The group stood talking awhile on the steps outside the church.  Kitty and her mother exchanged addresses, Donna Laura opened her mouth once or twice, and produced a few contorted smiles for Kitty’s benefit, while Colonel Warington tipped the sacristan, found the gondolier, and studied the guide-book.

As Madame d’Estrees stepped into her gondola, assisted by him, she tapped him on the arm.

“Are you coming, Markham?”

The low voice was pitched in a very intimate note.  Kitty turned with a start.

* * * * *

“A casa!” said Madame d’Estrees, and she and her friend made for one of the canals that pierce the Zattere, while Colonel Warington went off for a walk along the Giudecca.

Kitty and Ashe bade their gondoliers take them to the Piazzetta, and presently they were gliding across waters of flame and silver, where the white front and red campanile of San Giorgio—­now blazing under the sunset—­mirrored themselves in the lagoon.  The autumn evening was fresh and gay.  A light breeze was on the water; lights that only Venice knows shone on the tawny sails of fishing-boats making for the Lido, on the white sides of an English yacht, on the burnished prows of the gondolas, on the warm reddish-white of the Ducal Palace.  The air blowing from the Adriatic breathed into their faces the strength of the sea; and in the far distance, above that line of buildings where lies the heart of Venice, the high ghosts of the Friulian Alps glimmered amid the sweeping regiments and purple shadows of the land-hurrying clouds.

“This does you good, darling!” said Ashe, stooping down to look into his wife’s face, as she nestled beside him on the soft cushions of the gondola.

Kitty gave him a slight smile, then said, with a furrowed brow: 

“Who could ever have thought we should find maman here!”

“Don’t have her on your mind!” said Ashe, with some sharpness.  “I can’t have anything worrying you.”

She slipped her hand into his.

“Is that man going to marry her—­at last?  She called him ‘Markham.’  That’s new.”

“Looks rather like it,” said Ashe.  “Then he’ll have to look after the debts!”

They began to piece together what they knew of Colonel Warington and his relation to Madame d’Estrees.  It was not much.  But Ashe believed that originally Warington had not been in love with her at all.  There had been a love-affair between her and Warington’s younger brother, a smart artillery officer, when she was the widowed Lady Blackwater.  She had behaved with more heart and scruple than she had generally been known to do in these matters, and the young officer adored her—­hoped, indeed, to marry her.  But he was called on—­in Paris—­to fight a duel on her account, and was killed.  Before fighting, he had commended Lady Blackwater to the care of his much older brother, also a soldier, between whom and himself there existed a rare and passionate