he knew she would take it as a compliment if Frances would come too.
"She says she has seen nothing at all of you, Fan," he added, with the naïveté with which a man will sometimes repeat the speech of one woman to another. "We'll want another lady, I suppose, to balance the party," he went on, "so what do you say to our asking Madame Facchino? She is always a lively little grig, and we'll make her bring her guitar, or mandolin, or whatever she calls that instrument of hers. But you're the person we want, – that everything depends upon. So don't say no. I haven't had a favour of you for ever so long, have I, old lady?"
Lady Frances was pleased and not a little touched. Whatever might be the reason of this sudden urgency, the fact that her brother wanted her counted for so much – so very, very much. It had seemed to her lately as if he had certainly not wanted her; as if that joint life and companionship which had been begun in such hope, with such success, was proving, on one side at any rate, an encumbrance, a thing which, whether he married or did not marry, it might be wisest to give up, rather than to let it drag on, a weariness to him, a pain, and a perpetual source of unreasonable expectation to herself. Now, however, it would appear at last that he did want her. Had he suggested a pleasure-trip to Hades, she would hardly have declined!
"Of course, Hal, dear, I will go since you wish it," she said, her voice trembling with the pent-up feelings of weeks. "I will tell Gustave, too, to get ready some cold chicken and salad, and whatever else is wanted, so that it will not be necessary for any one else to order anything," she added, hurrying away with all the nervousness of a shy woman from the subject nearest to her heart, and which she felt to be perilous to her composure. She did recur to it again, however, for a moment before they parted.
"It will be spending a day together again, won't it, Hal?" she said, laying her hand timidly upon his sleeve, as he was moving towards the door. "We've not seen much of one another somehow lately, dear, have we?"
The Colonel turned round, touched instantly in his turn, and kissed her affectionately upon the cheek.
"No, I know I've been neglecting you most abominably lately, Fan!" he said, penitently. "And you're a trump; you never reproach a fellow. Only I couldn't help it, dear; I really could not. I – I – I've been most tremendously occupied lately somehow – about a thousand things, you know." He hesitated, moved a vase which was standing in somewhat perilous proximity to the edge of a table; divided his beard into two carefully equalised masses with his fingers, and then suddenly swept it all together again.
"Perhaps I'll have a bit of news to tell you to-morrow evening, Fan," he added, hurriedly; and having so said, bolted rapidly down the steps, and into the gondola which was waiting for him as usual at the steps.
Lady Frances went on into the sitting-room to put some flowers which she had brought with her from the garden on the Guidecca into water. She smiled to herself once or twice as she did so, sadly enough, but she was no longer under the influence of that melting mood which she had experienced a few minutes sooner. On the contrary, she was conscious of a sensation at the bottom of her mind
