`I simply couldn't stand it any longer,' Ned Worthington confided to his sister when they were alone. `My head is so full of her that I can't attend to my work, and it came to me all of a sudden that this might be my last chance. You'll be getting north before long, you know, to Switzerland and so on, where I cannot follow you. So I made a clean breast of it to the commodore, and the good old fellow, who has a soft spot in his heart for a love story, behaved like a brick, and made it all straight for me to come away.
Mrs Ashe did not join in these commendations of the commodore; her attention was fixed on another part of her brother's discourse.
`Then you won't be able to come to me again? I shan't see you again after this!' she exclaimed. `Dear me! I never realized that before. What shall I do without you?'
`You will have Miss Carr. She is a host in herself,' suggested Ned Worthington. His sister shook her head.
`Katy is a jewel,' she remarked presently, `but somehow one wants a man to call upon. I shall feel lost without you, Ned.'
The month's housekeeping wound up that night with a `thick tea' in honour of Lieutenant Worthington's arrival, which taxed all the resources of the little establishment. Maria was sent out hastily to buy pan forte da Siena and vino d'Asti, and fresh eggs for an omelette, and chickens' breasts smothered in cream from the restaurant, and artichokes for a salad, and flowers to garnish all. The guest ate and praised and admired; Amy and Mabel sat on his knee and explained everything to him, and they were all very happy together. Their merriment was so infectious that it extended to the poor giantess, who had been very pensive all day at the prospect of losing her good place, and who now raised her voice in the grand aria from Orfeo, and made the kitchen ring with the passionate demand, `Che faro senza, Eurydice?' The splendid notes, full of fire and lamentation, rang out across saucepans as effectively as if they had been footlights, and Katy, rising softly, opened the kitchen door a little way that they might not lose a sound.
The next day brought them to Venice. It was a moment', indeed, as Katy seated herself for the first time in a gondola, and looked from beneath its black hood at the palace walls on the Grand Canal, past which they were gliding. Some were creamy and white and black, some orange-tawny, others of a dull, delicious ruddy colour, half-pink, half-red; but all, in build and ornament, were unlike palaces elsewhere. High on the prow before her stood the gondolier, his form defined in dark outline against the sky, as he swayed and bent to his long oar, raising his head now and again to give a wild musical cry, as warning to other approaching gondolas. It was all like a dream. Ned Worthington sat beside her, looking more at the changes in her expressive face than at the palaces. Venice was as new to him as to Katy, but she was also a new feature in his life, and even more interesting than Venice.
They seemed to float on pleasures for the next ten days. Their arrival had been happily timed to coincide with a great popular festival, which for nearly a week kept Venice in a state of continual brilliant gala. All the days were spent on the water, only landing now and then to look at some famous building or picture, or to eat ices in the Piazza with the lovely fade of St Mark's before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of time! The evenings were spent on the water too, for every night, immediately after sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of the Doge's Palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our friends always took a part in it. In its centre went a barge hung with embroideries, and filled with orange trees and musicians. This was surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing coloured lanterns and streamers and gay awnings, and managed by gondoliers in picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept on together with a sort of rhythmic undulation, as if keeping time to the music, while across their path dazzling showers and arches of coloured fire poured from the palace fronts and the hotels. Every movement of the fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water, with every torch tip and scarlet lantern and flake of green or rosy fire. Above it all the bright full moon looked down as if surprised. It was magically beautiful in effect. Katy felt as if her previous sober ideas about life and things had melted away. For the moment the world was turned topsy-turvy. There was nothing hard or real or sordid left in it; it was just a fairy tale, and she was in the middle of it as she