Agnes reflected for a moment.  A thousand pounds was the sum that had been sent to Mrs. Ferrari in the anonymous letter.  Was that enclosure in any way connected, as a result, with the conversation between the Baron and Ferrari?  It was useless to press any more inquiries on Mrs. Rolland.  She could give no further information which was of the slightest importance to the object in view.  There was no alternative but to grant her dismissal.  One more effort had been made to find a trace of the lost man, and once again the effort had failed.

They were a family party at the dinner-table that day.  The only guest left in the house was a nephew of the new Lord Montbarry—­ the eldest son of his sister, Lady Barrville.  Lady Montbarry could not resist telling the story of the first (and last) attack made on the virtue of Mrs. Rolland, with a comically-exact imitation of Mrs. Rolland’s deep and dismal voice.  Being asked by her husband what was the object which had brought that formidable person to the house, she naturally mentioned the expected visit of Miss Haldane.  Arthur Barville, unusually silent and pre-occupied so far, suddenly struck into the conversation with a burst of enthusiasm.  ‘Miss Haldane is the most charming girl in all Ireland!’ he said.  ’I caught sight of her yesterday, over the wall of her garden, as I was riding by.  What time is she coming to-morrow?  Before two?  I’ll look into the drawing-room by accident—­I am dying to be introduced to her!’

Agnes was amused by his enthusiasm.  ’Are you in love with Miss Haldane already?’ she asked.

Arthur answered gravely, ’It’s no joking matter.  I have been all day at the garden wall, waiting to see her again!  It depends on Miss Haldane to make me the happiest or the wretchedest man living.’

‘You foolish boy!  How can you talk such nonsense?’

He was talking nonsense undoubtedly.  But, if Agnes had only known it, he was doing something more than that.  He was innocently leading her another stage nearer on the way to Venice.

CHAPTER XIV

As the summer months advanced, the transformation of the Venetian palace into the modern hotel proceeded rapidly towards completion.

The outside of the building, with its fine Palladian front looking on the canal, was wisely left unaltered.  Inside, as a matter of necessity, the rooms were almost rebuilt—­so far at least as the size and the arrangement of them were concerned.  The vast saloons were partitioned off into ‘apartments’ containing three or four rooms each.  The broad corridors in the upper regions afforded spare space enough for rows of little bedchambers, devoted to servants and to travellers with limited means.  Nothing was spared but the solid floors and the finely-carved ceilings.  These last, in excellent preservation as to workmanship, merely required cleaning, and regilding here and there, to add greatly to the beauty and importance