on in the house here, if
you could speak for me to the padrone."

"I don't see why you shouldn't, if we can make the padrone understand
it's different."

"You mean about the price?" The vice-consul nodded. "That's what I want
you should speak to him about, Mr. Bennam, if you would. Tell him that I
haven't got but a little money now, and he would have