‘Ah, but,’ said she, ’when these Venetians were rough men, chanting like our Huguenots, how cold it must have been here!’

She hoped she was not very wrong in preferring the times of the great Venetian painters and martial doges to that period of faith and stone-cutting.  What was done then might be beautiful, but the life was monotonous; she insisted that it was Huguenot; harsh, nasal, sombre, insolent, self-sufficient.  Her eyes lightened for the flashing colours and pageantries, and the threads of desperate adventure crossing the Rii to this and that palace-door and balcony, like faint blood-streaks; the times of Venice in full flower.  She reasoned against the hard eloquent Englishman of the books.  ’But we are known by our fruits, are we not? and the Venice I admire was surely the fruit of these stonecutters chanting hymns of faith; it could not but be:  and if it deserved, as he says, to die disgraced, I think we should go back to them and ask them whether their minds were as pure and holy as he supposes.’  Her French wits would not be subdued.  Nevil pointed to the palaces.  ‘Pride,’ said she.  He argued that the original Venetians were not responsible for their offspring.  ‘You say it?’ she cried, ’you, of an old race?  Oh, no; you do not feel it!’ and the trembling fervour of her voice convinced him that he did not, could not.

Renee said:  ’I know my ancestors are bound up in me, by my sentiments to them; and so do you, M. Nevil.  We shame them if we fail in courage and honour.  Is it not so?  If we break a single pledged word we cast shame on them.  Why, that makes us what we are; that is our distinction:  we dare not be weak if we would.  And therefore when Venice is reproached with avarice and luxury, I choose to say—­what do we hear of the children of misers? and I say I am certain that those old cold Huguenot stonecutters were proud and grasping.  I am sure they were, and they shall share the blame.’

Nevil plunged into his volume.

He called on Roland for an opinion.

‘Friend,’ said Roland, ’opinions may differ:  mine is, considering the defences of the windows, that the only way into these houses or out of them bodily was the doorway.’

Roland complimented his sister and friend on the prosecution of their studies:  he could not understand a word of the subject, and yawning, he begged permission to be allowed to land and join the gondola at a distant quarter.  The gallant officer was in haste to go.

Renee stared at her brother.  He saw nothing; he said a word to the gondoliers, and quitted the boat.  Mars was in pursuit.  She resigned herself, and ceased then to be a girl.

CHAPTER VI

LOVE IN VENICE

The air flashed like heaven descending for Nevil alone with Renee.  They had never been alone before.  Such happiness belonged to the avenue of wishes leading to golden mists beyond imagination, and seemed, coming on him suddenly, miraculous.  He leaned toward her like one who has broken a current of speech, and waits to resume it.  She was all unsuspecting indolence, with gravely shadowed eyes.