the
widow. Seven more gondolas were packed. The procession moved. We glided
down the little channel, broke away into the Grand Canal, crossed it,
and dived into a labyrinth from which we finally emerged before our
destination, the Trattoria di San Gallo. The perils of the landing were
soon over; and, with the rest of the guests, my mercurial companion and
I slowly ascended a long flight of stairs leading to a vast upper
chamber. Here we were to dine.

It had been the gallery of some palazzo in old days, was above one
hundred feet in length, fairly broad, with a roof of wooden rafters and
large windows opening on a courtyard garden. I could see the tops of
three cypress-trees cutting the grey sky upon a level with us. A long
table occupied the centre of this room. It had been laid for upwards of
forty persons, and we filled it. There was plenty of light from great
glass lustres blazing with gas. When the ladies had arranged their
dresses, and the gentlemen had exchanged a few polite remarks, we all
sat down to dinner--I next my inexorable widow, Eustace beside his calm
and comely partner. The first impression was one of disappointment. It
looked so like a public dinner of middle-class people. There was no
local character in costume or customs. Men and women sat politely bored,
expectant, trifling with their napkins, yawning, muttering nothings
about the weather or their neighbours. The frozen commonplaceness of the
scene was made for me still more oppressive by Signora dell'Acqua. She
was evidently satirical, and could not be happy unless continually
laughing at or with somebody. "What a stick the woman will think me!" I
kept saying to myself. "How shall I ever invent jokes in this strange
land? I cannot even flirt with her in Venetian! And here I have
condemned myself--and her too, poor thing--to sit through at least three
hours of mortal dulness!" Yet the widow was by no means unattractive.
Dressed in black, she had contrived by an artful arrangement of lace and
jewellery to give an air of lightness to her costume. She had a pretty
little pale face, a _minois chiffonne_, with slightly turned-up nose,
large laughing brown eyes, a dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously
frizzled mop of powdered hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her
quietly, without being giggled at or driven half mad by unintelligible
incitements to a jocularity I could not feel, it struck me that, if we
once found a common term of communicat