‘How strange a power of looking these people have,’ said Renee, whose vivacity was fascinated to a steady sparkle by the girl.  ’Tell me, is she glancing round at us?’

Nevil turned and reported that she was not.  She had exhausted them while they were in transit; she had no minor curiosity.

‘Let us fancy she is looking for her lover,’ he said.

Renee added:  ‘Let us hope she will not escape being seen.’

‘I give her my benediction,’ said Nevil.

‘And I,’ said Renee; ‘and adieu to her, if you please.  Look for Roland.’

‘You remind me; I have but a few instants.’

’M.  Nevil, you are a preux of the times of my brother’s patronymic.  And there is my Roland awaiting us.  Is he not handsome?’

‘How glad you are to have him to relieve guard!’

Renee bent on Nevil one of her singular looks of raillery.  She had hitherto been fencing at a serious disadvantage.

‘Not so very glad,’ she said, ’if that deprived me of the presence of his friend.’

Roland was her tower.  But Roland was not yet on board.  She had peeped from her citadel too rashly.  Nevil had time to spring the flood of crimson in her cheeks, bright as the awning she reclined under.

‘Would you have me with you always?’

‘Assuredly,’ said she, feeling the hawk in him, and trying to baffle him by fluttering.

‘Always? forever? and—­listen-give me a title?’

Renee sang out to Roland like a bird in distress, and had some trouble not to appear too providentially rescued.  Roland on board, she resumed the attack.

’M.  Nevil vows he is a better brother to me than you, who dart away on an impulse and leave us threading all Venice till we do not know where we are, naughty brother!’

‘My little sister, the spot where you are,’ rejoined Roland, ’is precisely the spot where I left you, and I defy you to say you have gone on without me.  This is the identical riva I stepped out on to buy you a packet of Venetian ballads.’

They recognized the spot, and for a confirmation of the surprising statement, Roland unrolled several sheets of printed blotting-paper, and rapidly read part of a Canzonetta concerning Una Giovine who reproved her lover for his extreme addiction to wine: 

’Ma se, ma se,
Cotanto beve,
Mi no, mi no,
No ve sposero.’

’This astounding vagabond preferred Nostrani to his heart’s mistress.  I tasted some of their Nostrani to see if it could be possible for a Frenchman to exonerate him.’

Roland’s wry face at the mention of Nostrani brought out the chief gondolier, who delivered himself: 

’Signore, there be hereditary qualifications.  One must be born Italian to appreciate the merits of Nostrani!’

Roland laughed.  He had covered his delinquency in leaving his sister, and was full of an adventure to relate to Nevil, a story promising well for him.