e side-canals were dark and noiseless but for the hundreds
of caged nightingales that made every byway musical. As his prow slipped
past garden walls and under the blackness of low-ached bridges Odo felt
the fathomless mystery of the Venetian night: not the open night of the
lagoons, but the secret dusk of nameless waterways between blind windows
and complaisant gates.

At one of these his gondola presently touched. The gate was cautiously
unbarred and Odo found himself in a strip of garden preceding a low
pavilion in which not a light was visible. A woman-servant led him
indoors and the Marquess greeted him on the threshold.

"You are late!" he exclaimed. "I began to fear you would not be here to
receive our guests with me."

"Your guests?" Odo repeated. "I had fancied there was but one."

The Marquess smiled. "My dear Mary of the Crucifix," he said, "is too
well-born to venture out alone at this late hour, and has prevailed on
her bosom friend to accompany her.--Besides," he added with his
deprecating shrug, "I own I have had too recent an experience of your
success to trust you alone with my enchantress; and she has promised to
bring the most fascinating nun in the convent to protect her from your
wiles."

As he spoke he led Odo into a room furnished in the luxurious style of a
French boudoir. A Savonnerie carpet covered the floor, the lounges and
easy-chairs were heaped with cushions, and the panels hung with pastel
drawings of a lively or sentimental character. The windows toward the
garden were close-shuttered, but those on the farther side of the room
stood open on a starlit terrace whence the eye looked out over the
lagoon to the outer line of islands.

"Confess," cried Coeur-Volant, pointing to a table set with delicacies
and flanked by silver wine-coolers, "that I have spared no pains to do
my goddess honour and that this interior must present an agreeable
contrast to the whitewashed cells and dismal refectory of her convent!
No passion," he continued, with his quaint didactic air, "is so
susceptible as love to the influence of its surroundings; and principles
which might have held out against a horse-hair sofa and soupe a l'oignon
have before now been known to succumb to silk cushions and champagne."

He received with perfect good-humour the retort that if he failed in his
designs his cook and his upholsterer would not be to blame; and the
young men were still engaged in such banter when the servant re