with a lighter rein than that upon which the ci-devant Madame Facchino kept her finger! Her one object, her first and most sacred duty in life – so she told her friends – was to keep her husband amused, and hinder his ever, even for a single instant, being bored. There may be, probably there are, nobler and loftier standards of wifely duty; but it is at least to Mrs Henry Mowbray's credit to say that in hers she was in the main eminently successful!
When Lady Frances returned to the Guidecca they had already been some time settled in Paris, which in many respects suited both admirably as a winter residence. For the Colonel it had many merits, including that of abounding variety; while to his wife, as a Belgian, it had naturally the almost sacred charm of being the original of which most of the places she knew best were copies; while both agreed in finding it immeasurably superior as a place of residence to Venice. The great merit of the latter, Mrs Mowbray was wont to pronounce authoritatively, was its cheapness; there was nowhere where you could get so much for so little. In most respects it was, in her opinion, an utterly detestable place, but in point of cheapness it was really divine. Once you had enough to live upon, however, once you were not obliged to look religiously after every miserable soldo, why, then, there was no reason for staying there more than anywhere else – every reason, in fact, for not staying there. In winter, O heavens! what she had suffered there in winter was not to be told; no one who did not know Venice could imagine or believe it! For her own part, she hoped devoutly never to see its odious, slimy shores again, or, at the very most, only for a week in the spring. Yes, for a week, perhaps at the utmost stretch two weeks, at a hotel in the month of May, Venice was tolerable, but at all other times and seasons it was simply detestable; and so other people would say if they had only half her honesty.
It was not one of the points in which she and her sister-in-law were ever at unison! For Lady Frances, Venice was Venice still, even though the harrow had gone over her threshold, and the little foxes made havoc amongst her grapes. When, therefore, the Princess Vasarhely died – which she did late in the spring which followed the events recorded in this little history – and it was found that she had carried out her threat, and left the house and everything she possessed on the Guidecca to Frances Mowbray, the latter, after a few struggles, meekly accepted it. She sat herself down in her old friend's place, and fed her hosts of canary-birds, and saw that Titi and the parrot had what they liked for their dinners, and spent a great many hours under the big cypresses, with Madame Bauche knitting beside her. She is not perhaps the happiest woman in the whole world, but then neither is she by many degrees the least so. The sandolo, with Michael Angelo in it, and not less beautiful than of yore, waits untiringly for her hour after hour amongst the sea-weed. The sea and the sky woo her unceasingly to come out and see what new combinations they have discovered since she saw them last. She is very peaceful, very quiet, sufficiently occupied, and has not certainly more social requirements made upon her than she feels she can adequately respond to. And that – as all who know her intimately are aware – is alone a source of no inconsiderable solace and satisfaction to her.
