material, and pins, cottons, and scissors strewn about her. She blushed deeply, from surprise, pleasure, and shyness, as he spoke. "I beg your pardon, Miss Gordon, but I only came to see if I could not persuade you to alter your mind. Your sister said you did not care to come out this morning." There was a slight emphasis on the word "care," as if the soldier wished to find out the truth, and truth was more natural to Bee than falsehood, even though Mrs. Gordon often said to her daughters that it was often very unnecessary and unladylike to give one's exact reason for one's actions. "I did want to come very much, but one of us was obliged to stay and finish this-this work." The Captain made no comment, and appeared almost sorry to have forced Beatrice to give an explanation; then, without any awkward apology, he turned the conversation. "This frost is certainly going to continue, my father says, and he considers himself very learned on the subject of weather. I hope you will still get some good skating; but perhaps," he added, glancing at the flimsy material, "dancing is more in your line." "Yes, dancing is delightful, but this is for Frances; she and Minnie are going to the Leighs' ball on Thursday. I am the youngest, so I do not get as much dancing as the others; we can't go out all three together." "Why not?" asked the Captain, innocently. "Because it would not be the-thing, I suppose; people would say the three Misses Gordon filled up the room," and then Beatrice laughed heartily. "I have been so long away from England that now and then, I fear, my ideas are old-fashioned. Society seems to me to be getting so much more a studied affair than formerly. People do not go out for amusement, but for all kinds of other motives." Beatrice was conscious of a new feeling; she recognised that Captain Grant was real, that all he said was not spoken because it was "the right thing to say." The girl had been brought up so much on the other principle, that the difference struck her forcibly to-day. She was thinking, as her heart beat a little faster than usual, "he came really to see me, to-day," and then she recollected that she ought to tell her mother that this visitor was here, that her mother would object to such an early call, and also that her pleasant talk would be over. She would, however, first make one remark : "I believe you always say what you think, Captain Grant, without caring about society." "No, not always, but I hope I do not say what I hold to be false ; for instance, I will not say I am sorry you are not coming, because I fancy you are on duty.' Forgive the military expression.' " "I had been grumbling very much to myself about being on duty.' I suppose soldiers never do that! Anyhow, thank you for coming to see; perhaps I shall lose all my "She did not know how to end, for the Captain rose, feeling he ought not to intrude any further. "The thought of you will make me feel what an idle creature an officer on furlough is, Miss Gordon," he said, smiling and holding out his hand; "however, I have learnt this morning that women can speak the truth." Beatrice again blushed with pleasure, for the tone was too gentlemanly for her to take offence at the words, and yet she felt that his praise was almost undeserved. However, when he was gone the youngest Miss Gordon registered a vow. "I always will speak the truth now, and act it too." VENETIAN LIFE. THE Venetians take life easily, though they do now and again affect to get prodigiously excited. During the first ten minutes of my acquaintance with the stout, dark-eyed lady whose tenant. I was subsequently for two months, she stormed and made such a bother about a few francs, more or less, per month, that I expected the house would always be in an uproar on her account. But it was by no means so. When we had come to our agreement, and she had straddled her nose with glasses, to put her name to the paper, she suddenly became as calm as the lagoon outside; and that calm she maintained all the rest of the time. I thought she would stay in my mind as a picturesque sort of Fury. Instead of that, I think of her as I used to see her most often: lolling about her fine, wide, stone staircase, with a cigarette between her pearly teeth, and casting her salutations to the right and left among her various clients. There was a dustman who used to come into the corte every morning, to take away the rubbish from the four doors that opened into the place. He was a very gentle old dustman, and not at all a martyr to his profession. I used to gaze at him while I was shaving. When he had set his barrow on one side and put his broom in it, he would fumble in his pocket for his snuffbox. This he would open, inspect, and smell deliberately, raising his thankful countenance to heaven after the indulgence. Then he would take up the dust at the doors; and, before departing, he would once again gratify his nose with a pinch. He even picked the grains of snuff off his labelled arm, and enjoyed them separately rather than run the risk of wasting them. You would have thought a gentleman of his line of life would have had no desire to vex his nostrils with any superfluous irritant. But the way he dallied over the pleasure told a different tale. ments, and he shows his teeth amiably at the ladies. And afterwards he clamours at them for their patronage, which, however, they withhold. Yet, if they had the needful courage, they could not do better than get aboard the black little boat, and allow themselves to be propelled lightly into mid - canal. For it is on the water in Venice that one understands best of all the feeling of pleasant, calm inertia, which seems to pervade the people and the place. The tall houses, with their stone faces and green shutters, glide by like buildings in a dream; and there is no sound save the subdued washing of the water against the swaying sides of the boat. Now and again a gondola comes in the opposite direction. First, the glitter of its bevelled steel prow, then the body of the thing, with, perhaps, a fair face behind the glass of the cabin, and afterwards the bending oarsman. When it has gone, there is a recurrence of the same marble palaces towering towards the blue; bridges, and, at intervals, other gondolas. It is impossible to take such a city altogether seriously. I was one of many inhabitants of a great house, the lower windows of which were heavily barred. Perhaps, two hundred years back, it was the palace of a very important nobleman; but, if so, no trace of him was left. The very paintings on the ceiling to the rooms had all been done over again, and the artist of the nineteenth century was not a very clever fellow. But the size of the rooms was, of course, unchanged; and for this I was grateful to the builder. It is the same with the other inhabitants of the dear old city. I do not admire the Venetian boatmen half as much as most people, who know them only in Mr. Gilbert's operetta, affect to do. They are not heroic and lovely all through; nor is their devotion to duty or the fair anything like as constant as their devotion to francpieces. But when the mood is on them, they are deliciously idle-hardly to be stirred into action by the bribe of a large silver crown. They much prefer to sit in a cluster on the marble steps by their gondolas, gossiping airily about nothing in particular, and looking as impudently well-to-do as the fat pigeons, which roost about the golden pinnacles of the Cathedral of San Marco what time they have had enough of the Indian corn with which thoughtless visitors from America and Great Britain are ever ready to stuff them. In their more active moments, the handsome, bronzed fellows are all civility and smiles to the emotional, elderly ladies from Germany and elsewhere, who approach them and comment audibly to each other on their fine manly beauty and magnificent complexions. "Did you ever see such a delightful mixture of burnt sienna and apple rose?" "Never my dear. His cheeks are perfect pictures; and then his eyes-so large and liquid- Twice or thrice I was set adrift in the almost like a gazelle's, only, of course, so fair city at uncanny hours about daybreak, much darker and more passionate!" The when the coral light of the east was but just gondolier has enough knowledge of foreign beginning to break through the pale grey languages to feel these strange complimist over the lagoon. This is not ordi It is wonderful how cheaply a man may live in Venice if he will. Even the hotels are not so exacting as the hotels elsewhere. No one, however, to whom the p's and q's of life in Italy are tolerably familiar, should trouble the Venetian hotels. It is so much more unconstrained to have chambers. The big key, which makes one free of the house at all hours of the day and night, is certainly an encumbrance to the pocket; but then it relieves one from so many other encumbrances. It was all one whether I entered the corte at eight o'clock or one o'clock, except, perhaps, in the matter of the ghostly tenants of the vast echoing hall upon which the door swung from the outside. narily an interesting hour in a city; but in Venice I found it so. In the first place, the flower-girls were then at their busiest in the market by the Rialto Bridge, and the perfume of lilies and hyacinths was at its freshest. Secondly, one could at pleasure then recast the inhabitants of Venice, and make them of what century one pleased for the entertainment of the fancy, in harmony with the different buildings. Instead of a long tail of black-coated youths bustling up and down the streetlets between the Square of San Marco and the Rialto, just as if they were in Cheapsidethe common spectacle on an ordinary business day-one could attire one's people in the silks, and satins, and velvets which Venice of old loved so well before the era of sumptuary laws, and which gave such bewitching interest to the old city. There is just a trace of the survival of some of this obsolete picturesqueness in the funerals of celebrities even in our day. This "palazzo" on the water-side, with the parti-coloured mob massing on both sides of the canal near it, is in mourning, and the funeral of the senator whose name it bears is about to be achieved. What a pretty sight is that long line of gondolas in the water, each laden with one lovely wreath of flowers, or many wreaths! In these gondolas Venetians of distinction are waiting to follow the hearse-gondola when it shall set out for the island cemetery away from Venice. Those old men, too, in claretcoloured uniforms and peaked caps, each with a long candle in his hand, lighted and clogging with grease; and those boys, in scarlet and white, also carrying candles! The old fellows, who owe much to the charity of the dead senator, are out of humour with their responsibilities this day. They don't scruple to quarrel with each other while they wait for the corpse, call each other very impolite names, and, in a sly way, drop the hot grease on each other's tender old toes. It is the same with the urchins. And from the other side of the canal the criticisms of the mob upon the group of fat clergy, who, also with candles in their hands, very considerably add to the bulk of the expectant crowd, descend into the midst of the mourners, but little mellowed into pleasantness by distance. The modern Venetian in low life does not like to remember the past days, when he was in such fear and terror of his parish priest. He atones for it by believing all that the daily press says in abuse of the Church, and by retailing such abuse in the coarse, hearty way characteristic of an emotional populace all the world over. Some think there is now no passion in Venice-only sensibility. There is probably less passion than there used to be, but there is still quite enough to keep the warm blood pulsing through Venetian bodies three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. It shows itself in the energy with which Venetians hate what formerly they loved and feared, and in the two or three stern tragedies per week which take place in the poorer quarters of the city. I much mistake if the two daughters of my Venetian landlady could not upon due provocation have shown that they, like their sisters elsewhere, have sharp talons under their smooth clouded skins. For all that, they were to me consistently gentle and pacific. One of them who found it most convenient used to call me in the morning-sometimes in curl-papers, I admit-and give me a most dulcet greeting with as sweet a smile as a human face may conjure to itself before breakfast time. Anon, the other or the maid would come and light the stove and bring the roll and coffee. The maid was a thoroughbred Venetian of the style Paolo Veronese has painted many times. Her eyes were blue, and her hair was like spun gold. She was somewhat loose of shape, and not always very cleanly of person. But she had a gift of smiling hardly to be equalled; and she had agreeable phrases on her rosy lips whenever she came to do me service, howsoever menial. She was not an honest handmaid, as we in England make estimate by honesty. But as they go in Venice, she need not be blamed inordinately. She stole nothing of price; but contented herself with lesser pickings and stealings, such as she might reasonably expect would never be missed. Daily she seemed to taste my liqueurs, for instance, and in this gradual way she at length wholly consumed one bottle which I had but opened and tried on the palate. Her wonder at what had become of it when I amused myself by examining it, and commenting upon its evaporated aspect in her presence, was most successful acting; and I forgave her the crime on the strength of her ancestry, which was vague, and therefore not likely to impress her with our notions of moral responsibility. Venice is not a city in which to do much serious work. Somehow, the atmosphere is against all such effort. I believe there are two or three artists and writers of repute in the place; but I do not envy them their daily conflict with the spirit of disinclination which must strive hard to keep them aloof from canvas and manuscript. It is a city in which people who depend on the public for a livelihood, find it enough if they do but sit in front of or behind their wares. Thence they are quite willing to answer the enquiries of possible purchasers; and if the enquiries eventuate in a sale—well and good. For the rest, it is not a matter for repining, if the prospector goes his way without buying aught. The Venetians work their hardest from half-past two until five in the afternoon. This is the time when the band plays in the charming Square of San Marco. Such fashionable folks as then abide in the city, come forth into the Square from the gondola stage hard by. The ladies are as elegant as their taste will allow them to be, and the gentlemen are exquisite dandies of a ridiculous type. They do not, it must be said, possess anything like as much beauty of face or form as one expects in them. The dark eyes and long hair of the ladies are, I suppose, worthy of notice, though blue eyes also are to be seen; but their deportment is much against them. It requires a considerable stay in the city to get accustomed to them. By that time perhaps they may appear as fascinating as they would like to be held. The Venetian youths, like their cousins in Rome, are fond of dogs; and the uglier and more forbidding the dog, so much the more does it seem to be admired. This has a very odd result. The gentlemen wear their boots long in the sole and curved upwards, a mode which does not improve their personal appearance. When very exquisite indeed, they further attire themselves in tall silk hats, lemon-coloured kid gloves, and collars that rise almost to their lips. Then, with a dapper cane, and a poodle shaven so brutally clean that no lock of wool is left upon it, save at the tip of its tail, the gentleman considers himself completed for promenade. Up and down he goes, bowing zealously to the right hand and the left, ever and anon stopping to caress the tips of the fingers of a lady, and ever and anon pausing to unwind the chain of his poodle from his elegant legs. He is an expert at expletives; but the poodle is used to them, and bears without one whine of objection all the abuse it excites. The more aged Venetians sit in the cafés under the colonnade, and admire the young men, their sons and grandsons, and wish they too were young again, and as able to enjoy life and bewitch the ladies as their more fortunate posterity. And to and fro among the crowd of the seated and the promenading, go those rather audacious damsels, the flower-girls, eager for patronage. It is in vain that the more noble of the ladies look with disdain at their assaults upon the buttonholes of the gentlemen. They are perhaps the most strenuous seekers of lucre in Venice. If you repulse them once they try again five minutes afterwards. Nor is there any reproach or malice in their brilliant eyes when, only at the third or fourth appeal, you bow to your fate, and allow them to pin the flower to your coat with their own plump hands. One could forgive the girls their pertinacity in the public thoroughfare, if they would but leave one in peace at one's meals; but this they decline to do. They have the run of the restaurants, and so with one's soup or macaroni one has to endure a good deal of annoyance. The band is delightful, of course. Italy is a musical country, and the blue skies go well with her instruments. So up and down the people go, now facing the brilliantly coloured Basilica of San Marco, and anon turned towards the Palladian buildings which enclose the Square. The pigeons are lively when the music plays. Perhaps they love sweet sounds; more probably they know that this is the time in the day when they are most sure of a surfeit. The pretty American girls, whose fond parents are hurrying them through the Old World, must be able to show their "folks at home" that they have fed the famous birds. The demand for Indian corn is therefore sometimes brisk while the band plays; and the photographer from the corner is sufficiently willing to turn his focus upon the pretty girl, as she stands with her back to the Cathedral, with a pigeon on each shoulder, and one bloated glutton of a bird perched upon one hand, while it pecks vigorously at the grain in the palm of the other hand. I used to love to watch the movement of the lights upon San Marco's ornate pile, as that time of promenade drew towards a close. The gold of the sun as it sank into the west crept from glass window to leaden dome, and from one leaden dome to another, until at length it was held by no part of the building except the many gilt vanes which becrest the various pinnacles above the domes and windows. There it would stay while one paced the length of the Square-no longer; and afterwards it would climb the tall campanile by the side of the Basilica, linger for a moment on the faces of the exalted tourists who had ascended the building to see Venice and the Alps, linger for another moment on the campanile's highest point, and then vanish until the morrow. And out over the placid lagoon one might also watch its vanishing, from the red buildings of one island to the red buildings of another island; from white sail to white sail; and so on to the puffy wisps of cloud in the sky. Save from some vantage point or watch-tower of the city, one could not ordinarily see the glow far away on the snow of the Alps, ere night was thoroughly heralded by the stars over head. I have said that Venice is a cheap city. So it is; and especially if you dine with the people in the fish kitchens of the Street of the Smiths. There you get a slice of smoking polenta, as broad as a gondolier's palm and somewhat thicker, for a penny. Another penny will, if fish be abundant, as it generally is, buy a plateful of very palateable fry. Add to this a third penny for half a litre of wine, and the bill is told. There is no doubting the nutrition in such a meal. The faces of the clients of the shops in the Street of the Smiths are plump and hearty, and the clients themselves are not famishingly impatient to be served when there is a crush, as there often is of an evening, when such work as Venice does is mostly at an end. The waiters in the more accredited restaurants here seem to have a warm motherliness of demeanour which one may look for in vain elsewhere. There were two of them in particular where I made my evening meals. One was very tall and thin, and the other was short and fat, and with a club-foot. The taller one was all humility and gentleness-"What would your Excellency please to fancy this evening!" for example; or "If your Excellency would condescend to give an eye to the fried calves' brains by-and-by, your Excellency would not regret it"; and so on. With his companion, amiability took a more genial turn. The little fellow would, notwithstanding his club-foot, speed towards an habitual guest, and catch him ere he made a movement to free himself from his overcoat. This was a duty he made peculiarly his; and when he had duly, and with reverent regard, hung the garment by the neck, he would stoop his pleasant little face towards his client, and ask, emotionally, about the gentleman's health. The remedies this excellent little fellow has suggested to me for a disturbance of the liver or a touch of catarrh would hardly be believed; and he was always surprisingly sympathetic when he could conscientiously congratulate the guest upon the re-establishment of his health. One day I had the honour to entertain, under his care, two Anglo-Saxon ladies, travelling acquainttances. On the morrow I asked him why he was so inordinately attentive to the younger and much the more beautiful of these ladies. "Is she not, then, to be the signor's 'sposa'?" he asked, opening his eyes as at a miracle. "By no means," said I. "Oh, and I thought it might be," observed Pietro, with a die-away sigh of disappointment; "for she was truly beautiful, and with so much gold about her neck." One is disposed to imagine, indeed, that some of the Venetian men are rather too effeminate. They owe it to their shopkeeping ancestors and to the Austrians, I suppose. A good rousing war would perhaps be the making of them. They are just a little too content to be the very obedient servants of the various Tomnoddys who come to Venice from the North to spend their money and be enchanted. With such restricted ambitions in their souls, the germs of many gracious and robust virtues which assert themselves in other people do not seem with them to get out of the embryonic stage. lady in dread of mad dogs, I should never, for instance, look to a Venetian to stand between me and the infuriated monster in the hour of need. The little fellow would be ready to melt almost away in the ardour of his sympathy-after the disaster. There would be no end to the intensity of his grief, and the hot tears from his beautiful dark eyes would perchance fall pit-a-pat upon the pavement for five minutes in succession. This would be very laudable in him, but still it would be indicative of a void somewhere. The true grit of manhood would be wanting. The best of it is, however, that, as a rule, there are no mad dogs in the narrow streetlets of the dear old city; and there is no stout call upon the more vigorous virtues of the people to prove them wanting. One |