lashes drooped in instinctive, native coquetry.

"Aren't you going to introduce your uncle to me?" she said in a lowered
voice.

He looked at her, mystified and attracted.

"If I knew you better, Mrs. Milbanke----" he began.

But without replying, Clodagh moved away from him across the hall and
out on to the terrace. There, transfixed by a new impression, she
paused involuntarily.

Venice is beautiful in the morning and exquisite in the twilight, but
it is at night that the mystery of Venice--that most subtle of its many
charms--enwraps and envelops it like a magic web. There is nothing in
Europe to rival the literal, tangible romance of Venice at night: the
faint, idle, infinitely suggestive lap of water against a thousand
unseen steps; the secret darkness, revealed rather than dispersed by
the furtive, uneven lights shed forth from windows or open doors; the
throb of music that seems woven into the picture--an inseparable,
integral part of the enchanted life. All is a wonder and a joy.

To Clodagh, with her inherent love of things mystic and beautiful, the
scene was curiously impressive. In an ecstasy of appreciation, she
stood drinking it in; then, suddenly touched with the warm desire of
sharing her sensations, she turned to her companion.

"Isn't it--wonderful?" she said below her breath.

Serracauld looked at her for a moment in puzzled doubt; then he smiled
indulgently.

"Yes!" he said vaguely. "Yes! It is rather great--the water and the
gondolas and--and all that sort of thing----"

Her large, clear eyes rested on his face, then slowly returned to their
scrutiny of the canal. A momentary sense of disappointment had assailed
her--she was conscious of a momentary jar. But as she stood, silent and
uncertain, a burst of low, throbbing music broke across the darkness,
and at the same moment she became conscious of a large gondola gliding
up to the hotel steps.

With the excitement of anticipation, the cloud passed from her face.

"Come!" she cried--"come! I see Mr. Barnard."

It was at the head of the flight of stone steps leading to the water,
that Lord Deerehurst was introduced to her; and in the semi-darkness,
it struck her that he made a distinctly interesting figure, with his
black hair worn a shade lower on the forehead than modern fashion
permits; his pale, aristocratic, unemotional face; his cold,
penetrating eyes; and the somewhat unusual evening clothes that fitted
his tall figure closely a