’However that may be, I have been making up my mind for some days past that the embassy on behalf of Elvira, which I thrust upon you, and which you so generously undertook, was a blunder on my part which it would be delightful to repair, and which no artistic considerations whatever need prevent me from repairing.  You cannot think how divine she was in Juliet the other night.  Imperfect and harsh, of course, here and there, but still a creature to build many and great hopes upon, if ever there was one.  She is shaking off trick after trick; your brother-in-law is merciless to them whenever they appear, and she is for ever working with a view to his approval, and also, I think, from two or three things she has said, with a memory of that distant standard of criticism which she believes to be embodied in you!

’M. de Chateauvieux has devoted himself to her; it is a pretty sight to see them together.  Your sister and she, too, are inseparable, and Madame de Chateauvieux’s quiet, equable refinement makes a good contrast to Miss Bretherton’s mobility.  She will never lose the imprint of her friendship with these two people; it was a happy thought which led you to bring them together.

’Well, we went to Torcello, and I watched for an opportunity of getting her alone.  At last Madame de Chateauvieux gave me one; she carried off her husband, Ruskin in hand, to study the mosaics, and Miss Bretherton and I were left sitting under the outer wall of San Fosca till they should come back.  We had been talking of a hundred things—­not of acting at all; of the pomegranates, of which she had a scarlet mass in her lap, of the gray slumberous warmth of the day, or the ragged children who pestered us for coppers—­and then suddenly, I asked her whether she would answer me a personal question:  Was there any grudge in her mind towards me for anything I had said and done in London, or caused others to say and do for me?

’She was much startled, and coloured a good deal, but she said very steadily:  “I feel no sort of grudge; I never had any cause.”  “Well, then,” I went on, throwing myself down on the grass before her that I might really see her expression, “if you bear me no grudge, if you feel kindly towards me, will you help me to undo a great mistake of mine?”

’She looked at me with parted lips and eyes which seemed to be trying to find out from my face what I meant.  “Will you,” I said, hurrying on; “will you take from me Elvira, and do what you like with it?” And then, do you know what happened?  Her lips quivered, and I thought she was on the point of tears, but suddenly the nervousness of each of us seemed to strike the other, and we both laughed—­she long and helplessly, as if she could not help herself.