a coquette, she was the stateliest of coquettes, – the most composed, the least unbending. She hoped that her brother might have come back, if only to expatiate upon her perfections; but this he did not do, springing, instead, into his own gondola, which was waiting for him at the steps, and which bore him away in the direction of the Piazzetta. After this interchange of civilities, she saw nothing more of the English-named Russian for several weeks, though indirectly she heard a good deal, as indeed did all Venice. The whole town took a lively interest in the proceedings of the magnificent widow, about whose fortune, character, intentions, a thousand conflicting rumours were industriously flying.
Passing up and down the Grand Canal, Lady Frances used sometimes to see her of an afternoon holding a sort of semi-royal state upon the terrace of her hotel, surrounded by a train of devotees, amongst whom the Colonel's stalwart proportions towered conspicuously. The sight always gave her a feeling of discomfort, almost of humiliation, she hardly knew why. It was not the sense of neglect, for that was quite a separate feeling. It was as though he were doing something unbecoming, – putting himself into a category from which he ought, according to her own feeling, to be exempt.
She saw little of him in these days, for he was brimful of engagements; Venetian custom, which entails the sitting up, even upon the smallest occasions, until two or three in the morning, obliging the votaries of its society to make up some portion of their forfeited rest upon the following day. She felt a little hurt, a little neglected; but after all, what right had she, she asked herself, to feel so? ought she not rather to wonder that something of the same kind had not happened long, long before? She went a great deal to the garden on the Guidecca, and sat hours at a time with her old friend, or wandered about under the vine-trellises, looking between the sun-streaked leaves at the satiny breadths of the lagune, so gleaming, so sensitive, so alive to every breath of the skies; at the fragmentary islands, the black clumps of piles, the infinite play and fluctuation seen across the more solid foreground of greenery.
The Princess never again alluded, even remotely, to the subject of her testamentary dispositions; and once, when Lady Frances would herself have reopened the matter, she made such emphatic demonstrations of her intention then and there to have another attack of hysteria, that the latter was forced to forbear, registering, however, a mute determination of recurring to it again at a more convenient season.
One afternoon about the middle of May, she chanced to return to the house just as her brother was also arriving in his gondola, and the two waited for one another upon the steps, and went up-stairs together. The Colonel was in high spirits, looking remarkably handsome – perfectly unconscious, evidently, of any imaginable cause for offence. upon either side. He wanted Frances, he said, to do him a favour. They were planning an expedition next day to one of the islands in the lagune. Would she come too? He particularly, most particularly, wanted her to do so; in fact, she must not refuse. Maitland Majoribanks was coming, and so was young Fennel and his pretty sister, and one or two other fellows. Mrs Markham had agreed to be of the party, and
