Eventually, Mrs. Culling’s departure was permitted.  He argued, ’Why go? the fellow’s comfortable, getting himself together, and you say the French are good nurses.’  But her entreaties to go were vehement, though Venice had no happy place in her recollections, and he withheld his objections to her going.  For him, the fields forbade it.  He sent hearty messages to Nevil, and that was enough, considering that the young dog of ‘humanity’ had clearly been running out of his way to catch a jaundice, and was bereaving his houses of the matronly government, deprived of which they were all of them likely soon to be at sixes and sevens with disorderly lacqueys, peccant maids, and cooks in hysterics.

Now if the master of his fortunes had come to Venice!—­Nevil started the supposition in his mind often after hope had sunk.—­Everard would have seen a young sailor and a soldier the thinner for wear, reclining in a gondola half the day, fanned by a brunette of the fine lineaments of the good blood of France.  She chattered snatches of Venetian caught from the gondoliers, she was like a delicate cup of crystal brimming with the beauty of the place, and making one of them drink in all his impressions through her.  Her features had the soft irregularities which run to rarities of beauty, as the ripple rocks the light; mouth, eyes, brows, nostrils, and bloomy cheeks played into one another liquidly; thought flew, tongue followed, and the flash of meaning quivered over them like night-lightning.  Or oftener, to speak truth, tongue flew, thought followed:  her age was but newly seventeen, and she was French.

Her name was Renee.  She was the only daughter of the Comte de Croisnel.  Her brother Roland owed his life to Nevil, this Englishman proud of a French name—­Nevil Beauchamp.  If there was any warm feeling below the unruffled surface of the girl’s deliberate eyes while gazing on him, it was that he who had saved her brother must be nearly brother himself, yet was not quite, yet must be loved, yet not approached.  He was her brother’s brother-in-arms, brother-in-heart, not hers, yet hers through her brother.  His French name rescued him from foreignness.  He spoke her language with a piquant accent, unlike the pitiable English.  Unlike them, he was gracious, and could be soft and quick.  The battle-scarlet, battle-black, Roland’s tales of him threw round him in her imagination, made his gentleness a surprise.  If, then, he was hers through her brother, what was she to him?  The question did not spring clearly within her, though she was alive to every gradual change of manner toward the convalescent necessitated by the laws overawing her sex.