“It won’t be published for ten days.  There’s time.  It’s only a question of money,” she said to herself, feverishly—­“only a question of money!”

* * * * *

All the rest of the day, Kitty was at once so restless and so languid that to amuse her was difficult.  Ashe was quite grateful to his amazing mother-in-law for the plan of the evening.

As night fell, Kitty started at every sound in the old Palazzo.  Once or twice she went half-way to the door—­eagerly—­with hand out-stretched—­as though she expected a letter.

“No other English post to-night, Kitty!” said Ashe, at last, raising his head from the finely printed Poetae Minores he had just purchased at Ongania’s.  “You don’t mean to say you’re not thankful!”

* * * * *

The evening arrived—­clear and mild, but moonless.  Ashe went off to dine with his prince, in the ordinary gondola of commerce, hired at the Traghetto; while Margaret and Kitty followed a little later in one which had already drawn the attention of Venice, owing to the two handsome gondoliers, habited in black from head to foot, who were attached to it.  They turned towards the Piazzetta, where they were to meet with Madame d’Estrees’ party.

Kitty, in her deep mourning, sank listlessly into the black cushions of the gondola.  Yet almost as they started, as the first strokes carried them past the famous palace which is now the Prefecture, the spell of Venice began to work.

City of rest!—­as it seems to our modern senses—­how is it possible that so busy, so pitiless, and covetous a life as history shows us should have gone to the making and the fashioning of Venice!  The easy passage of the gondola through the soft, imprisoned wave; the silence of wheel and hoof, of all that hurries and clatters; the tide that comes and goes, noiseless, indispensable, bringing in the freshness of the sea, carrying away the defilements of the land; the narrow winding ways, now firm earth, now shifting sea, that bind the city into one social whole, where the industrial and the noble alike are housed in palaces, equal often in beauty as in decay; the marvellous quiet of the nights, save when the northeast wind, Hadria’s stormy leader, drives the furious waves against the palace fronts in the darkness, with the clamor of an attacking host; the languor of the hot afternoons, when life is a dream of light and green water, when the play of mirage drowns the foundations of the lidi in the lagoon, so that trees and buildings rise out of the sea as though some strong Amphion-music were but that moment calling them from the deep; and when day departs, that magic of the swiftly falling dusk, and that white foam and flower of St. Mark’s upon the purple intensity of the sky!—­through each phase of the hours and the seasons, rest is still the message of Venice, rest enriched with endless images, impressions, sensations, that cost no trouble and breed no pain.