plaster clouds, from which exalted sphere it descended, too effectually chilled to administer much comfort to the inferior beings sitting benumbed and shivering below.
Lady Frances was very fond of her Venetian apartment, however, – fonder than of any other abode which it would have been possible for her now to inhabit. She had become used too, and in her youth, to larger fluctuations of climate than any which even Venice can show, and was not therefore particularly sensitive on that score. The colonel her brother was of opinion indeed that there were many places in the world that would have been livelier to live in than the shores of the Adriatic. But then he was very fond of his sister: it was she who contributed the lion's share of their mutual housekeeping; she who took the whole trouble and responsibility of things in general off his hands; and he was therefore well content to follow her guidance, – so long, that is, as she did not insist upon dragging him quite away from the dear face of humanity – a piece of self-immolation of which he secretly believed her to be perfectly capable, and which he always held himself in readiness to combat should the occasion arise.
Colonel Hal Mowbray was an ex-Guardsman, a man of London and of the clubs, social to the very tips of his fingers, a ci-devant dandy, and a bit of a bon viveur too, though the latter happily nowadays of the most exemplarily domesticated type. He was an old bachelor, just as his sister was an old maid; and although no two people in the whole wide world could be found less alike, no two people upon the whole could have fitted better into each other's moods, or combined to lead a more united, if in some respect also a divided life. In their disunion, indeed, as in their affection, there was something quasi-matrimonial about them which was not a little diverting to their numerous friends, and which seemed to be borne out by their very names – Colonel and Lady Frances Mowbray: could anything be more absolutely suggestive of man and wife? Indeed in Venice – rather famous for malicious stories, and not always equally innocent ones – a tale is told of a lady who, having been introduced to the pair, was heard, upon their departure, calmly and audibly inquiring of her hostess what family they had, and whether the daughters were as excruciatingly ugly as their mother; – a piece of indiscreet inquisitiveness which was brought to a summary conclusion by the subdued but irresistible titterings of the assembled company!
Poor Lady Frances, if she had ever heard the anecdote – which, perhaps, who knows, she may have done – might fairly have retorted that she had been more of a mother than many mothers only that neither self-laudation nor repartee were at all in her line. Standing there in the grey light of that wet Venetian afternoon, there was no doubt that she was a very ugly woman indeed – tall, grim, gaunt, stiff-backed; her hair, which was a dark iron-grey, put tightly back from her face, showing a breadth but likewise a height of forehead which even the very loveliest of her sex would hardly in these days have the hardihood to expose. A very ugly woman undeniably, and an ill-dressed one to boot, without any graces or manners to speak of; and yet no one, I think, could have looked at her without feeling that there was more about her than met the
