to call upon this Mrs Markham?" she added.
"I don't know exactly. Somehow, I think you'd suit; I'd like, too, to see what you thought of her. She's a wonderful woman – quite extraordinary. Rather silent, you know, but tremendously clever, I believe, at bottom. As to her beauty, it's amazing – I never saw anything like it in my life; and she can paint, too, and sing, and speak four or five languages if she chooses. I know you'd suit."
Lady Frances laughed a little, and shook her head. "I doubt it myself, it all sounds much too brilliant," she said.
"Oh yes, she's brilliant, of course," her brother replied, rather in the tone of one who concedes a damaging admission. "I don't see how she's to help it, though. She was born so. Some women are."
"Does she want to help it, do you suppose?"
"I don't know whether she does or not, but it makes the other women down upon her, don't you know. They say she's proud and odd – I don't know what all – though, for the life of me, what there is odd in being rich and beautiful, or in speaking four or five languages, I can't see. Do you?"
"Well, no, I certainly cannot. But then, you know, they say I'm odd too, if that's any satisfaction; though I'm not beautiful, and I don't speak four or five languages."
"Yes, but that is quite different, of course. Everybody knows all about you, and you've been here a long time, and everything, whereas Mrs Markham has only just come; so that it would be a sort of civility – give her the freedom of the place, don't you see?"
"Oh," Lady Frances replied, uttering that comprehensive monosyllable slowly, and with more gravity in her tone than she had used before. Then, when the silence between them had lasted about a minute – "Of course, if you really wish me to call upon her, Hal, I will," she added; "only don't forget to remind me."
"Never you fear, I'll remind you fast enough," the Colonel responded positively.
CHAPTER II.
The next day was Sunday – a mild day, with spaces of blue sky overhead – ushered in, like every Venetian Sunday that ever yet came into being, with tumultuous crashings of bells, as though the ringers' aim and object had been to tear down and rive the very belfries. All the time Lady Frances was tying on her bonnet for church the crashing and clanging never ceased for a single instant. It made her head ache, though she ought certainly to have been used to it by this time.
The English church at Venice is, as most people are aware, upon an upper floor of one of the palaces on the Grand Canal, – a palace formerly belonging to the Contarini, now given up to appartamenti mobigliati, and rooms full of indifferent antiquities, a card for which is mysteriously thrust into your hand as you enter in to or leave your devotions. The "church" is a long and rather handsome room, with the usual frescoed ceiling, with portraits of senators and other notabilities – presumably of the house of Contarini – stuck in green painted wooden panels, with windows half-filled with coarsely stained blue
