he'e was, it wouldn't have been fai'a."

"Why, weren't you sincere about that?"

"Of cou'se I was!" returned the girl, almost indignantly. "But if the'e
was anything else, I ought to have told him that, too; and I couldn't."

"Then you can't tell me, of course?" Miss Milray rose in a little pique.

"Perhaps some day I will," the girl entreated. "And perhaps that was
all."

Miss Milray laughed. "Well, if that was enough to end it, I'm satisfied,
and I'll let you keep your mystery--if it is one--till we meet in
Venice; I shall be there early in June. Good bye, dear, and say good bye
to Mrs. Lander for me."

XXVIII.

Dr. Welwright got his patient a lodging on the Grand Canal in Venice,
and decided to stay long enough to note the first effect of the air and
the baths, and to look up a doctor to leave her with.

This took something more than a week, which could not all be spent in
Mrs. Lander's company, much as she wished it. There were hours which he
gave to going about in a gondola with Clementina, whom he forbade to
be always at the invalid's side. He tried to reassure her as to Mrs.
Lander's health, when he found her rather mute and absent, while they
drifted in the silvery sun of the late April weather, just beginning to
be warm, but not warm enough yet for the tent of the open gondola. He
asked her about Mrs. Lander's family, and Clementina could only tell him
that she had always said she had none. She told him the story of her own
relation to her, and he said, "Yes, I heard something of that from Miss
Milray." After a moment of silence, during which he looked curiously
into the girl's eyes, "Do you think you can bear a little more care,
Miss Claxon?"

"I think I can," said Clementina, not very courageously, but patiently.

"It's only this, and I wouldn't tell you if I hadn't thought you equal
to it. Mrs. Lander's case puzzles me: But I shall leave Dr. Tradonico
watching it, and if it takes the turn that there's a chance it may take,
he will tell you, and you'd better find out about her friends, and--let
them know. That's all."

"Yes," said Clementina, as if it were not quite enough. Perhaps she
did not fully realize all that the doctor had intended; life alone is
credible to the young; life and the expectation of it.

The night before he was to return to Florence there was a full moon; and
when he had got Mrs. Lander to sleep he asked Clementina if she would
not go out on the lagoon with him. He as