“Does she see much of anybody?”

“Because, you mean, of Tranmore’s condition?  What good can she be to him now?  He knows nobody.”

“She doesn’t seem to ask the question,” said Mary, dryly.

A queer, soft look came over Sir Richard’s old face.

“No, the women don’t,” he said, half to himself, and fell into a little reverie.  He emerged from it with the remark—­accompanied by a smile, a little sly but not unkind: 

“I always used to hope, Polly, that you and Ashe would have made it up!”

“I’m sure I don’t know why,” said Mary, fastening up her envelopes.  As she did so it crossed her father’s mind that she was still very good-looking.  Her dress of dark-blue cloth, the plain fashion of her brown hair, her oval face and well-marked features, her plump and pretty hands, were all pleasant to look upon.  She had rather a hard way with her, though, at times.  The servants were always giving warning.  And, personally, he was much fonder of his younger daughter, whom Mary considered foolish and improvident.  But he was well aware that Mary made his life easy.

“Well, you were always on excellent terms,” he said, in answer to her last remark.  “I remember his saying to me once that you were very good company.  The Bishop, too, used to notice how he liked to talk to you.”

When Mary and her father were together, “the Bishop” was Sir Richard’s property.  He only fell to Mary’s share in the old man’s absence.

Mary colored slightly.

“Oh yes, we got on,” she said, counting her letters the while with a quick hand.

“Well, I hope that young woman whom he did marry is now behaving herself.  It was that fellow Cliffe with whom the scandal was last year, wasn’t it?”

“There was a good deal of talk,” said Mary.

“A rum fellow, that Cliffe!  A man at the club told me last week it is believed he has been fighting for these Bosnian rebels for months.  Shocking bad form I call it.  If the Turks catch him, they’ll string him up.  And quite right, too.  What’s he got to do with other people’s quarrels?”

“If the Turks will be such brutes—­”

“Nonsense, my dear!  Don’t you believe any of this radical stuff.  The Turks are awfully fine fellows—­fight like bull-dogs.  And as for the ‘atrocities,’ they make them up in London.  Oh, of course, what Cliffe wants is notoriety—­we all know that.  Well, I’m going out to see if I can find another English paper.  Beastly climate!”

But as Sir Richard turned again to the window, he was met by a burst of sunshine, which hit him gayly in the face like a child’s impertinence.  He grumbled something unintelligible as Mary put him into his Inverness cape, took hat and stick, and departed.

Mary sat still beside the writing-table, her hands crossed on her lap, her eyes absently bent upon them.

She was thinking of the serenata.  She had followed it with an acquaintance from the hotel, and she had seen not only Kitty and Madame d’Estrees, but also—­the solitary man in the heavy cloak.  She knew quite well that Cliffe was in Venice; though, true to her secretive temper, she had not mentioned the fact to her father.