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COLLECTIOS 

OF 

BKITISH AOTHORS 

XACCHNITZ EDITION. 

VOL. 1835. 
A FOItEGOKE CONCITSION M T. D. HOWHIS. 

IN OKI VOLUMB. 



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FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



W. D* HO WELLS. 



AUTHORIZED EDITION. 



LEIPZIG 
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 

1879. 



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A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



As Don Ippolito passed down the long najrow calle 

or footway leading from the Campo San Stefano to 

the Grand Canal in Venice, he peered anxiously about 

him: now turning for a backward look up the calle, 

where theie was no living thing in sight but a cat on 

a garden gate; now running a quick eye along the 

palace walls that rose vast on either hand and notched 

the slender strip of blue sky visible overhead with the 

lines of their jutting balconies, chimneys, and cornices; 

and now glancing toward the canal, where he could 

see the noiseless black boats meeting and passing. 

There was no sound in the calle save his own footfalls 

and the harsh scream of a parrot that hung in the 

sunshine in one of the loftiest windows; but the note 

^ of a peasant crying pots of pinks and roses in the 

^ campo came softened to Don Ippolito's sense, and he 

J heard the gondoliers as they hoarsely jested together 

3 and gossiped, with the canal between them, at the 

'■* next gondola station. 



6 A forecone conclusion. 

The first tenderness of spring was in the air, though 
down in that calle there was yet enough of the wintry . 
rawness to chill the tip of Don Ippolito's sensitive 
nose, which he rubbed for comfort with a handkerchief 
of dark blue calico, and polished for ornament with a 
handkerchief of white linen. He restored each to a 
different pocket in the sides of the ecclesiastical lalare, 
or gown, reaching almost to his ankles, and then 
clutched the pocket in which he had replaced the linen 
handkerchief, as if to make sure that something he 
prized was safe within. He paused abruptly, and, look- 
ing at the doors he had passed, went back a few paces 
and stood before one over which hung, slightly tilted 
forward, an oval sign painted with the eiifigy of an 
eagle, a bundle of arrows, and certain thunderbolts, 
and bearing the legend. Consulate of the United 
States, in neat characters. Don Ippolito gave a quick 
sigh, hesitated a moment, and then seized the bell- 
pull and jerked it so sharply that it seemed to thrust 
out, like a part of the mechanism, the head of an old 
serving-woman at the window above him. 

"Who is there?" demanded this head. 

"Friends," answered Don Ippolito in a rich, sad 
voice. 

"And what do you command?" further asked the 
old woman. 

Don Ippolito paused, apparently searching for his 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 7 

voice, before he inquired, "Is it here that the Consul 
of America lives?" 

"Precisely." 

"Is he perhaps at home?" 

"I don't know. I will go ast him." 

"Do me that pleasure, dear," said Don Ippolito, 
and remained knotting his fingers before the closed 
door. Presently the old woman returned, and looking 
out long enough to say, "The consul is at home," 
drew some inner bolt by a wire running to the lock, 
that let the door start open; then, waiting to hear Don 
Ippolito close it again, she called out from her height. 
"Favor me above." He cUmbed the dim stairway to 
the point where she stood, and followed her to a door, 
which she flung open into an apartment so brightly lit 
by a window looking on the sunny canal, that he 
blinked as he entered. "Signer Console," said the 
old woman, "behold the gentleman who desired to see 
you;" and at the same time Don Ippolito, having re- 
moved his broad, stiff, three-cornered hat, came for- 
ward and made a beautiful bow. He had lost for the 
moment the trepidation which had marked his ap- 
proach to the consulate, and bore himself with graceful 
dignity. 

It was in the first year of the war, and from a 
motive of patriotism common at that time, Mr. Ferris 
(one of my many predecessors in office at Venice) had 
just been crossing his two sOken gondola flags above 



8 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

the consular bookcass, where with their gilt lance- 
headed staves, and their vivid stars and stripes, they 
made a very pretty effect He filHped a little dust 
from his coat, and begged Don Ippolito to be seated, 
with the air of putting even a Venetian priest on a 
footing of equality with other men under the folds of 
the national banner. Mr, Ferris had the prejudice of 
9II Italian sympathizers against the priests; but for this 
he could hardly have found anything in Don Ippolito 
to alarm dislike. His face was a little thin, and the 
chin was delicate; the nose had a fine, Dautesque 
purve, but its final droop gave a melancholy cast to a 
countenance expressive of a gentle and kindly spirit; 
the eyes were large and dark and full of a dreamy 
warmth. Don Ippolito's prevailing tint was that trans- 
parent blueishness which comes from much shaving of 
a heavy black beard; his forehead and temples were 
marble white; he had a tonsure the size of a dollar. 
He sat silent for a httle space, and softly questioned 
the consul's face with his dreamy eyes. Apparently he 
could not gather courage to speak of his business at 
once, for he tiuned his gaze upon the window and 
said, "A beautiful position, Signor Console." 

"Yes, it's a pretty place," answered Mr. .Ferris, 
warily. 

"So much pleasanter here on the Canalazzo than 
on the campos or the tittle canals." 

"Oh, without doubt." 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. ^ 

"Here there must be constant amusement in watch- 
ing the boats: great stir, great variety, great life. And 
now the line season commences, and the Signor Con- 
sole's countrymen will be coming to Venice. Perhaps," 
added Don Ippolito with a polite dismay, and an air 
of sudden anxiety to escape from his own purpose, 
"I may be disturbing or detaining the Signor Con- 
sole?" 

"No," said Mr. Ferrisj "I am quite at leisure for 
the present In what can I have the honor of serving 
you?" 

Don Ippolito heaved a long, ineffectual sigh, and 
taking his linen handkerchief from his pocket, wiped 
his forehead with it, and rolled it upon his knee. He 
looked at the door, and all round the room, and then 
rose and drew near the consul, who had officially 
seated himself at his desk. 

"I suppose that the Signor Console gives passports?" 
he asked. 

"Sometimes," replied Mr. Ferris, with a clouding 
face. 

Don Ippolito seemed to note the gathering distrust 
and to be helpless against it. He continued hastily: 
" Could the Signor Console give a passport for America 
... to me?" 

"Are you an American citizen?" demanded the 
consul in the voice of a man whose suspicions are fully 
roused. 



iO A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"ArQerican citizen?" 

"Yes; subject of the American republic" 

"No, surely; I have not that happiness. I am an 
Austrian subject," returned Don Ippolito a little bitterly, 
as if the last words were an unpleasant morsel in the 
mouth. 

"Then I can't give you a passport," said Mr. Ferris, 
somewhat more gently. "You know," he explained, 
"that no government can give pas^orts to foreign sub- 
jects. That would be an unheard-of thing." 

"But I thought that to go to America an American 
passport would be needed," 

"In America," returned the consul, with proud 
compassion, "they don't care a fig for passports. You 
go and you come, and nobody meddles. To be sure," 
he faltered, "just now, on account of the secessionists, 
they do require you to show a passport at New York; 
but," he continued more boldly, "American passports 
are usually for Europe; and besides, all the American 
passports in the world wouldn't get j>ou over the fron- 
tier at Peschiera. Vou must have a passport from the 
Austrian Lieutenancy of Venice." 

Don Ippolito nodded his head softly several times, 
and said, "Precisely," and then added with an in- 
describable weariness, "Patiencel Signer Console, \ 
ask your pardon for the trouble I have given," and he 
made the consul another low bow. 

Whether Mr. Ferris's curiosity was piqued, and feel- 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1 1 

ing himself on the safe side of his visitor he meant to 
kaow why he had come on such an errand, or whether 
he had some kindlier motive, he could hardly have 
told himself, but fac said, "I'm very sorry. Perhaps 
there is something else in which I could be of use to 
you." 

"Ah, I hardly know," cried Don Ippolito. "I really 
had a kind of hope in coming to your excellency," 

"I am not an excellency," interrupted Mr. Ferris, 
conscientiously. 

"Many excuses! But now it seems a mere besti- 
ality. I was so ignorant about the other matter that 
doubtless I am also quite deluded in this." 

"As to that, of course I can't say," answered Mr. 
Ferris, "but I hope not." 

"Why, listen, signore!" said Don Ippolito, placing 
his hand over that pocket in which he kept his linen 
handkerchief. "1 had something that it had come 
into my head to offer your honored government for its 
advantage in this deplorable rebellion." 

"Oh," responded Mr. Ferris with a falling coun- 
tenance. He had received so many offers of help for 
his honored government from sympathizing foreigners. 
Hardly a week passed but a sabre came clanking up 
his dim staircase with a Herr Graf or a Herr Baron 
attached, who appeared in the spotless panoply of his 
Austrian captaincy or lieutenancy, to accept from the 



12 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION', 

consul a brigadier-generalship in the Federal annies, 
on condition that the consul would pay his expenses 
to Washington, or at least assure him of an exalted 
post and reimbursement of all outlays from President 
Lincoln as soon as he arrived. They were beautiful 
men, with the complexion of blonde girls; their uni- 
forms fitted like kid gloves; the pale blue, or pure 
white, or huzzar black of their coats was ravishingly 
set off by their red or gold trimmings; and they were 
hard to make understand that brigadiers of American 
birth swarmed at Washington, and that if they went 
thither, they must go as soldiers of fortune at then- 
own risk. But they were very polite; they begged 
pardon when they knocked their scabbards against the 
consul's furniture, at the door they each made him a 
magnificent obeisance, said "Servus!" in their great 
voices, and were shown out by the old Marina, ab- 
horrent of their uniforms and doubtful of the consul's 
political sympathies. Only yesterday she had called 
him up at an unwonted hour to receive the visit of a 
courtly gentleman who addressed him as Monsieur le 
Ministre, and offered him at a bargain ten thousand 
stand of probably obsolescent muskets belonging to 
the late Duke of Farma. Shabby, hungry, incapable 
exiles of all nations, religions, and politics beset him 
for places of honor and emolument in the service of 
the Union; revolutionists out of business, and the 
minions of banished despots, were alike willing to be 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 13 

fed, clothed, and dispatched to Washington with swords 
consecrated to the perpetuity of the republic. 

"I have here," said Don Ippolito, too intent upon 
showing whatever it was he had to note the change 
in the consul's mood, "the model of a weapon of my 
contrivance, which I thought the government of the 
NorHi could employ successfully in cases where its 
batteries were in danger of capture by the Spaniards." 
"Spaniards? Spaniards? We have no war with 
Spain!" cried the consuL 

"Yes, yes, I know," Don Ippolito made haste to 
explain, "but those of South America being Spanish 
by descent" — 

"But we are not fighting the South Americans. 
We are fighting our own Southern States, I am sorry 
to say." 

"Oh! Many excuses, I am afraid I don't under- 
stand," said Don Ippolito meekly; whereupon Mr. 
Ferris enlightened him in a formula (of which he was 
beginning to be weary) against European misconcep- 
tion of the American situation. Don Ippolito nodded 
his head contritely, and when Mr. Ferris had ended, 
he was so much abashed that he made no motion to 
show his invention till the other added, "But no 
matter; I suppose the contrivance would work as well 
agunst the Southerners as the South Americans. Let 
me see it, please;" and then Don Ippolito, with a 



14 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

grati£ed smile, drew from his pocket the neatly iinished 
model of a breech-loading cannon. 

"You perceive, Signor Console," he said with new 
dignity, "that this is nothing very new as a breech- 
loader, though I ask you to observe this little im- 
provement for restoring the breech to its place, which 
is original. The grand feature of my invention, how- 
ever, is this secret chamber in the breech, which is in- 
tended to hold an explosive of high potency, with a 
fuse coming out below. The gunner, finding his piece 
in danger, ignites this fuse, and takes refuge in flight. 
At the moment the enemy seizes the gun the contents 
of the secret chamber explode, demoHshing the piece 
and destroying its captors," 

The dreamy warmth in Don Ippolito's deep eyes 
kindled to a flame; a dark red glowed in his thin 
cheeks; he drew a box from the folds of his drapery 
and took snuff in a great whiff, as if inhaling the 
sulphurous fiimes of battle, or titillating his nostrils 
with grains of gunpowder. He was at least in fiill 
enjoyment of the poetic power of his invention, and 
no doubt had before his eyes a vivid picture of a 
score of secessionists surprised and blown to atoms in 
the very moment of triumph. "Behold, Signor Con- 
sole!" he said. 

"It's certainly very curious," said Mr. Ferris, turn- 
ing the fearful toy over in his hand, and admiring the 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1 5 

neat workmanship of it. "Did you make this model 
yourself?" 

"Surely," answered the priest, with a joyous pride; 
"I have no money to spend upon artisans; and be- 
sides, as you might infer, signore, I am not very well 
seen hy my superiors and associates on account of 
these little amusements of mine; so I keep them as 
much as I can to myself." Don Ippolito laughed 
nervously, and then fell silent with his eyes intent 
upon the consul's face. "What do you think, signore?" 
he presently resumed. "If this invention were brought 
to the notice of your generous government, would it 
not patronize my labors? I have read that America 
is the land of enterprises. Who knows but your govern- 
ment might invite me to take service under it in some 
capacity in which I could employ those litde gifts that 
Heaven" — He paused again, apparendy puzzled by the 
compassionate smile on the consul's lips. "But tell 
me, signore, how this invention appears to you." 

"Have you had any practical experience in gun- 
nery?" asked Mr. Ferris. 

"Why, certainly not" 

"Neither have I," continued Mr. Ferris, "but I was 
wondering whether the explosive in this secret chamber 
would not become so heated by the frequent dis- 
charges of the piece as to go off prematurely some- 
times, and kill our own artillerymen instead of waiting 
for the secessionists?" 



1 6 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Don Ippolito's countenance fell, and a dull shame 
displaced the exultation that had glowed in it His 
head sunk OQ his breast, and he made no attempt at 
reply, so that it was again Mr. Ferris who spoke. "You 
see, I don't really know anything mofe of the matter 
than you do, and I don't undertake to say whether 
your invention is disabled by the possibUity I suggest 
or not. Haven't you any acquaintances among the 
military, to whom you could show your model?" 

"No," answered Don Ippolito, coldly, "I don't con- 
sort with the military. Besides, what would be thought 
of a priest," he asked with a bitter stress on the word, 
"who exhibited such an invention as that to an officer 
of our paternal government?" 

"I suppose it would certainly surprise the lieu- 
tenant-governor somewhat," said Mr. Ferris with a 
laugh. "May I ask," he pursued after an interval, 
"whether you have occupied yourself with other in- 
ventions?" 

"I have attempted a great many," replied Don Ip- 
polito in a tone of dejection. 

"Are they all of this warlike temper?" pursued 
the consul. 

"No," said Don Ippolito, blushing a little, "they 
are nearly all of peaceful intention. It was the wish 
to produce something of utility which set me about 
this cannon. Those good friends of mine who have 
done me the honor of looking at my attempts had 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 17 

blamed me for the uselessness of my inventions; they 
allowed that they were ingenious, but they said that 
even if they could be put in operation, they *ould not 
be what the world cared for. Perhaps they were right. 
I know very little of the world," concluded the priest, 
sadly. He had risen to go, yet seemed not quite able 
to do so; there was no more to say, but if he had 
come to the consul with high hopes, it might well 
have unnerved him to have all end so blankly. He 
drew a long, sibUant breath between his shut teeth, 
nodded to himself thrice, and turning to Mr. Ferris 
with a melancholy bow, said, "Signer Console, I thank 
you infinitely for your kindness, I beg youi pardon for 
the disturbance, and I take my leave." 

"I am sorry," said Mr. Ferris. "Let us see each 
other again. In regard to the inventions, — well, you 
must have patience." He dropped into some proverbial 
phrases which the obliging Latin tongues supply so 
abundantly for the races who must often talk when 
they do not feel like thinking, and he gave a start 
when Don Ippolito repbed in English, "Yes, but hope 
deferred maketh the heart sick." 

It was not that it was so uncommon to have 
Italians innocently come out with their whole slender 
stock of EngHsh to him, for the sake of practice, as 
they told him; but there were peculiarities in Don Ip- 
polito's accent for which he could not account. "What," 
he exclaimed, "do you know English?" 



l8 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"I have studied it a little, by myself," answered 
Don Ippolito, pleased to have his English recog- 
nized, and then lapsing into the safety of Italian, 
he added, "And I had also the help of an English 
ecclesiastic who sojourned some months in Venice, 
last year, for his health, and who used to read with 
me and teach me the pronunciation. He was from 
Dublin, this ecclesiastic." 

"dhl" said Mr. Ferris, with relief, "I see;" and 
he perceived that what had puzzled him in Don Ip- 
polito's English was a fine brogue superimposed upon 
his Italian accent 

"For some time I have had this idea of going to 
America, and I thought that the first thing to do was * 
to equip myself with the language." 

"Um!" said Mr. Ferris, "that was practical, at any 
rate," and he mused awhile. By and by he continued, 
more kindly than he had yet spoken, "I wish I could 
ask you to sit down again; but I have an engagement 
which I must make haste to keep. Are you going out 
through the campo? Pray wait a minute, and I will 
walk with you." 

Mr. Ferris went into another room, through the 
open door of which Don Ippolito saw the parapher- 
nalia of a painter's studio; an easel with a half- 
finished picture on it; a chair with a palette and 
brushes, and crushed and twisted tubes of colors; a 
lay figure in one comer; on the walls scraps of 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1 9 

stamped leather, lags of tapestry, desultory sketches 

Mr. Ferris came out again, brushing his bat. 

"The Signer Console amuses himself with painting, 
I see," said Don Ippolito courteously. 

"Not at all," replied Mr. Ferris, putting on his 
gloves; "I am a painter by profession, and I amuse 
myself with consuling;"* and as so open a matter 
needed no explanation, he said no more about it. 
Nor is it quite necessary to tell how, as he was one 
day painting in New York, it occurred to him to make 
use of 3. Congressional fnend, and ask for some Italian 
consulate, he did not care which. That of Venice 
happened to be vacant: the income was a few hun- 
dred dollars; as no one else wanted it, no question 
was made of Mr. Feiris's fitness for the post, and he 
presently found himself possessed of a commission re- 
questing the Emperor of Austria to permit him to 
enjoy and exercise the office of consul of the ports of 
the Lombardo- Venetian kingdom, to which the Pre- 
sident of the United States appointed him from a 

* Since these words of Mr. Ferns where Ant printed, I have been tdd 
that a more eminenl painler, namely Rubens, made ysry much the same 

ing sometimes ,^^ said a visitoi who found him at his easeL "1 amuse myself 
by pUying the ambassador sometimes," answered Rubens. In spite of the 

tbat he did Dot know how unhandsoDielv Rubens had takeo the words oat of 
his month. 



»V,.K>;(lc 



20 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Special trust in his abilities and integrity. He pro- 
ceeded at once to his post of duty, called upon the 
ship's chandler with whom they had been left, for the 
consular archives, and began to paint some Venetian 
subjects. 

He and Don Ippolito quitted the Consulate to- 
gether, leaving Marina to digest with her noonday 
porridge the wonder that he should be walking 
amicably forth with a priest The same spectacle was 
presented to the gaze of the campo, where they paused 
in friendly converse, and were seen to part with many 
politenesses by the doctors of the neighborhood, loung- 
ing away their leisure, as the Venetian fashion is, at 
the local pharmacy. 

The apothecary craned forward over his counter, 
and peered through the open door. "What is that 
blessed Consul of America doing with a priest?" 

"The Consul of America with a priest?" demanded 
a grave old man, a physician with a beautiful silvery 
beard, and a most reverend and senatorial presence, 
but one of the worst tongues in Venice. "Oh!" he 
added, with a laugh, after scrutiny of the two through 
his glasses, "it's that crack-brain Don Ippolito Ron- 
dinelli. He Isn't priest enough to hurt the consul. 
Perhaps he's been selling him a perpetual motion for 
the use of his government, which needs something of 
the kind just now. Or maybe he's been posing to 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



him for a picture. He would make a veiy pretty 
Joseph, give him Potiphar's wife in the background," 
said the doctor, who if not maligned would have 
needed much more to make a Joseph of him. 



D,nlz-nf,G00g[c 



I FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



Mr. Ferris took his way through the devious foot- 
ways where the shadow was chill, and through the 
broad campos where the sun was tenderly warm, and 
the towers of the church rose against the specklcss 
azure of the vernal heaven. As he went along, he 
frowned in a helpless perplexity with the case of Don 
Ippolito, whom he had begun by doubting for a spy 
with some incomprehensible motive, and had ended 
by pitying with a certain degree of amusement and a 
deep sense of the futility of his compassion. He pre- 
sently began to think of him with a litUe disgust, as 
people commonly think of one whom they pity and 
yet cannot help, and he made haste to cast oif the 
hopeless burden. He shrugged his shoulders, struck 
his stick on the smooth paving-stones, and let his eyes 
rove up and down the fronts of the houses, for the 
sake of the pretty faces that glanced out of the case- 
ments. He was a young man, and it was spring, and 
this was Venice. He made himself joyfully part of 
the city and the season; he was glad of the narrow- 
ness of the streets, of the good-humored jostling and 
pushing; he crouched into an arched doorway to let a 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 2^ 

water-carrier pass with her copper buckets dripping at . 
the end of the yoke balanced on her shoulder, and 
he returned her smiles and excuses with others as 
broad and gay; he brushed by the swelling hoops of 
ladies, and stooped before the unwieldy burdens of 
porters, who as they staggered through the crowd with 
a thrust here and a shove there forgave themselves, 
laughing, with "We are in Venice, signorij" and he 
stood aside for the files of soldiers clanking heavily 
over the pavement, their muskets kindling to a blaze 
in the sunlit campos and quenched again in the damp 
shadows of the calles. His ear was taken by the 
vibrant jargoning of the boatmen as they pushed their 
craft under the bridges he crossed, and the keen notes 
of the canaries and the songs of the golden-billed 
blackbirds whose cages hung at lattices far oveiiiead. 
Heaps of oranges, topped by the fairest cut in halves, 
gave their color, at frequent intervals, to the dusky 
corners and recesses and the long-drawn cry of the 
venders, "Oranges of Palermo!" rose above the clatter 
of feet and the clamor of other voices. At a little 
shop where butter and eggs and milk abounded, to- 
gether with early flowers of various sorts, he bought a 
bunch of hyacinths, blue and white and yellow, and 
he presently stood smelling these while he waited in 
the hotel parlor for the ladies to whom be had sent 
his card. He turned at the sound of drifting drapery, 
and coald not forbear placing the hyacinths in the 



24 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

hand of Miss Florida Vervain, who had come into the 
room to receive him. 

She was a girl of about seventeen years, who looked 
older; she was tall rather than short, and rather Ml, — 
though it could not be said that she erred in point of 
solidity. In the attitudes of shy hauteur into which 
she constantly fell, there was a touch of defiant awk- 
wardness which had a certain fascination. She was 
blonde, with a throat and hands of milky whiteness; 
there was a suggestion of freckles on her regular face, 
where a quick color came and went, though her 
cheeks were habitually somewhat pale; her eyes were 
very blue under their level brows, and the lashes were 
even lighter in color than the masses of her fair gold 
hair; the edges of the lids were touched with the 
faintest red. The late Colonel Vervain of the United 
States anny, whose complexion his daughter had in- 
herited, was an officer whom it would not have been 
peaceable to cross in any purpose or pleasure, and 
Miss Vervain seemed sometimes a little burdened by 
the passionate nature which he had left her together 
with the tropical name he had bestowed in honor of 
the State where he had fought the Seminoles in his 
youth, and where he chanced still to be stationed when 
she was bom; she had the air of being embarrassed 
in presence of herself, and of having an anxious watch 
upon her impulses. I do not know how otherwise 
to describe the effort of proud, helpless femininity, 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 2$ 

which wonld have struck the close observer is Miss 
Vervain. 

"Delicious!" she said, in a deep voice, which con- 
veyed something of this anxiety in its guarded tones, 
and yet was not wanting in a kind of frankness. "Did 
you mean them for me, Mr. Ferris?" 

"I didn't, but I do," answered Mr. Ferris. "I 
bought them in ignorance, but I understand now what 
they were meant for by nature;" and in fact the hya- 
cinths, with their smooth textures and their pure colors, 
harmonized well with Miss Vervain, as she bent her 
face over them and inhaled their full, rich periiime. 

"I wUl put them in water," she said, "if you'll 
excuse me a moment. Mother will be down directly." 

Before she could return, her mother rustled into 
the parlor. 

Mrs, Vervain was gracefully, fragilely unlike her 
daughter. She entered with a gentle and gliding step, 
peering near- sigh tedly about through her glasses, and 
laughing triumphantly when she had determined Mr. 
Ferris's exact position, where he stood with a smile 
shaping his full brown beard and glancing from his 
hazel eyes. She was dressed in perfect taste with 
reference to her matronly years, and the lingering 
evidences of her widowhood, and she had an unaffected 
naturalness of manner which even at her age of forty- 
eight could not be called less than charming. She 



26 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

spoke in a trusting, caressing tone, to which no man 
at least could respond unkindly. 

"So very good of you, to take all this trouble, Mr. 
Ferris," she said, giving him a friendly band, "and I 
suppose you are letting us encroach upon very valuable 
time. I'm quite ashamed to take it. But isn't it a 
heavenly day? What / call a perfect day; just right 
every way; none of those disagreeable extremes. It's 
so unpleasant to have it too hot, for instance. I'm the 
greatest person for moderation, Mr. Ferris, and I cany 
the principle into everything; but I do think the break- 
fasts at these Italian hotels are too light altogether. I 
like our American breakfasts, don't you? I've been 
telling Florida I can't stand it; we really must make 
some arrangement. To be sure, you oughtn't to think 
of such a thing as eating, in a place like Venice, all 
poetry; but a sound mind in a sound body, / say. 
We're perfectly wild over it. Don't you think it's a 
place that grows upon you very much, Mr. Ferris? All 
those associations, — it does seem too much; and the 
gondolas everywhere. But I'm always afraid the gon- 
doliers cheat us; and in the stores I never feel safe a 
moment — not a moment. I do think the Venetians 
are lacking in truthfulness, a little. I don't believe 
they understand our American fairdealing and sincerity. 
I shouldn't want to do them injustice, but I really 
think they take advantages in bargaining. Now such 
a thing even as corals. Florida is extremely fond of 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 2 ^ 

them, and we bought a set yesterday in the Piazza, 
and I know we paid too much for them. Florida," 
said Mrs. Vervain, for her daughter had reentered the 
room, and stood with some shawls and wrafts upon her 
arm, patiently waiting for the conclusion of the elder 
lady's ^)eech, "I wish you would bring down that set 
of corals. Td like Mr. Fetris to give an unbiased 
opinion. I'm sure we were cheated." 

"I don't know anything about corals, Mrs. Vervain," 
interposed Mr. Ferris. 

"Well, but you ought to see this set for the beauty 
of the color; they're really exquisite. I'm sure it will 
gratiiy your artistic taste." 

Miss Vervain hesitated with a look of desire to 
obey, and of doubt irfiether to force the pleasure upon 
Mr. Ferris. "Won't it do another time, mother?" she 
asked faintly; "the gondola is waiting for us." 

Mrs. Vervain gave a frailish start from the chair, 
into which she had sunk. "Oh, do let ua be off at 
once, then," she said; and when they stood on the 
landing-stairs of the hotel: "What gloomy things these 
gondolas are!" she added, while the gondolier with 
one foot on the gunwale of the boat received the 
ladies' shawls, and then crooked his arm for them to 
rest a h^id on in stepping aboard; "I wonder they 
don't paint them some cheerful color." 

"Blue, or pink, Mis. Vervain?" asked Mr. Ferris. 
"1 knew you were coming to that question; they all 



2B A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

do. But we needn't have the top oo at all, if it de- 
presses your spirits. We shall be just waim enough in 
the open sunlight." 

"Well, have it off, then. It sends the cold chills 
over me to look at it. What did Byron call it?" 

"Yes, it's time for Byron, now. It was very good 
of you not to mention him before, Mrs. Vervain. But 
I knew he had to come. He called it a cofRn clapped 
in a canoe," 

"Exactly," said Mrs. Vervain. "I always feel as if 
I were going to my own funeral when I get into it; 
and Fve certainly had enough of funerals never to 
want to have anything to do with ^lother, as long as 
I live." 

She settled heiself luxuriously upon the feather- 
stuffed leathern cushions when the cabin was removed. 
Death had indeed been near her very often; father 
and mother had been early lost to her, and the brothers 
and sisters orphaned with her had faded and perished 
one after another, as they ripened to men and women; 
she had seen four of her own children die; her hus- 
band had been dead six years. All these bereave- 
ments had left her what they had found her. She had 
truly grieved, and, as she said, she had hardly ever 
been out of black since she could remember. 

"I never was in colors when I was a girl," she went 
on, indulging many obituary memories as the gondola 
dipped and darted down the canal, "and I was mar- 



A FOEEGOHE CONCLUSION. 2g 

lied in my mourning for my last sister. It did seem 
a little too much when the went, Mr. Ferris. I was 
too young to feel it so much about the others, but we 
were nearly of the same age, and that makes a dif- 
ference, don't you know. First a brother and then a 
sister: it was very strange how they kept going that 
way. I seemed to break the charm when I got mar- 
ried; though, to be sure, there was no brother left after 
Marian." 

Miss Vervain heard her mother's mortuary prattle 
with a face from which no impatience of it could be 
inferred, and Mr. Ferris made no comment on what 
was oddly various in character and manner, for Mrs. 
Vervain touched upon the gloomiest facts of her history 
with a certain impersonal statistical interest. They 
were rowing across the lagoon to the Island of San 
Lazzaro, where for reasons of her own she intended to 
venerate the convent in which Byron studied the Ar- 
menian language prcparatoiy to writing his great poem 
in it; if her pilgrimage had no very earnest motive, it 
was worthy of the fact which it was designed to honor. 
The lagoon was of a perfect, shining smoothness, 
broken by the shallows over which the ebbing tide 
had left the sea-weed trailed like long, dishevelled hair. 
The fishermen, as they waded about staking their nets, 
or stooped to gather the small shell-fish of the shallows, 
showed legs as brown and tough as those of the apos- 
tles in Titian's Assumption. Here and there was a 



30 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

boat, with a boy or an old man asleep in the bottom 
of it. The gulls sailed high, white flakes against the 
ilhmitable blue of the heavens; the air, though it was 
of eailf spring, and in the shade had a salty pun- 
gency, was here almost languorously warm; in the 
motionless splendors and rich colors of the scene there 
was a melancholy before which Mrs. Vervain fell fitfully 
silent. Now and then Ferris briefly spoke, calling 
Miss Vervain's notice to this or that, and she briefly 
responded. As they passed the mad-house of San 
Servolo, a maniac standing at an open window took 
his black velvet skull-cap from his white hair, bowed 
low three times, and kissed his hand to the ladies. 
The Lido in front of them stretched a brown strip of 
sand with white villages shining out of it; on their lefl; 
the Public Gardens showed a mass of hovering green; 
far beyond and above, the ghostlike snows of the 
Alpine heights haunted the misty horizon. 

It was chill in the shadow of the convent when 
they landed at San Lazzaro, and it was cool in the 
parlor where they waited for the monk who was to 
show them through the place; but it was still and 
warm in the gardened court, where the bees murmured 
among the crocuses and hyacinths under the noonday 
siin. Miss Vervain stood looking out of the window 
upon the lagoon, while her mother drifted about the 
room, peering at the objects on the wall through her 
eyeglasses. She was praising a Chinese painting of 



4 FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 3 1 

fish on rice-paper, when a young monk entered with a 
cordial greeting in English for Mr. Ferris. She turned 
and saw them shaking hands, but at the same moment 
her eyeglasses abandoned her nose with a vigorous 
leap; she gave an amiable laugh, and groping for them 
over her dress, bowed at random as Mr. Ferris pre- 
sented Padre Giiolamo. 

"Fve been admiring this painting so much. Padre 
Girolamo," she said, with instant good-wiU, and taking 
the monk into the easy familiarity of her friendship by 
the tone with which she spoke his name. "Some of 
the brothers did it, I suppose." 

"Oh no," SMd the monk, "it's a Chinese painting. 
We bung it up there because it was given to us, and 
was curious." 

"Well, now, do you know," returned Mrs. Vervain, 
"I thought it was Chinese! Their things art so odd. 
But really, in an Armenian convent it's very mislead- 
ing, I don't think you ought to leave it there; it cer- 
tainly does throw people off the track," she added, 
subduing the expression to something very lady-like, 
by the winning appeal with which she used it, 

"Oh, but if they put up Anuenian paintings in 
Chinese convents?" said Mr. Ferris. 

"You're joking!" cried Mrs. Vervain, looking at him 
with a graciously amused air, "There art no Chinese 
convents. To be sure those rebels are a kind of 
Christians," she added thoughtfully, "but there can't be 



32 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

many of them left, poor things, hundreds of them exe- 
cuted at a time, that way. It's perfectly sickening to 
read of it; and you can't help it, you know. But they 
say they haven't really so much feeling as we have — 
not so nervous." 

She walked by the side of the young friar as he 
led the way to such parts of the convent as are open 
to visitors, and Mr. Ferris came after with her daugh- 
ter, who, he fancied, met his attempts at talk with 
sudden and more than usual hauteur. "What a fool!" 
he said to himself. "Is she afraid I shall be wanting 
to make love to her?" and he followed in rather a 
sulky silence the course of Mrs. Vervain and her guide. 
The library, the chapel, and the museum called out 
her friendliest praises, aod in the last she praised the 
mummy on show there at the expense of one she had 
seen in New York; but when Padre Girolamo pointed 
out the desk in the refectory from' which one of the 
brothers read while the rest were eating, she took him 
to task. "Oh, but I can't think that's at all good for 
the digestion, you know, — using the brain that way 
whilst you're at table. I really hope you don't listen 
too attentively; it would be better for you in the long 
run, even in a religious point of view. But now — 
Byron I You Tmtst show me his cell!" The monk 
deprecated the non-existence of such a cell, and 
glanced in perplexity at Mr. Ferris, who came to his 
relief, "You couldn't have seen his cell, if he'd had 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 33 

one. Mis. Vervain. They don't admit ladies to the 
cloister." 

"What nonsense!" answered Mrs. Vervain, ap- 
parently regarding this as another of Mr. Ferris's plea- 
santries; but Padre Girolamo silently confirmed his 
statement, and she briskly assailed the nile as a dis- 
respect to the sex, which r^ected even upon the 
Virgin, the object, as he was forced to allow, of their 
high veneration. He smiled patiently, and confessed 
that Mrs. Vervain had all the reasons on her side. At 
the polyglot printing-office, where she handsomely 
bought every kind of Armenian book and pamphlet, 
and thus repaid in the only way possible the trouble 
their visit had given, he did not offer to take leave of 
them, but after speaking with Ferris, of whom he 
seemed an old tiiend, he led them through the garden 
environing the convent, to a little pavilion perched on 
the wall that defends the island from the tides of the 
lagoon. A lay-brother presently followed them, bear- 
mg a tray with coffee, toasted rusk, and a jar of that 
conserve of rose-leaves which is the convent's delicate 
hospitality to favored guests. Mrs. Vervain cried out 
over the poetic confection when Padre Girolamo told 
her what it was, and her daughter suffered herself 
to express a guarded pleasure. The amiable matron 
brushed the crumbs of the baicolo from her lap when 
the lunch was ended, and fitting on her glasses leaned 
forward for a better look at the monk's black-bearded 



34 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

face. 'Tm perfectly delighted," she said. "You must 
be very happy here, I suppose you are." 

"Yes," answered the monk rapturously; "so happy 
that I should be content never to leave San.Lazzatx). 
I came here when I was veiy young, and the greater 
part of my life has been passed on this little island. 
It is my home — my country." 

"Do you never go away?" 

"Oh yes; sometimes to Constantinople, sometimes 
to London and Paris." 

"And you've never been to America yet? Well 
now, 111 tell you; you ought to go. You would like 
it, I know, and our people would give you a very cor- 
dial reception." 

"Reception?" The monk appealed once more to 
Ferris with a look. 

Ferris broke into a laugh. "I don't believe Padre 
Girolamo would come in quality of distinguished 
f(»eigner, Mrs. Vervain, and I don't think he'd know 
what to do with one of our ccffdial receptions." 

"Well, he ought to go to America, any way. He 
can't really know anything about us till he's been there. 
Just think how ignorant theEnghsh are of oui country! 
You wili come, won't you? I should be de%hted to 
welcome you at my house in Providence. Rhode Island 
is a small State, but there's a great deal of wealth 
there, and very good society in Providence. It's quite 
New-Yorky, you know," said Mrs. Vervain expressively. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 35 

She rose as she spoke, and led the way back to the 
gondola. She told Padre Girolamo that th^ were to 
be some weeks in Venice, and made him promise to 
breakfast with them at their hotel. She smiled and 
nodded to him after the boat had pushed off, and kept 
him bowing on the landing-stairs. 

"What a lovely place, and what a perfectly heav- 
enly moining you hace given us, Mr. Ferris! We never 
can thank you enough for it And now, do you know 
what I'm thinking off Perhaps you can help me. It 
was Byron's studying there put me in mind of it How 
soon do the mosquitoes come?" 

"About the end of June," responded Ferris me- 
chanically, staring with helpless mystification at Mrs. 
Vervain, 

"Very well; then there's no reason why we shouldn't 
stay in Venice till that time. We are both very ftind 
of the place, and we'd quite concluded, this morning, 
to stop here till the mosquitoes came. You know, Mr. 
Ferris, my daughter had to leave school much earlier 
than she ought, for my health has obliged me to travel 
a great deal since I lost my husband; and I must 
have her with me, for we're all that there is of us; we 
haven't a chick or a child that's related to us any- 
where. But wherever we stop, even few a few weeks, 
I contrive to get her some kind of instruction. I feel 
the need of it so much in my own case; for to tell 
you the truth, Mr. Ferris, I married too young. I sup- 



36 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

pose I should do the same thing over again if it toa^ 
to be done over; but don't you see, my mind wasn't 
properly formed; and then following my husband 
about from pillar to post, and my first baby bom 
when I was nineteen — well, it wasn't education, at any 
rate, whatever else it was; and I've determined that 
Florida, though we are such a pair of wanderers, shall 
not have my regrets. I got teachers for her in Eng- 
land, — the English are not anything like so disagree- 
able at home as they are in traveling, and we stayed 
there two years, — and I did in France, and I did in 
Germany. And now, Italian. Here we are in Italy, 
and I think we ought to improve the time. Florida 
knows a good deal of Italian already, for her music 
teacher in France was an Italian, and he taught her 
the language as well as music. What she wants now, 
I should say, is to perfect her accent and get facility, 
I think she ought to have some one come every day 
and read and converse an hour or two with her." 

Mrs. Vervain leaned back in her seat, and looked 
at Ferris, who said, feeling that the matter was re- 
ferred to him, "I think — without presuming to say 
what Miss Vervain's need of instruction is — that your 
idea is a very good one." He mused in silence his 
wonder that so much addlepatedness as was at once 
observable in Mrs. Vervain should exist along with so 
much common-sense. "Ifs certainly very good in the 
abstract," he added, with a glance at.the daughter, as. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 37 

if the sense must be hers. She did not meet his 
glance at once, but with tin impatient recc^ition of 
the heat that was now great for the warmth with which 
she was dressed, she pushed her sleeve from her wrist, 
showing its delicious whiteness, and letting her fingers 
trail through the cool water; she dried them on her 
handkerchief, and then bent her eyes full upon him as 
if challenging him to think this unlady-like. 

"No, clearly the sense does not come from her," 
said Ferris to himself; it is impossible to think well 
of the mind of a girl who treats one with tacit con- 
tempt. 

"Yes," resumed Mrs. Vervain, "it's certainly very 
good in the abstract, fiut oh dear me! you've no 
idea of the difficulties in the way. I may speak frankly 
with you, Mr. Feiris, for you are here as the repre- 
sentative of the country, and you naturally sympathize 
with the difficulties of Americans abroad; the teachers 
will fall in love with their pupils." 

"Motherl" began Miss Vervain; and then she 
checked herself. 

Ferris gave a vengefial laugh. "Really, Mrs. Ver- 
vain, though I sympathize with you in my official 
capacity, I must own that as a man and a brother, 
I can't help feeling a little sony for those poor fellows, 
too," 

"To be sure, they are to be pitied, of course, and 
/ feel for them; I did when I was a girl; for the same 



38 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

thing used to happen then. I don't know why Flo- 
rida should be subjected to such embarrassments, too. 
It does seem sometimes as if it were something in the 
blood. They all get the idea that you have money, 
you know." 

"TTien I should say that it might be something in 
the pocket," suggested Ferris with a look at Miss Ver- 
vain, in whose silent suffering, as he imagined it, he 
found a malicious consolation for her scorn. 

"Well, whatever it is," replied Mrs. Vervain, "it's 
too vexatious. Of course, going to new places, that 
way, as we're always doing, and only going to stay for 
a limited time, perhaps, you can't pick and choose. 
And even when you do get an elderly teacher, they're 
as bad as any. It really is too trying. Now, when I 
was talking with that nice monk of youre at the con- 
vent, there, 1 couldn't help thinking how perfectly de- 
lightful it would be if Florida could have kim for a 
teacher. Why couldn't she? He told me that he would 
come to take breakfast or lunch with us, but not dinner, 
for he always had to be at the convent before night- 
fall. Well, he might come to give the lessons some- 
time in the middle of the day." 

"You couldn't manage it, Mrs. Vervain, I know you 
couldn't," answered Ferris earnestly. "I'm sure the 
Armenians never do anything of the kind. They're all 
very busy men, engaged in ecclesiastical or literary 
work, and they couldn't give the time." 



A FOKXGONE COMCLtlSIOS. 39 

"Why not? There was Byron," 

"But Byron went to them, and be studied Arme< 
nian, not Italian, with them. Padre Girolamo speaks 
perfect Italian, for all that I can see; bat I doubt if 
he'd undertake to impart the native accent, vdiich is 
what yon imnt. In fact, the scheme is altogether im- 
practicable." 

"Well," said Mrs, Vervain; "rm exceedingly sorry. 
I had quite set my heart on it. I never UxA such a 
fancy to any one in such a short time before." 

"It seemed to be a case of love at first sight on 
both sides," said Ferris. "Fadre Girolamo doesn't 
shower those syruped rose-leaves indiscriminately upon' 
visiKars." 

"Thanks," returned Mrs. Vervain; "it's very good of 
you to say so, Mr, Ferris, and it's very gratifying, all 
round; but don't you see, it doesn't serve the present 
purpose. What teachers do you know of?"' 

She had been by marriage so long in the service 
of the United States that she still regarded its agents 
as part of her own domestic economy. Consuls she 
everywhere employed as functionaries specially ap- 
pointed to look after the interests of American ladies 
traveling without protection. In the week which had 
passed since her arrival in Venice, there had been no 
day on which ^e did not appeal to Ferris for help or 
sympaAy or advice. She took amiable possession of 
him at once, and she had established an amusing sort 



40 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

of intimacy with him, to which the haughty trepida- 
tions of hei daughter set certain bounds, but in which 
the demand that be should find her a suitable Italian 
teacher seemed trivially matter of course. 

"Yes, I know several teachers," he said, after think- 
ing awhile; "but they're all open to the objection of 
being human; and besides, they all do things in a set 
kind of way, and I'm afraid they wouldn't enter into 
the spirit of any scheme of instruction that departed 
very widely from Ollendorff." He paused, and Mrs. 
Vervain gave a sketch of the different professional 
masters whom she had employed in the various, coun- 
tries of her sojourn, and a disquisition upon tbdr 
several lives and characters, fortifying her statements 
by reference of doubtful points to her daughter. This 
occupied some time, and Foris listened to it all with 
an abstracted air. At last he said, with a smile, 
"There was an Italian priest came to see me this 
morning, who astonished me by knowing English — 
with a brogue that he'd learned from an English priest 
straight from Dublin; perhaps lu might do. Mis. Ver- 
vain? He's professionally pledged, you know, not to 
give the kind of annoyance you've suffered from in 
teachers. He would do as well as Padre Girolamo, I 
suppose." 

"Do you really? Are you in earnest?" 
"Well, no, I believe I'm not. I haven't the least 
idea he would da He belongs to the church militant. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 4I 

He came to me with the model of a breech-loading 
cannon he's invented, and he wanted a passport to go 
to America, so that he might offer his cannon to onr 
gcrvcmment" 

"How cuiiousl" said Mrs. Vavain, and her daughter 
looked frankly into Fenis's face. "But I know; it's 
one of your jokes." 

"You overpraise me, Mrs. Vervain, If I could 
make such jokes as that priest was, I should set up for 
a humorist at once. He had the touch of pathos that 
they say all true pieces of humor ought to have," he 
went on instinctively addressing himself to Miss Ver- 
vain, who did not repulse him. "He made me mel- 
ancholy; and his face haunts me. I should like to 
paint him. Priests are generally such a snuily, common 
lot. And I dare say," he concluded, "he's sufficiently 
commonplace, too, though he didn't look it. Spare 
your romance, Miss Vervain." 

The young lady blushed resentfully. "I see as little 
romance as joke in it," she said. 

"It was a cannon," returned Ferris, without taking 
any notice of her, and with a sort of absent laugh, 
"that would make it very lively for the Southerners — 
if they had it. Poor fellow 1 I suppose he came with 
high hopes of me, and expected me to receive his in- 
vention with eloquent praises. I've no doubt he figured 
himself furnished not only with a passport, but with a 
letter fzom me to President Lincohi, and foresaw 



42 A FOREGONE CONCLTJSIOH. 

his own triumphal entry into Washington, and his 
honorable interviews with the admiring generals of the 
Union forces, to whom he should display his wonder- 
ful cannon. Too bad; isn't it?" 

"And whjf didn't you give him the passpcwt and 
the letter?" asked Mrs. Vervain. 

"Oh, that's a state secret," returned Ferris. 

"And you think he won't do for our purpose?" 

"I don't indeed." 

"Well, I'm not so sure of it Tell me something 
more about him." 

"I don't know anything more about him. Besides, 
there iMi't time." 

The gondola had already entered the canal, and 
was swiftly approaching the hotel. 

"Oh yes, there is," pleaded Mrs, Vervain, laying her 
hand upon his arm. "I want you to come in and dine 
with us. We dine early." 

"Thank you, I can't Affairs of the nation, you 
know. Rebel privateer on the canal of the Brenta." 

"Really?" Mrs. Vervain leaned towards Ferris 
for sharper scrutiny of his face. Her glasses sprang 
from her nose, and precipitated themselves into his 
bosom. 

"Allow me," he said, with burlesque politeness, 
withdrawing them from the recesses of his waistcoat 
and gravely presenting them. Miss Vervain burst into 
a helpless laugh; then she turned toward her mother 



A roSECONG CONCLUSION. 43 

with a kind of indignant tenderness, and gently ar- 
ranged her shawl so that it should not drop off when 
she rose to leave the gondola. She did not look 
^ain at Ferris, who resisted Mrs. Vervain's entreaties 
to remain, and took leave as soon as the gondola 
landed. 

The ladies went to their room, where Rorida 
lifted from the Uble a vase of divers-colored hyacinths, 
and stepping out upon the balcony flung the flowers 
into the canal. As she put down the empty vase, the 
lingering perfume of the banished flowers haunted the 
air of the room. 

"Why, Florida," said her mother, "those were the 
flowers that Mr. Ferris gave you. Did you fancy they 
had begun to decay? The smell of hyacinths when 
they're a little old is dreadful. But I can't imagine a 
gentleman's giving you flowers that were at all old." 

"Oh, mother, don't speak to mel" cried Miss Ver- 
vain, passionately, clasping her hands to her face. 

"Now I see that I've been saying something to vex 
you, my darling," and seating herself beside the young 
girl on the sofa, she fondly took down her hands. 
"Do tell me what it was. Was it about your teachers 
falling in love with you? You know they did, Florida; 
Festachiavi and Schulze, both; and that horrid old 
Fleuron." 

"Did you think I Uked any better on that account 



44 A FOHEGONE CONCLUSION. 

to have you talk it over with a stranger?" asked Flor- 
ida, stUl angrily. 

"That's true, my dear," said Mrs. Vervain, peni- 
tently. "But if it worried you, why didn't you do 
something to stop me? Give me a hint, or just a 
little knock, somewhere?" 

"No, mother; I'd rather not. Then you'd have 
come out with the whole thing, to prove that you were 
right. It's better to let it go," said Florida, with a 
fierce laugh, half sob. "But it's strange that you can't 
remember how such things torment me." 

"I suppose it's my weak health, dear," answered 
the mother. "I didn't use to be so. But now I don't 
really seem to have the strength to be sensible. I 
' know it's silly as well as you. The talk just seems to 
keep going on of itself, — slipping out, slipping out 
But you needn't mind. ifr. Ferris won't think you 
could ever have done anything out of the way. I'm 
sure you don't act with him as if you'd ever encour- 
^;ed anybody. I think you're too haughty with him, 
Florida. And now, his flowers." 

"He's detestable. He's conceited and presuming 
beyond all endurance. I don't care what he thinks of 
me. Bat if s his manner towards you that I can't 
tolerate." 

"I suppose it's rather free," said Mis. Vervain. 
"But then you know, ray dear, I shall be soon getting 
to be an old lady; and besides, I always feel as if 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 45 

consuls were a kind of one of the family. He's been 
very obliging since we came; I don't know what we 
should liave done without him. And I don't object to 
a httle ease of manner in the gentlemen; I never 
did." 

"He makes fun of you," cried Florida: "and there 
at the convent," she said, bursting into angry tears, "he 
kept exchanging glances with that monk, as if he. . . 
. . He's insulting, and I hate himj" 

"Do you mean that he thought your mother ridi- 
culous, Florida?" asked Mrs. Vervain gravely. "You 
must have misunderstood his looks; indeed you must 
I can't imagine why he should. I remember that I 
talked particularly well during our whole visit; my 
mind was active, for I felt unusually strong, and I was 
interested in everything. It's nothing but a fancy of 
yours; or your prejudice, Florida. But ifs odd, now 
I've sat down for a moment, how worn I feel. And 
thirsty," 

Mr?. Vervain iitted on her glasses, but even then 
felt uncertainly about for the empty vase on the table 
before her. ■ 

"It isn't a goblet, mother," said Florida; "I'll get 
you some water." 

"Do; and then throw a shawl over me. I'm sleepy, 
and a nap before dinner will do me good. I don't 
see why Vm so drowsy of late. I suppose it's getting 
into the sea air here at Venice; though it's mountain 

.^Luw.)!.' 



46 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

air that makes you drow^. But you're quite mistaken 
about Mr. Ferns. He isn't capable of anj'thiiig really 
rude. Besides, there wouldn't have been any sense 
in it" 

The young girl brought the water and then knelt 
beside the sofa, on which she arranged the pillows 
under her mother, and covered her with soft wraps. 
She laid her cheek against the thinner face. "Don't 
mind anything Fve said, mother; let's talk of some' 
thing else." 

The mother drew some loose threads of the daugh- 
ter's hair through her slender fingers, but said little 
more, and presently fell into a deep slumber. Florida 
gently lifted her head away, and remained kneeling 
before the sofa, lookit^ into the sleeping face with an 
expression of strenuous, compassionate devotion, mixed 
with a vague alarm and self-pity, and a certain won- 
dering anxiety. 



f,Goo«^lc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



Don InvLiTo bad slept upon his interview with 
Ferris, and now sat in his laboratory, amidst the many 
witnesses of his inventive industry, with the model of 
the breech-loading cannon on the workbench before 
him. He had neatly mounted it on wheels, that its 
completeness might do him the greater credit with the 
consul when he should show it him, but the carriage 
had been broken in his pocket, on the way home, by 
an unlucky thrust from the burden of a porter, and 
the poor toy lay there disabled, as if to dramatize that 
premature explosion in the secret chamber. 

His heart was in these inventions of his, which had 
as yet so grudgingly repaid his affection. For their 
sake he had stinted himself of many needful things. 
The meagre stipend which he received trom the patri- 
mony of his church, eked out with the money paid 
him for baptisms, funerals, and marriages, and for 
masses by people who had friends to be prayed out of 
pm^atory, would at best have barely sufficed to sup- 
port him; but he denied himself everything save the 
necessary decorums of dress and lodging; he fasted 
like a saint, and slept hard as a hermit, that he might 



40 A FOREGONE COHCLUSION. 

Spend upon these lu^atefiil creatures of his brain. 
They were the work of his own hands, and so he saved 
the expense of their construction; but there were many 
little outlays for materials and for tools, which he could 
not avoid, and with him a httle was all. They 
not only famished him; they isolated him. His supe- 
riors in the church, and his brother priests, looked with 
doubt 01 ridicule upon the labors for which he shunned 
their company, while he gave up the other social joys, 
few and small, which a priest might know in the Venice 
of that day, when all generous spirits regarded him 
with suspicion for his cloth's sake, and church and 
state were alert to detect disaffection or indifference in 
him. But hearing these things willingly, and living as 
frugally as he might, he had stilt not enough, and he 
had been fain to assume the instruction of a young 
girl of old and noble family in certain branches of 
polite learning which a young lady of that sort might 
fitly know. The family was not so rich as it was old 
and noble, and Don Ippolito was paid from its purse 
rather than its pride. But the slender salary was a 
help; these patricians were very good to him; many a 
time he dined with them, and so spared the cost of 
his own pottage at home; they always gave hirn coffee 
when he came, and that was a saving; at the proper 
seasons little presents from them were not wanting. In 
a word, his condition was not privation. He did his 
duty as a teacher faithfully, and the only trouble with 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 49 

it was that the young girl was growing into a young 
woman, and that he could not go on teaching her for- 
ever. In an evil hour, as it seemed to Don Ippolito, 
that made the years she had been his pupil shrivel to 
a mere pinch of time, there came from a young count 
of the Friuli, visiting Venice, an offer of marriage; and 
Don Ippolito lost his place. It was hard, but he bade 
himself have patience; and he composed an ode for 
the nuptials of his late pupil, which, together with a 
brief sketch of her ancestral history, he had elegantly 
printed, according to the Italian usage, and distributed 
among the family friends; he also made a sonnet to 
the bridegroom, and these literary tributes were hand- 
somely acknowledged. 

He managed a whole year upon the proceeds, and 
iept a cheerful spirit till the last soldo was spent, in- 
venting one thing after another, and giving much time 
and money to a new principle of steam propulsion, 
which, as applied without steam to a small boat on 
the canal before his door, failed to work, though it 
liad no logical excuse for its delinquency. He tried to 
get other pupils, but he got none, and he began to 
dream of going to America. He pinned his faith in 
all sorts of magnificent possibilities to the names of 
Franklin, Fulton, and Morse; he was so ignorant of 
our politics and geography as to suppose us at war 
with the South American Spaniards, but he knew that 
English was the language of the North, and he applied 



50 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

himself to the study of it. Heaven only knows what 
kind of inventor's Utopia, our poor, patent-ridden 
country appeared to him in these dreams of his, and 
I can but dimly figure it to myself. But he might very 
naturally desire to come to a land where the spirit of 
invention is recognized and fostered, and where he 
could hope to find that comfort of incentive and com- 
panionship which our artists find in Italy. 

The idea of the breech-loading cannon had oc- 
curred to him suddenly one day, in one of his New- 
World-ward reveries, and he had made haste to realize 
it, carefully studying the form and general effect of 
the Austrian cannon under the gallery of the Ducal 
Palace, to the high embairassment of the Croat sentry 
who paced up and down there, and who did not feel 
free to order off a priest as he would a civilian. Don 
Ippolito's model was of admirable finish; he even 
painted the carriage yellow and black, because that of 
the original was so, and colored the piece to look like 
brass; and he lost a day while the paint was drying, 
ailer he was otherwise ready to show it to the consul. 

He had parted from Ferris with some gleams of 
comfort, caught chiefly from his kindly manner, but 
they had died away before nightfall, and this morning 
he could not rekindle them. 

He 'had had his coffee served to him on the bench, 
as his frequent custom was, but it stood untasted in 
the little copper pot beside the dismounted cannon. 



^ FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 5I 

though it was now ten oclock, and it was full time he 
had breakfasted, for he had lisen early to perform the 
matia service for three peasant women, two beggars, a 
cat, and a paralytic nobleman, in the ancient and 
beautiful church to which he was attached. He had 
tried to go about his wonted occupations, but he was 
still sitting idle before his bench, while his servant 
gossiped from her balcony to the mistress of the next 
house, across a calle so deep and narrow that it opened 
like a mountain chasm beneath them. "It were well 
if the master read his breviary a little more, instead 
of always maddening himself with those blessed inven- 
tions, that eat more soldi than a Christian, and never 
come to anything. There he sits before his table, as 
if he were nailed to his chair, and lets his coffee cool 
— and God knows I was ready to driflk it warm two 
hours ago — and never looks at me if I open the door 
twenty times to see whether he has finished. Holy 
patience! You have not even the advantage of fasting 
to the glory of God in this house, though you keep 
t.ent the year round. If s the Devil's Lent, / say. Eh, 
Diana! There goes the bell. Who now? Adieu, Lusetta. 
To meet again, dear. Farewell!" 

She ran to another window, and admitted the visit- 
or. It was Ferris, and she went to announce him to 
her master by the title he had given, while he amused 
bis leisure in the darkness below by falling over a 
cistem-top, with a loud clattering of his cane on the 



52 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

copper lid, after which he heard the voice of the priest 
begging him to remain at his convenience a moment 
till he could descend and show him the way np-stairs. 
His eyes were not yet used to the obscurity of the 
narrow entry in which he stood, when he felt a cold 
hand laid on his, and passively yielded himself to its 
guidance. He tried to excuse himself for intruding 
upon Don Ippolito so soon, but the priest in far suppler 
Italian overwhelmed him with lamentations that he 
should be so unworthy the honor done him, and ushered 
his guest into his apartment. He plainly took it for 
granted that Ferris had come to see his inventions, in 
compliance with the invitation he had given him the 
day before, and he made no affectation of delay, though 
after the excitement of the greetings was past, it was 
with a quiet dejection that he rose and offered to lead 
his visitor to his laboratory. 

The whole place was an outgrowth of himself; it 
was his history as well as his character. It recorded 
his quaint and childish tastes, his restless endeavors, 
his partial and halting successes. The ante-room in 
which he had paused with Ferris was painted to look 
like a grape-arbor, where the vines sprang from the 
floor, and flourishing up the trellised walls, with many 
a wanton tendril and flaunting leaf, displayed their 
lavish clusters of white and purple all over the ceiling. 
It touched Ferris, when Don Ippolito confessed that 
this decoration had been the distraction of his own 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 53 

vacant mometits, to find that it was like certain grape- 
arbors he had seen in remote comers of Venice before 
Ihe doors of degenerate palaces, or forming the en- 
trances of open-air restaurants, and did not seem at 
all to have been studied from giape-arbors in the 
country. He perceived the archaic striving for exact 
truth, and he successfully praised the mechanical skill 
and love of reality with which it was done; but he 
was silenced by a collection of paintings in Don Ippo- 
lito's parlor, where he had been made to sit down a 
m<Hnent. Hard they were in line, fixed in expression, 
and opaque in color, these copies of famous master- 
pieces, — saints of either sex, ascensions, assumptions, 
martyrdoms, and what not, — and they were not quite 
comprehensible till Don Ippolito explained that he had 
made them from such prints of the subjects as he could 
get, and had colored them after his own fancy. All 
this, in a city whose art had been the glory of the 
world for nigh half a thousand years, struck Ferris as 
yet more comically pathetic than the frescoed grape- 
arbor; he stared about him for some sort of escape 
from the pictures, and his eye fell upon a piano and 
a melodeon placed end to end in a right angle. Don 
Ippolito, seeing his look of inquiry, sat down and 
briefly played the same air with a hand upon each in- 
strument. 

Ferris smiled. "Don Ippolito, you are another Da 
Vind, a universal genius." 



54 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"Bagatelles, bagatelles," said the priest pensively; 
but he rose with greater spirit than he had yet shown, 
and preceded the consul into the little room that served 
him for a smithy. It seemed from some peculiarities 
of shape to have once been an oratory, but it was now 
begrimed with smoke and dust fix)m the forge which 
Don Ippolito had set up in it; the embers of a recent 
fire, the bellows, the pincers, the hammers, and the 
other implements of the trade, gave it a sinister effect, 
as if the place of prayer had been invaded by mocking 
imps, or as if some hapless mortal in contract with 
the evil powers were here searching, by the help of 
the adversary, for the forbidden secrets of the metals 
\ and of fire. In those days, *'erris was an uncompro- 
mising enemy of the theatricalization of Italy, or indeed 
of anything; but the fancy of the black-robed young 
priest at work in this place appealed to him all the 
more potently because of the sort of tragic innocence 
which seemed to characterize Don Ippolito's expression. 
He longed intensely to sketch the picture then and 
there, but he had strength to rebuke the fancy as 
something that could not make itself intelli^ble with- 
out the help of such accessories as he despised, and 
he victoriously followed the priest into his larger work- 
shop, where his inventions, complete and incomplete, 
were stored, and where he had been seated when his 
visitor arrived. The high windows and the frescoed 
ceiling were festooned with ■ dusty cobwebs; litter of 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 55 

shavings and whittlings strewed the floor; mechanical 
implements and contrivances were everywhere, and 
Don Ippohto's listlessness seemed to return upon him 
again at the sight of the familiar disorder. 

Conspicuous among other objects lay the illogically 
unsuccessful model of the new principle of steam 
propulsion, untouched since the day when he had 
hfted it out of the canal and carried it indoors through 
the ranks of grinnit^ spectators. From a shelf above 
it he took down models of a flying-machine and a 
perpetual motion. "Fantastic researches in the im- 
possible. I never expected results from these experi- 
ments, with which I nevertheless once pleased myself," 
he said, and turned impatiently to various pieces of 
portable fiimiture, chairs, tables, bedsteads, which by 
folding up their legs and tops condensed themselves 
into flat boxes, developing handles at the side for 
convenience in carrying. They were painted and 
varnished, and were in all respects complete; they had 
indeed won favorable mention at an exposition of the 
ftovincial Society of Arts and Industries, and Ferris 
could applaud their ingenuity sincerely, though he 
had his tacit doubts of their usefulness. He fell silent 
again when Don Ippolito called his notice to a pho- 
tographic camera, so contrived with straps and springs 
that you could snatch by its help ^atever joy there 
might be in taking your own photograph; and he did 
not knoiv what to say of a submarine boat, a four- 



56 a FOREGC 

wheeled water-velocipede, a movable bridge, or the 
very many other principles and ideas to wbicli Don 
Ippolito's cunning hand had given shape, more or less 
imperfect. It seemed to him that they all, however 
perfect or imperfect, had some fatal defect: they were 
aspirarions toward the impossible, or realizations of 
the trivial and superfluous. Yet, for all this, they 
strongly appealed to the painter as the stunted fruit 
of a talent denied opportunity, instruction, and sym- 
pathy. As he looked from them at last to the ques- 
tioning face of the priest, and considered out of what 
disheartened and solitary patience they must have 
come in this city, — dead hundreds of years to all such 
endeavor, — he could not utter some glib phrases of 
compliment that he had on his tongue. If Don Ip- 
polito had been taken young, he might perhaps have 
amounted to something, though this was questionable; 
but at thirty — as he looked now, — with his undis- 
ciplined purposes, and his head full of vagaries of 

which these things were the tangible witness 

Ferris let his eyes drop again. They fell upon the 
ruin of the breech-loading cannon, and he said, "Don 
Ippolito, it's very good of you to take the trouble of 
showing me these matters, and I hope you'll pardon 
the ungrateful return, if I cannot offer any definite 
opinion of them now. They are rather out of my way, I 
confess, I wish with all my heart I could order an 
experimental, life-size copy of your breech-loading 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 57 

cannon here, for trial by my government, but I can't; 
and to tell you the truth, it was not altogether the 
wish to see these inventions of yours that brought 
me here to-day." 

"Oh," said Don Ippolito, with a mortified air, 
"I am afraid that I have wearied the Signor Con- 
sole." 

"Not at all, not at all," Ferris made haste to an- 
swer, with a frown at his own awkwardness. "But 
your speaking English yesterday; .... perhaps what 
I was thinking of is quite foreign to your tastes and 
possibilities." .... He hesitated with a look of per- 
plexity, while Don Ippolito stood before him in an 
attitude of expectation, pressing the points of his 
fingers together, and looking curiously into his face. 
"The case is this," resumed Ferris desperately. "There 
are two American ladies, friends of mine, sojourning 
in Venice, who expect to be here till midsummer. 
They are mother and daughter, and the young lady 
wants to read and speak Italian with somebody a few 
hours each day. The question is whether it is quite 
out of your way or not to give her lessons of this 
kind. I ask it quite at a venture. I suppose no barm 
is done, at any rate," and he looked at Don Ippolito 
with apologetic perturbation. 

"No," said the priest, "there is no harm. On the 
contrary, I am at this moment in a position to con- 
sider it a great favor that you do me in offering me 



58 A FOREGONE CONCLUSIOM. 

this employment I accept it with the greatest plea- 
sure. Oh!" he cried, breaking by a sudden impulse 
from the composure with which he had beguu to 
speak, "you don't know what you do for me; you lift 
me out of despair. Before you came, I had reached 
one of those passes that seem the last bound of en- 
deavor. But you give me new life. Now I can go on 
with my experiment. I can attest my gratitude by 
possessing your native country of the weapon I had 
designed for it — I am sure of the principle: some 
slight improvement, perhaps the use of some different 
explosive, would get over that difficuhy you suggested," 
he said eagerly. "Yes, something can be done. God 
bless you, my dear little son — I mean — perdoni! — my 
dear sir." .... 

"Wait — not so fast," said Ferris with a laugh, yet 
a little annoyed that a question so purely tentative as 
his should have met at once such a definite response. 
"Are you quite sure you can do what they want?" 
He unfolded to him, as fully as he understood it, 
Mrs. Vervain's scheme. 

Don Ippolito entered into it with perfect intelli- 
gence. He said that he had already had charge of 
the education of a young girl of noble family, and he 
could therefore the more confidently hope to be useful 
to this American lady. A light of joyful hope shone 
in his dreamy eyes, the whole man changed, he as- 
sumed the hospitable and caressing host, He con- 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 59 

ducted Ferris back to his parlor, and making him sit 
upon the hard sofa that was his hard bed by night, 
he summoned his servant, and bade her serve them 
coffee. She closed her lips firmly, and waved her 
finger before her face, to signify that there was no 
more coffee. Then he bade her fetch it from the 
caff^; and he listened with a sort of rapt inattention 
while Ferris again returned to the subject and ex- 
plained that he had approached him without first in- 
forming the ladies, and that he must regard nothing 
as final. It was at this point that Don Ippolito, who 
had understood so clearly what Mrs. Vervain wanted, 
appeared a little slow to understand; and Ferris had 
a doubt whether it was from subtlety or from sim- 
plicity that the priest seemed not to comprehend the 
impulse on which he had acted. He finished his 
cofTee in this perplexity, and when he rose to go, Don 
Ippolito followed him down to the street-door, and 
preserved him from a second encounter with the 
cistern-top. 

"But, Don Ippolito — remember! I make no en- 
gagement for the ladies, whom you must see before 
anything is settled," said Ferris. 

"Surely, — surely!" answered the priest, and he re- 
mained smiling at the door till the American turned 
the next comer. Then he went back to his work- 
room, and took up the broken model from the bench. 
But he could not work at it now, he could not 



6o A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

weak at anything; he began to walk up and down;the 
flow. 

"Could he really have been so stupid because Ms 
mind was on his ridiculous cannon?" wondered Ferris 
as be sauntered frowning away; and he tiied to pre- 
pare his own mind for his meeting with the Vervains, 
to whom he must now go at once. He felt abused 
and victimized. Yet it was an amusing experience, 
and he found himself able to interest both of the 
ladies in it. The younger had received him as coldly 
as the forms of greeting would allow; but as he talked 
she drew nearer him with a reluctant haughtiness 
which he noted. He turned the more conspicuously 
towards Mrs. Vervain. "Well, to make a long story 
short," he said, "I couldn't discourage Don Ippolito. 
He refused to be dismayed— as I should have been at 
the notion of teaching Miss Vervain. I didn't arrange 
with him not to fall in love with her as his secular 
predecessors have done — it seemed superfluous. But 
you can mention it to him if you like. In fact," said 
Ferris, suddenly addressing the daughter, "you might 
make the stipulation yourself. Miss Vervain." 

She looked at him a moment with a sort of de- 
fenseless pain that made him ashamed; and then 
walked away from him towards the window, with a 
frank resentment that made him smile, as he con- 
tinued, "But I suppose you would like to have some 
explanation of my motive in precipitating Don Ip- 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 6 1 

polito Upon you in this way, when I told you only 
yesterday that he wouldn't do at all; in fact I think 
myself that I've behaved rather fickle-mindedly — for a 
representative of the country. But I'll tell you; and 
you won't be surprised to learn that I acted fixim 
mixed motives. I'm not at all sure that he'll do; Tve 
had awful misgivings about it since I left him, and 
I'm glad of the chance to make a clean breast of it. 
When I came to think the matter over last night, the 
fact that he had taught himself English — with the 
help of an Irishman for the pronunciation— seemed to 
promise that he'd have the right sort of sympathy with 
your scheme, and it showed that he must have some- 
thing practical about him, too. And here's where 
the selfish admixture comes in. I didn't have your 
interests solely in mind when I went to see Don Jp- 
polito. I hadn't been able to get rid of him; he stuck 
in my thought. I fancied he might be glad of the 
pay of a teacher, and — I had half a notion to ask him 
to let me paint him. It was an even chance whether 
I should try to secure him for Miss Vervain, or for 
Art — as they call it. Miss Vervain won because she 
could pay him, and I didn't see how Art could. I 
can bring him round any time; and that's the whole 
inconsequent business. My consolation is that I've 
left you perfectly free. There's nothing decided." 

"TTianks," said Mrs. Vervain; "then it's all settled. 
You can bring him as soon as you like, to our new 



62 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

place. We've taken that apaitment we looked at the 
other day, and we're going into it this afternoon. 
Here's the landlord's letter," she added, drawing a 
paper out of her pocket "If he's cheated us, I sup- 
pose you can see justice done. I didn't want to trouble 
you before." 

"You're a woman of business, Mis. Vervain," said 
Ferris, "The man's a perfect Jew — or a perfect Chris- 
tian, one ought to say in Venicej we true believers do 
gouge so much more infamously here — and you let 
him get you in black and white before you come to 
me. Well," he continued, as he glanced at the paper, 
"you've done it! He makes you pay one half too 
much. However, it's cheap enough; twice as cheap as 
your hotel." 

"But I don't care for cheapness. I hate to be im- 
posed upon. What's to be done about it?" 

"Nothing; if he has your letter as you have his. 
It's a bargain, and you must stand to it," 

"A bargain? Oh nonsense, now, Mr. Ferris, This 
is merely a note of mutual understanding." 

"Yes, that's one way of looking at it. The Civil 
Tribunal would call it a binding agreerfient of the 
closest tenure, — if you want to go to law about it" 

"I villi go to law about it." 

"Oh no, you won't — unless you mean to spend 
your remaining days and all your substance in Venice. 
Come, you haven't done so badly, Mrs. Vervain. I 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 63 

don't call four rooms, completely furnished for house- 
keeping, with that lovely garden, at all dear at eleven 
francs a day. Besides, the landlord is a man of 
excellent feeling, sympathetic and obliging, and a 
perfect gentleman, though he is such an outrageous 
scoundrel. Hell cheat you, of course, in whatever he 
can; you must look out for that; but he'll do you any 
sort of little neighborly kindness. Good-by," said 
Ferris, getting to the door before Mis. Vervain could 
intercept him, "111 come to your new place this even- 
ing to see how you are pleased." 

"Florida," said Mrs. Vervain, "this is outrageous." 

"I wouldn't mind it, mother. We pay very little, 
after all." 

"Yes, but we pay too much. That's what I can't 
bear. And as you said yesterday, I don't think Mr. 
Ferris's manners are quite respectful to me," 

"He only told you the truth; I think he advised 
you for the best The matter couldn't be helped 

"But I call it a want of feeling to speak the truth 
so bluntly." 

"We won't have to complain of that in our land- 
lord, it seems," said Florida. "Perhaps not in our 
priest, either," she added. 

"Yes, that was kind of Mr. Ferris," said Mrs. Ver- 
vain. "It was thoroughly thoughtful and considerate 
—what I call an instance of true delicacy. I'm really 



64 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

quite curious to see him. Don Ippolito! How very 
odd to call a priest Don! I should have said Padre. 
Don always makes you think of a Spanish cavalier. 
Don Rodrigo: something like that," 

They went on to talk, desultorily, of Don Ippolito, 
and what he might be like. In speaking of him the 
day before. Ferns had hinted at some mysterious sad- 
ness in him; and to hint of sadness in a man always 
interests women in him, whether they are old or young: 
the old have suffered, the young forebode suffering. 
Their interest in Don Ippolito had not been diminished 
by what Ferris had told them of his visit to the priest's 
house and of the things he had seen there; for there 
had always been the same strain of pity in his laugh- 
ing account, and he had imparted none of his doubts 
to them. They did not talk as if it were strange that 
Ferris should do to-day what he had yesterday said he 
Would not do; perhaps as women they could not find 
such a thing strange; but it vexed him more and more 
as he went about all afternoon thinking of his in- 
consistency, and wondering whether he had not acted 
rashly. 



f,Goo«^lc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



The palace in which Mrs. Vervain had taken an 
apartment fronted on a broad campo, and hung its 
empty marble balconies from gothic windows above a 
silence scarcely to be matched elsewhere in Venice. 
The local pharmacy, the cafK, the grocery, the fruiterer's, 
the other shops with which every Venetian campo is 
furnished, had each a certain life about it, but it was 
a silent life, and at midday a frowsy-headed woman 
clacking across the flags in her wooden-heeled shoes 
made echoes whose garrulity was interrupted by no 
other sound. In the early morning, when the lid of 
the public cistern in the centre of the campo was un- 
locked there was a clamor of voices and a clangor of 
copper vessels, as the housewives of the neighborhood 
and the local force of strong-backed Friulan water- 
girls drew their day's supply of water; and on that 
sort of special parochial holiday, called a 'cgra, the 
campo hummed and clattered and shrieked with a 
multitude celebrating the day around the stands where 
pumpkin seeds and roast pumpkin and anisette-water 
were sold, and before the movable kitchen where 
cakes were fried in caldrons of oil, and uproariously 



66 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

offered to the crowd by the cook, who did not suffer 
himself to be embarrassed by the rival drama of ad- 
joining puppet-shows, but continued to bellow forth 
his bargains all day long and far into the night, when 
the flames under his kettles painted his visage 3 fine 
crimson. The sagra once over, however, the campo 
relapsed into its habitual silence, and no one looking 
at the front of the palace would have thought of it as 
a place for distraction-seeking foreign sojourners. But 
it was not on this side that the landlord tempted his 
tenants; his principal notice of lodgings to let was af- 
fixed to the water-gate of the palace, which opened 
on a smaller channel so near the Grand Canal that 
no wandering eye could fail to see it. The portal was 
a tall arch of Venetian gothic tipped with a carven 
flame; steps of white Istrian stone descended to the 
level of the lowest ebb, irregularly embossed with 
barnacles, and dabbling long fringes of soft green 
sea-mosses in the rising and falling tide. Swarms of 
water-bugs and beetles played over the edges of the 
steps, and crabs scuttled side-wise into deeper water 
at the approach of a gondola. A length of stone- 
capped brick wall, to which patches of stucco still 
clung, stretched from the gale on either hand under 
cover of an ivy that flung its mesh of shining green 
from within, where there lurked a lovely garden, 
Btately, spacious for Venice, and full of a delicious, 
half-sad surprise for whoso opened upon it In the 



CONCLUSION, 67 . 

midst it had a broken fountain, with a marble naiad 
standing on a shell, and looking saucier than the 
sculptor meant, from having lost the point of her nose, 
nymphs and fauns, and shepherds and shepherdesses, 
her kinsfolk, coquetted in and out among the greenery 
in flirtation not to be embarrassed by the fracture of 
an arm, or the casting of a leg or so; one lady had 
no head, but she was the boldest of all. In this gar- ' 
den there were some mulberry and pomegranate trees, 
several of which hung about the fountain with seats in 
their shade, and for the rest there seemed to be 
mostly roses and oleanders, with other shrubs of a 
kind that made the greatest show of blossom and cost 
the least for tendance. A wide terrace stretched 
across the rear of the palace, dropping to the garden 
path by a flight of balustraded steps, and upon this 
terrace opened the long windows of Mrs. Vervain's 
parlor and dining-room. Her landlord owned only the 
first story and the basement of the palace, in some 
comer of which he cowered with his servants, his taste 
for pictures and brtc-i-brac, and his little branch of 
inquiry into Venetian history, whatever it was, ready 
to let himself or anything he had for hire at a mo- 
ment's notice, but very pleasant, gentle, and unobtrusive; 
a cheat and a liar, but of a kind heart and sympathetic 
manners. Under his protection Mrs. Vervain set up 
her impermanent household gods. The apartment was 
taken only from week to week, and as she (reely ex- 



68 A FOREGONE CONCLUSIOK. 

plained to the padrone hovering about with offers of 
service, she knew herself too well ever to unpack any- 
thing that would not spoil by remaining packed. She 
made her trunks yield all the appliances necessary for 
an invalid's comfort, and then left them in a state to 
be strapped and transported to the station within half 
a day after the desire of change or the exigencies of 
her feeble health caused her going. Everything for 
housekeeping was furnished with the rooms. There 
was a gondolier and a sort of house-servant in the 
employ of the landlord, of whom Mrs. Vervain hired 
them, and she caressingly dismissed the padrone at an ■ 
early moment after her arrival, with the charge to find 
a maid for herself and daughter. As if she had been 
waiting at the next door this maid appeared promptly, 
and being Venetian, and in domestic service, her name 
was of course Nina, Mrs. Vervain now said to Florida 
that everything was perfect, and contentedly began her 
life in Venice by telling Mr. Ferris, when he came in 
the evening, that he could bring Don Ippolito the day 
after the morrow, if he liked. 

She and Florida sat on the terrace waiting for 
them on the morning named, when Ferris, with the 
priest in his clerical best, came up the garden path 
in the sunny light Don Ippolito's best was a little 
poverty-stricken; he had faltered a while, before 
leaving home, over the sad choice between a shabby 
cylinder hat of. obsolete fashion and his well-worn 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 6g 

three-cornered priestly beaver, and had at last put oa 
the latter with a sigh. He had made his servant 
polish the buckles of his shoes, and instead of a band 
of linen round his throat, he wore a strip of cloth 
covered with small white beads, edged above and 
below with a single row of pale blue ones. 

As he mounted the steps with Ferris, Mrs. Vervain 
came forward a little to meet them, while Florida rose 
and stood beside her chair in a sort of proud suspense 
and timidity. The elder lady was in that black from 
which she had so seldom been able to escape; but the 
daughter wore a dress of delicate green, in which she 
seemed a part of the young season that everywhere 
clothed itself in the same tint The sunlight fell 
upon her blonde hair, melting into its light gold; her 
level brows frowned somewhat with the glance of 
scrutiny which she gave the dark young priest, who 
was making his stately bow to her mother, and trying 
to answer her English greetings in the same tongue. 

"My daughter," said Mrs. Vervain, and Don Ippolito 
made another low bow, and then looked at the girl 
with a sort of frank and melancholy wonder, as she 
turned and exchanged a few words with Ferris, who 
was assailing her seriousness and hauteur with un- 
abashed levity of compliment. A quick light flashed 
and fled in her cheek as she talked, and the fringes 
of her serious, asking eyes swept slowly up and down 
as she bent them upon him a moment before she 



70 A FOKECONE CONCLUSION. 

broke abruptly, not coquettishly, away from him, and 
moved towards her mother, while Ferris walked off to 
the other end of the terrace, with a laugh. Mrs. Ver- 
vain and the priest were trying each other in French, 
and not making great advance; he explained to Florida 
in Italian, and she answered him hesitatingly; where- 
upon he praised her Italian in set phrase. 

"Thank you," said the girl sincerely, "I have tried 
to learn. I hope," she added as before, "you can 
make me see how little I know." The deprecating 
wave of the hand with which Don Ippolito appealed 
to her from herself, seemed arrested mid-way by his 
perception of some novel quality in her. He said 
gravely that he should try to be of use, and then the 
two stood silent 

"Come, Mr. Ferris," called out Mrs. Vervain, "break- 
fast is ready, and I want you to lake me in." 

"Too much honor," said the painter, coming for- 
ward and offering hia arm, and Mrs. Vervain led the 
way indoors. 

"I suppose I ought to have taken Don Ippolito's 
arm," she confided in under-lone, "but the fact is, our 
French is so unlike that we don't understand each 
other vtry well." 

"Oh," returned Ferris, "I've known Italians and 
Americans whom Frenchmen themselves couldn't under- 
stand." 

"You see it's an American breakfast," said Mrs. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 7 1 

Vervain with a critical glance at the table bcfoie she 
sat down. "All but hot bread i that you can't have," 
and Don Ippolito was for the first time in his life 
con&onted by a breakfast of hot beef-steak, eggs and 
toast, fried potatoes, and coffee with milk, with a 
choice of tea. He subdued all signs of the wonder 
he must have felt, and beyond cutting his meat into 
little bits before eating it, did nothing to betray his 
strangeness to the feast 

The breakfast had passed off very pleasantly, with 
occasional lapses. "We break down under the burden 
of so many languages," said Ferris. "It is an embarras 
de richesses. Let us fix upon a common maccheronic 
May I trouble you for a poco pii di sugar dans raon 
caf^, Mrs. Vervain? What do you think of the bellezza 
de ce weather magnifique, Don Ippolito?" 

"How ridiculous!" said Mrs. Vervain in a tone 
of fond admiration aside to Don Ippolito, who smiled, 
but shrank from contributing to the new tongue. 

"Very well, then," said the painter. "I shall 
stick to my native Bergamask for the future; and Don 
Ippolito may translate for the foreign ladies." 

He ended by speaking English with everybody; 
Don Ippolito eked out his speeches to Mra. Vervain 
in that tongue with a little French; Florida, conscious 
of Ferris's ironical observance, used an embarrassed 
but deiiant Italian with the priest. 

"I'm io pleased!" said Mrs. Vervain, rjsing when 



72 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Ferris said that he must go, and Florida shook hands 
with both guests. 

"Thank you, Mrs, Vervain; I could have gone be- 
fore, if I'd thought you would have liked it," answered 
the painter. 

"Oh nonsense, now," returned the lady. "Vou 
know what I mean. I'm perfectly delighted with him," 
she continued, getting Ferris to one side, "and I know 
he must have a good accent. So very kind of you. 
Will you arrange with him about the pay?- — such a 
shame! Thanks. Then I needn't say anything to him 
about that. I'm so glad I had him to breakfast the 
first day; though Florida thought not. Of course, one 
needn't keep it up. But seriously, it isn't an ordinary 
case, you know." 

Ferris laughed at her with a sort of affectionate 
disrespect, and said good-by. Don Ippolito lingered 
for a while to talk over the proposed lessons, and then 
went, after more elaborate adieux. Mrs. Vervain re- 
mained thoughtful a moment before she said: — 

"That was rather droll, Florida." 

" What, mother?" 

"His cutting his meat into small bites, before he 
began to eat. But perhaps it's the Venetian custom. 
At any rate, my dear, he's a gentleman in virtue of 
his profession, and I couldn't do less than ask him to 
breakfast He has beautiful manners; and if he must 
take snufT, I suppose it's neater to carry two hand- 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 73 

kerchiefs, though it does look odd. I wish he wouldn't 
take snuff," 

"I don't see why we need care, mother. At any 
rate, we cannot help it." 

"That's true, my dear. And his nails. Now, when 
they're spread out on a book, you know, to keep it 
open, won't it be unpleasant?" 

"They seem to have just such fingernails all over 
Europe — except in England." 

"Oh, yes; I know it. 1 dare say we shouldn't 
care for it in him, if he didn't seem so very nice 
otherwise. How handsome he is!" 



f,Gooj^lc 



i FOREGONE CONCLUSIOM. 



It was understood that Don Ippolito should come 
every morning at ten o'clock, and read and talk with 
Miss Vervain for an hour or two; but Mrs. Vervain's 
hospitality was too aggressive for the letter of the 
agreement She oftener had him to breakfast at nine, 
for, as she explained to Ferris, she could not endure 
to have him feel that it was a mere mercenary trans- 
action, and there was no limit fixed for the lessons on 
these days. When she could, she had Ferris come, 
too, and she missed him when he did not come. "I 
like that bluntness of his," she professed to her daugh- 
ter, "and I don't mind his making light of me. You 
are so apt to be heavy if you're not made light of 
occasionally. I certainly shouldn't want a son to be 
so respectful and obedient as you are, my dear." 

The painter honestly returned her fondness, and 
with not much greater reason. He saw that she took 
pleasure in his talk, and enjoyed it even when she did 
not understand itj and this is a kind of flattery not 
easy to resist. Besides, there was very little ladies' 
sodely in Venice in those times, and Ferris, after try- 
ing the little he could get at, had gladly denied him- 



A FOREGONE CONCLCSIOS. 75 

self its pleasures, and consorted with the young men 
he met at the cafCte, or in the Piazza. But when the 
Vervains came, they recalled to him the younger days 
in which he had delighted in the companionship of 
women. After so long disuse, it was charming to be 
with a beautiful girl who neither regarded him with 
distrust nor expected him to ask her in marriage be- 
cause he sat alone with her, rode out with her in a 
gondola, walked with her, read with her. All young 
men like a house in which no ado is made about their 
coming and going, and Mrs. Vervain perfectly under- 
stood the art of letting him make himself at home. 
He pereeived with amusement that this amiable lady, 
who never did an ungraceful thing nor wittingly said 
an ungracious one, was very much of a Bohemian at 
heart,— the gentlest and most blameless of the tribe, 
but still lawless, ^ — whether from her canapaigning mar- 
ried life, or the rovings of her widowhood, or by 
natural disposition; and that Miss Vervain was inclined - 
to be conventionally strict, but with her irregular train- 
ing was at a loss for rales by which to check her 
mother's little waywardnesses. Her anxious perplexity, 
at times, together with her heroic obedience and un- 
swerving loyalty to her mother had something pathetic 
as well as amusing in it He saw her tried almost to 
tears by her mother's helpless frankness, — for Mrs. Ver- 
vain was apparently one of those ladies whom the in- 
tolerable surprise of having anything come into their 



76 A FOREGONE 

heads causes instantly to say or do it, — and he ob- 
served that she never tried to pass off her endurance 
with any feminine arts; but seemed to defy him to 
think what he would of it. Perhaps she was not able 
to do otherwise: he thought of her at times as a per- 
son wholly abandoned to the truth. Her pride was on 
the alert against him; she may have imagined that he 
was covertly smiling at her, and she no doubt tasted 
the ironical flavor of much of his talk and behavior, 
for in those days he liked to qualify his devotion to 
the Vervains with a certain nonchalant slight, which, 
while the mother openly enjoyed it, filled the daughter 
with anger and apprehension. Quite at random, she 
visited points of his informal manner with unmeasured 
reprisal; others, for which he might have blamed him- 
self, she passed over with strange caprice. Sometimes 
this attitude of hers provoked him, and sometimes it 
disarmed him; but whether they were at feud, or 
• keeping an armed truce, or, as now and then hap- 
pened, were in an entente cordiale which he found very 
charming, the thing that he always contrived to treat 
with silent respect and forbearance in Miss Vervain 
was that sort of aggressive tenderness with which she 
hastened to shield the foibles of her mother. That 
was something very good in her pride, he finally de- 
cided. At the same time, he did not pretend to under- 
stand the curious filial self-sacrifice which it involved. 
Another thing in hei that puzzled him was her 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 77 

devoutness. Mrs. Vervaia could with difficulty be got 
to church, but her daughter missed no service of the 
English ritual in the old palace where the British and 
American tourists assembled once a week with their 
guide-books in one pocket and their prayer-books in 
the other, and buried the tomahawk under the altar. 
Mr, Ferris was oflen sent with her; and then his 
thoughts, which were a young man's, wandered from 
the service to the beautiful girl at his side, — the gol- 
den head that punctiliously bowed itself at the proper 
places in the liturgy: the full lips that murmured the 
responses; the silken lashes that swept her pale cheeks 
as she perused the morning lesson. He knew that the 
Vervains were not Episcopalians when at home, for 
Mrs. Vervain had told him so, and that Florida went 
to the English service because there was no other. He 
conjectured that perhaps her touch of ritualism came 
from mere love of any form she could make sure of. 

The servants in Mrs. Vervain's lightly ordered 
household, with the sympathetic quickness of the 
Italians, learned to use him as the next friend of the 
family, and though they may have had their decorous 
surprise at his untrammeled footing, they probably ex- 
cused the whole relation as a phase of that foreign 
eccentricity to which their nation is so amiable. If 
they were not able to cast the same mantle of charity 
over Don Ippolito's allegiance, — and doubtless they had 
.their reserves concerning such frankly familiar treat- 



78 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

ment of so dubious a character as priest, — still as a. 
priest they stood somewhat in awe of him; they had 
the spontaneous loyalty of their race to the people they 
served, and they never intimated by a look that they 
found it strange when Don Ippolito freely came and went. 
Mrs. Vervain had quite adopted him into her family; 
while her daughter seemed more at ease with him than 
with Ferris, and treated him with a grave politeness 
which had something also of compassion and of child- 
like reverence in it. Ferris observed that she was 
always particularly careful of his supposable sensibili- 
ties as a Roman Catholic, and that the priest was 
oddly indifferent to this deference, as if it would have 
mattered very little to him whether his church was 
spared or not. He had a way of lightly avoiding, 
Ferris fancied, not only religious points on which they 
could disagree, but all phases of religion as matters of 
indifference. At such times Miss Vervain relaxed her 
reverential attitude, and used him with something like 
rebuke, as if it did not please her to have the repre- 
sentative of even an alien religion slight his office; as 
if her respect were for his priesthood and her com- 
passion for him personally. That was rather hard for 
Don Ippolito, Ferris thought, and watted to see him 
snubbed outright some day, when he should behave 
without sufficient gravity. 

The blossoms came and went upon the pome- 
granate and almond trees in the garden, and some of 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 79 

the earliest roses were in their prime; everywhere was 
BO full leaf that the wamtonest of the strutting nymphs 
was forced into a sort of decent seclusion, but the 
careless naiad of the fountain burnt in sunlight that 
subtly increased its fervors day by day, and it was no 
longer beginning to be warm, it was warm, when one 
morning Ferris and Miss Vervain sat on the steps of 
the terrace, waiting for Don Ippolito to join them at 
breakfast 

By this time the painter was well on with the pic- 
ture of Don Ippolito which the first sight of the priest 
had given him a longing to paint, and he had been 
just now talking of it with Miss Vervain. 

"But why do you paint him simply as a priest?" 
she asked. "I should think you would want to make 
him the centre of some famous or romantic scene," 
she added, gravely looking into his eyes as he sat 
with his head thrown back against the balustrade. 

"No, I doubt if you think" answered Ferris, "or 
you'd see that a Venetian priest doesn't need any 
tawdry accessories. What do you want? Somebody 
administering the extreme unction to a victim of the 
Council of Ten? A priest stepping into a confessional 
at the Frari — tomb of Canova in the distance, per- 
spective of one of the naves, and so forth — with his 
eye on a pretty devotee coming up to unburden her 
conscience? Fve no patience with the follies people 
think and say about Venice!" 



So A FOREGONE CONCLOSIOM. 

Florida stared in haughty question at the painter. 

"You're no worse than the rest," he continued with 
indifference to her anger at his bluntness. "You all 
think that there can be no picture of Venice without 
a gondola or a Bridge of Sighs in it Have you ever 
read the Merchant of Venice, or Othello? There isn't 
a boat nor a bridge nor a canal mentioned in either 
of them; and yet they breathe and pulsate with the 
very life of Venice. I'm going to try to paint a Vene- 
tian priest so that you'll know him without a bit of 
conventional Venice near him." 

"It was Shakespeare who wrote those plays," said 
Florida. Ferris bowed in mock suffering from her sar- 
casm. "You'd better have some sort of symbol in your 
picture of a Venetian priest, or people will wonder 
why you came so far to paint Father O'Brien." 

"I don't say I shall succeed," Ferris answered. "In 
fact I've made one failure already, and I'm pretty well 
on with a second; but the principle is right, all the 
same. I don't expect everybody to see the difference 
between Don Ippolito and Father O'Brien. At any 
rate, what I'm going to paint ai is the lingering pagan 
in the man, the renunciation first of the inherited 
nature, and then of a personality that would have en- 
joyed the world. I want to show that baffled aspira- 
tion, apathetic despair, and rebellious longing which 
you catch in his face when he's off his guard, and that 
suppressed look which is the characteristic expression 



, A FOREGONE CONCLUSJON. 8l 

of all Austrian Venice. Then," said Ferris laughing, 
"I must work in that small suspicion of Jesuit which 
there is in every priest. But it's quite possible I may 
make a Father O'Brien of him." 

"You won't make a Don Ippolito of him," said 
Florida, after serious consideration of his face to see 
whether he was quite in earnest, "if you put all that 
into him. He has the sin^lest and openest look in 
the world," she added warmly, "and there's neither 
pagan, nor martyr, nor rebel in it" 

Ferris laughed again. "Excuse roe; I don't think 
you know. I can convince you." .... 

Florida rose, and looking down the garden path 
said, "He's coming;" and as Don Ippolito drew near, 
his face lighting up with a joyous and innocent smile, 
she continued absently, "he's got on new stockings, 
and a different coat and hat" 

The stockings were indeed new and the hat was 
not the accustomed nicckio, but a new silk cylinder 
with a very worldly, curling brim. Don Ippolito's coat, 
abo, was of a more mundane cut than the talare; he 
wore a waistcoat and small-clothes, meeting the stock- 
ings at the knee with a sprightly buckle. His person 
showed no traces of the snuff with which it used to be 
so plentiftiUy dusted; in fact, he no longer took snuff 
in. the presence of the ladies. The fiiM: week he had 
noted an inexplicable uneasiness in them when be 
drew forth that blue cotton handkerchief sflerLthS 



82 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

solace of a pinch; shortly afterwards, being alone widi 
Florida, he saw her give a nervous start at its appear- 
ance. He blushed violently, and put it back into the 
pocket from which he had half drawn it, and whence 
it never emei^d again in her presence. The con- 
tessina his former pupil had not shown any aversion 
to Don Ippolito's snuff or his blue handkerchief; but 
then the contessina had never rebuked his finger-nails 
by the tints of rose and ivory with which Miss Ver- 
vain's hands bewildered him. It was a little droll how 
anxiously he studied the ways of these Americans, and 
conformed to them as far as he knew. His English 
grew rapidly in their society, and it happened some- 
times that the only Italian in the day's lesson was 
what he read with Florida, for she always yielded to 
her mother's wish to talk, and Mrs. Vervain preferred 
the ease of her native tongue. He was Americanizing 
in that good lady's hands as fast as she could trans- 
form him, and he listened to her with trustfiil reverence, 
as to a woman of striking though eccentric mind. Yet 
he seemed finally to refer every point to Florida, as if 
with an intuition of steadier and stronger character in 
her; and now, as he ascended lie terrace steps in his 
modified costume, he looked intently at her. She 
swept him from head to foot with a glance, and then 
gravely welcomed him with unchanged countenance. 

At the same moment Mrs. Vervain came out through 
one of the long windows, and adjusting her glasses, said 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 83 

with a start, "Why, my dear Don IppoUto, I shouldn't 
have known you!" 

"Indeed, madama?" asked the priest with a painfut 
smile. "Is it so great a change? We can wear this 
dress as well as the other, if we please." 

"Why, of couise it's very becoming and all that; 
but it does look so out of character," Mrs, Vervain 
said, leading the way to the In^akfasbroom, "It's like 
seeing a military man in a civil oiat." 

"It must be a great relief to lay aside the unifonn 
now and then, mother," said Florida, as they sat down. 
"I can remember that papa used to be glad to get out 
of his." 

"Perfectly wild," assented Mrs. Vervain. "But he 
never seemed the same peison. Soldiers and — clergy- 
men — are so much more stylish in their own dress — 
not styhsh, exactly, but taking; don't you know?" 

"There, Don IppoHto," interposed Ferris, "you had 
better put on your talare and your nicchio again. Your 
abbatit dress isn't acceptable, you see." 

The painter spoke in ItaUan, but Don Ippolito an- 
swered — with certain blunders which it would be tedious 
to reproduce — in his patient, conscientious English, 
half sadly, half playfully, and glancing at Florida, be- 
fore he turned to Mrs. Vervain, "You are as rigid as 
the rest of the world, madama. I thought you would 
like this dress, but it seems that you think it a mas- 
querade. As madamigella says, it is a relief to lay 



84 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

aside the uniform, now and then, for us who fight the 
spiritual enemies as well as for the other soldiers. 
There was one time, when I was younger and in the 
subdiaconate orders, that I put off the priest's, dress 
altogether, and wore citizen's dothes, not an abbate's 
suit like this. We were in Padua, another young priest 
and I, my nearest and only friend, and for a whole 
night we walked about the streets in that dress, meet- 
ing the students, as they strolled singing through the 
moonlight; we went to the theatre and to the cafffe, — 
we smoked cigars, all the time laughing and trembling 
to think of the tonsure under our hats. But in the 
morning we had to put on the stockings and the talare 
ahd the nicchio again." 

Don Ippolito gave a melancholy laugh. He had 
thrust the comer of his napkin into his collar; seeing 
that Ferris had not his so, he twitched it out, and 
made a feint of its having been all the time in his lap. 
Every one was silent as if something shoddng had 
been said; Florida looked with grave rebuke at Don 
Ippolito, whose story affected Ferris like that of some 
girl's adventure in men's clothes. He was in terror lest 
Mrs. Vervain should be going to say it was like that; 
she was going to say something; he made haste to 
forestall her, and turn the talk on other things. 

The next day the priest came in his usual dress, 
-and he did not again try to escape from it 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



Vt 



One afternoon, as Don Ippolito was posing to Ferris 
for his picture of A Venetian Priest, the painter asked, 
to make talk, "Have you hit upon that new explosive 
yet, which is to utilize your breech-loading cannon? 
Or are you engaged upon something altogether new?" 

"No," answered the other uneasily, "I have not 
touched the caunon since that day you saw it at my 
house; and as for other things, I have not been able 
to put ray mind to them. I have made a few trifles 
which I have ventured to offer the ladies." 

Ferris had noticed the ingenious reading-desk which 
Don IppoUto had presented to Florida, and the foot- 
stool, contrived with springs and hinges so that it 
would fold up into the compass of an ordinary port- 
folio, which Mrs. Vervain carried about with her. 

An odd look, which the painter caught at and 
missed, came into the priest's face, as he resumed: "I 
suppose it is the distraction of my new occupation, 
and of the new acquaintances — so very strange to me 
in every way — that I have made in your amiable 
country-women, which hinders me from going about 
anything in earnest, now that their munificence has 



86 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

enabled me to pursue my aims with greater advantages 
than ever before. But this idle mood will pass, and 
in the mean time I am very happy. They are real 
angels, and madama is a true original." 

"Mrs. Vervain is rather peculiar," said the painter, 
retirii^ a few paces from his picture, and quizzing it 
through his half-closed eyes. "She is a woman who 
has had affliction enough to turn a stronger head than 
hers could ever have been," he added kindly. "But 
she has the best heart in the world. In fact," he 
burst forth, "she is the most extraordinary combina- 
tion of perfect fool and perfect lady I ever saw," 

"Excuse me; I don't understand," blankly faltered 
Don Ippolito. 

"No; and I'm afraid I couldn't explain to you," 
answered Ferris. 

There was a silence for a time, broken at last by 
Don Ippolito, who asked, "Why do you not many 
madamigella?" 

He seemed not to feel that there was anything out 
of the way in the question, and Fenis was too well 
used to the childlike directness of the most maneuver- 
ing of races to be surprised. Yet he was displeased, 
as he would not have been if Don Ippolito were not a 
priest He was not of the type of priests whom the 
American knew from the prejudice and distrust of the 
Italians; he was alienated from his clerical fellows by 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 87 

aU the objects of his life, and by a recipTOcal dislike. 
About other priests there were various scandals; but 
Don Ippolito was like that pretty match-girl of the 
Piazza of whom it was Venetianly answered, when one 
asked if so sweet a face were not innocent, "Oh yes, 
she is mad!" He was of a purity so blameless that 
he was reputed crack-brained by the cafii^gossip that 
in Venice tums its searching light upon whomever 
you mention; and &om his own association with the 
man Ferris perceived in him an apparent single-hearted- 
ness such as no man can have but the rarest of Italians. 
He was the albino of his species; a gray crow, a white 
fly; he was really this, or he knew how too seem it 
with an art far beyond any common deceit It was 
the half expectation of coming sometime upon the 
lurking duphcity in Don Ippolito, that continually 
enfeebled the painter in his attempts to portray his 
Venetian priest, and that gave its undecided, unsatis- 
factory character to the picture before him — its weak 
hardness, its provokiDg superficiality. He expressed 
the traits of melancholy and loss that he imagined in 
him, yet he always was tempted to leave the picture 
with a touch of something sinister in it, some airy and 
subtle shadow of selfish design. 

He stared hard at Don Ippolito while this per- 
plexity filled his mind, for the hundredth time; then 
he said stiffly, "I don't know. I don't want to marry 
anybody. Besides," he added, relaxing into a smile 



88 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

of helpless amusemeni, "it's possible that Miss Ver- 
vain might not want to many me." 

"As to that," replied Don Ippolito, "you never can 
tell. All young girls desire to be married, I suppose," 
he continued with a sigh. "She is very beautiful, is 
she not? It is seldom that we see such a blonde in 
Italy. Out blondes are dark; they have auburn hair 
and blue eyes, but their complexions are thick. Miss 
Vervain is blonde as the moming light; the sun's gold 
is in her hair, his noonday whiteness in her dazzling 
throat; the flush of his coming is on her lips; she might 
utter the dawn!" 

"You're a poet, Don Ippolito," laughed the painter. 
"What property of the sun is in her angry-looking 
eyes?" 

"His firel Ah, that is her greatest charm! Those 
strange eyes of hers, they seem full of tr^edies. She 
looks made to be the heroine of some stormy romance; 
and yet how simply patient and good she is!" 

"Yes," said Ferris, who often responded in English 
to the priest's Italian; and he added half musingly in 
his own tongue, after a moment, "but I don't think it 
would be safe to count upon her. I'm afraid she has 
a bad temper. At any rate, I always expect to see 
smoke somewhere when I look at those eyes of hers. 
She has wonderful self-control, however; and I don't 
exactly understand why. Perhaps people of strong im- 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 89 

pulses have strong wills to overrule themj it seems no 
more than fair." 

"Is it the custom," asked Don Ippolito, after a 
monient, "for the American young ladies always to 
address their mammas as mother?" 

"No; that seems to be a peculiarity of Miss Ver- 
vain's. It's a little formality that I should say served 
to hold Mrs. Vervain in check." 

"Do you mean that it repulses her?" 
. "Not at all. I don't think I could explain," said 
Ferris with a certain air of regretting to have gone so 
far in comment on the Vervains. He added recklessly, 
"Don't you see that Mrs. Vervain sometimes does and 
says things that embarrass her daughter, and that Miss 
Vervain seems to try to restrain her?" 

"I thought," returned Don Ippolito meditatively, 
'that the signorina was always very tenderly submis- 
sive to her mother." 

"Yes, so she is," said the painter dryly, and looked 
in annoyance from the priest to the picture, and from 
the picture to the priest. 

After a minute Don Ippolito said, "They must be 
very rich to Uve as they do." 

"I don't know about that," replied Ferris. "Ameri- 
cans spend and save in ways different from the Italians. 
I dare say the Vervains find Venice very cheap after 
London and Paris and Berlin." 



go A FOREGONE CONCLUSION- 

"Perhaps," said Don Ippolito, "if they were rich 
you would be in a position to many her." 

"I should not many Miss Vervain for her money," 
answered the painter, sharply. 

"No, but if you loved her, the money would enable 
you to marry her," 

"Listen to me, Don Ippolito. I never said that I 
loved Miss Vervain, and I don't know how you feel 
warranted in speaking to me about the matter. Why 
do you do so?" 

"I? Why? I could not but imagine that you 
must love her. Is there anything wrong in speaking 
of such things? Is it contrary to the American custom? 
I ask pardon from my heart if I have done anything 
amiss." 

"There is no offense," said the p^ter, with a 
laugh, "and I don't wonder 3:ou thought I ought to be 
in love with Miss Vervain. She is beautiful, and I 
believe she's good. But if men had to many because 
women were beautiful and good, there isn't one of us 
could live single a day. Besides, I'm the victim of 
another passion; — Vm laboring under an tmrequited 
affection for Art" 

"Then you do tioi love her?" asked Don Ippolito, 
eagerly. 

"So far as Fm advised at present, no, I don't" 

"It is strange!" said the priest, absently, but with 
a glowing face. 



A FOHEGOME CONCLUSION. 9I 

He quitted the painter's and walked swiftly home- 
ward with a triumphant buoyancy of step. A subUe 
content diffused itself over his face, and a joyful light 
burnt in his deep eyes. He sat down before the 
piano and <M:gan as he had arranged them, and began 
to strike their keys in unison; this seemed to him for 
the first time childish. Then he played some lively 
bars on the piano alone; they sounded too light and 
trivial, and he tmned to the other instrument. As the 
plaint of the reeds arose, it filled his sense like a 
solemn organ-music, and transfigured the place; the 
notes swelled to the ample vault of a church, and at 
the high altar he was celebrating the mass in his 
sacerdotal robes. He suddenly caught his fingers 
away from the keys; his breast heaved, he hid his 
face in his hands. 



D,nl,-nl,G00J^lc 



I FOREGONE CONCLUSION'. 



Ferkis stood cleaning his palette, after Don Ip- 
polito was gone, scraping the colors together with his 
knife and neatly buttering them on the palette's edge, 
while he wondered what the priest meant by pumping 
him in that way. Nothing, he supposed, and yet it 
was odd. Of course she had a bad temper 

He put on his hat and coat and strolled vaguely 
forth, and in an hour or two came by a roundabout 
course to the gondola station nearest his own hoiise. 
There he stopped, and after an absent contemplation 
of the boats, from which the gondoliers were clamoring 
for his custom, he stepped into one and ordered the 
man to row him to a gate on a small canal opposite. 
The gate opened, at his ringing, into the garden of the 
Vervains. 

Florida was sitting alone on a bench near the 
fountain. It was no longer a ruined fountain; the 
broken-nosed naiad held a pipe above her head, and 
from this rose a willowy spray high enough to catch 
some colors of the sunset then striking into the garden, 
and fell again in a mist around her, making her almost 
modest. 

■ l;oo;(Ic 



.A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. ,93 

"What does this mean?" asked Ferris, carelessly 
taking the young girl's hand. "I thought this lady's 
occupation was gone." 

"Don Ippolito repaired the fountain for the land- 
lord, and he agreed to pay for iilling the tank that 
feeds it," said Florida. "He seems to think it a hard 
bargain, for he only lets it play about half an hour a 
day. But he says it's very ingeniously mended. He 
didn't believe it could be done. It is pretty," 

"It is, indeed," said the painter, with a singular 
desire, going through him like a pang, likewise to do 
something for Miss Vervain. "Did you go to Don 
Ippolito's house the other day, to see his traps?" 

"Yes; we were very much interested. I was sorry 
that I knew so little about inventions. Do you think 
there are many practical ideas amongst his things? I 
hope there are — he seemed so proud and pleased to 
show them. Shouldn't you think he had same real 
inventive talent?" 

"Yesy I think he hasj but I know as little about 
the matter as you do." He sat down beside her, and 
picking up a twig from the gravel, pulled the bark off 
in silence. Then, "Miss Vervain," he said, knitting 
his brows, as he always did when he had something 
on his conscience and meant to ease it at any cost, 
"Fm the dog that fetches a bone and carries a bone; 
I talked Don Ippolito over with you, Uie other day, 



94 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

and now I've been talking you over with him. But 
I've the grace to say that I'm ashamed of myself." 

"Why need you be ashamed?" asked Florida. 
"You said no harm of him. Did you of us?" 

"Not exactly; but I don't think it was quite my 
business to discuss you at alL I think you can't let 
people alone too much. For my part, if I try to cha- 
racterize my friends, I fail to do them perfect justice, 
of course; and yet the imperfect result remains re- 
presentative of them in my mind; it limits them and 
fises them; and I can't get them back again into the 
undefined and the ideal where they really belong. 
One ought never to speak of the faults of one's 
friends: it mutilates them; they can never be the same 
afterwaids." 

"So you have been talking of my faults," said 
Florida, breathing quickly. "Perhaps you could tell 
me of them to my face." 

"I should have to say that unfairness was one of 
them. But that is common to the whole sex. I never 
said I was talking of your faults. I declared against 
doing so, and you immediately infer .that my motive 
is remorse. I don't know that you have any faults. 
They may be virtues in disguise. There is a chaim 
even in unfairness. Well, I did say that I thought 
you had a quick temper," — 

Florida colored violendy. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. g5 

— "but now I see that I was mistaken," said Ferris 
vith a laugh. 

"May I ask what else you said?" demanded the 
young girl haughtily. 

"Oh, that would be a betrayal of confidence," said 
Ferris, unaffected by her hauteur. 

"Then why have you mentioned the matter to me 
at all?" 

"I wanted to clear my conscience, I suppose, and 
sin again. I wanted to talk with you about Don 
Ippolito." 

Florida looked with perplexity at Feiris's face, while 
her own slowly cooled and paled. 

"What did you want to say of him?" she asked 
calmly. 

"I hardly know how to put it: that he puzzles me, 
to b^in with. You know I feel somewhat responsible 
for him." 

"Yes." 

"Of coui^ei I never should have thought of him, 
if it hadn't been for your mother's talk that morning 
coming back from San Lazzaro." 

"I know," said Florida, with a faint blush. 

"And yet, don't you see, it was as much a fancy 
of mine, a weakness for the man himself, as the desire 
to serve your mother, that prompted me to bring him 
to you." 

"Yes, I see," answered the young girl. 



96 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"I acted in the teeth of a bitter Venetian preju- 
dice against priests. All my friends .here — the/ie 
mostly yoimg men with the modem Italian ideas or 
old liberals — hate and despise the priests. They be- 
lieve that priests are full of guile and deceit, that they 
are spies for the Austrians, and altogether evil." 

"Don Ippolito is welcome to report our most secret 
thoughts to the police," said Florida, whose look of 
rising alarm relaxed into a smile, 

"Oh," cried the painter, "how you leap to con- 
clusions! I never intimated that Don Ippolito was a 
spy. On the contrary, it was his difference from other 
priests that made me think of him for a moment. He 
seems to be as much cut off from the church as from 
the world. And yet he is a priest, with a priest's 
education. What if I should have been altogether 
mistaken? He is either one of the openest souls in 
the world, as you have insisted, or he is one of the 
closest" 

"I should not be afraid of him in any case," s^ 
Florida; "but I can't ielieve any wrong of him." 

Ferris frowned in annoyance. "I don't want you 
to; I don't, myself. I've bungled the matter as I might 
have known I would. I was trying to put into words 
an undefined uneasiness of mine, a quite formless de- 
sire to have you possessed of the whole case as it had 
come up in, my mind. I've made a mess of it," said 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 97 

Ferris rising, with a rueful air. "Besides, I ought to 
have spoken to Mrs. Vervain." 

"Oh no," cried Florida, eagerly, springing to h^ 
feet beside him. "Don't! Little things wear upon 
my mother, so. I'm glad you didn't speak to her. I 
don't misunderstand you, 1 think; 1 expressed myself 
badly," she added with an anxious face. "I thank 
you very much. What do you want me to do?" 
■ By Ferris's impulse they both began to move down 
the garden path toward the water-gate. The sunset 
had faded out of the fountain, but it still lit the whole 
heaven, in whose vast blue depths hung light whiffs 
of pinkish cloud, as ethereal as the draperies that 
floated after Miss Vervain as she walked with a 
splendid grace beside him, do awkwardness, now, or 
self-constraint in her. As she turned to Ferris, and 
asked in her deep tones, to which some latent feeling 
imparted a slight tremor, "What do you want me to 
do?" the sense of her wiUingness to be bidden by him 
gave him a. delicious tlirill. He looked at the superb 
creature, so proud, so helpless; so much a woman, so 
much a child; and he caught his breath before he 
answered. Her gauzes blew about his feet in the 
light breeze that lifted the foliage; she was a little 
near-sighted, and in her eagerness she drew closer to 
him, fixing her eyes full upcn his with a bold in- 
nocence. "Good heavens! Miss Vervain," he cried, 
with a sudden blush, "it isn't a serious matter. I'm 

A Fart^mt Cmeluiim. 7 



CONCLUSION. 

a fool to have spoken to you. Don't do anything. 
Let things go on as before. It isn't for me to instinct 
■you." 

"I should have been very glad of your advice," she 
said with a disappointed, almost wounded manner, keep- 
ing her eyes upon him. "It seems to me we are al- 
ways going wrong" — 

She stopped short, with a flush and then a pallor. 

Ferris returned her look with one of comical dis- 
may. This apparent readiness of Miss Vervain's to be 
taken command of, daunted him, on second thoughts. 
"I wish you'd dismiss all my stupid talk from your 
mind," he said. "I feel as if I'd been guiltily trying 
to set you against a man whom I like very much and 
have no reason not to trust, and who thinks me so 
much his friend that he couldn't dream of my making 
any sort of trouble for him. It would break his heart, 
I'm afraid, if you treated him in a different way from 
that in which you've treated him till now. It's really 
touchii^ to listen to his gratitude to you and your 
mother. It's only conceivable on the ground that he 
has never had friends before in the world. He seems 
like another man, or the same man come to hfe. And 
it isn't his fault that he's a priest. I suppose," he 
added, with a sort of final throe, "that a Venetian 
family wouldn't use him with the frank hospitality 
you've shown, not because they distrusted him at all, 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. gg 

perhaps, biit because they would be afraid of other 
Venetian tongues," 

This ultimate drop of venom, helplessly distilled, 
did not seem to rankle in Miss Vervain's mind. She 
walked now with her face turned from his, and she 
answered coldly, "We shall not be troubled. We don't 
care for Venetian tongues." 

They were at the gate. "Good-by," said Ferris, 
ahraptly, "I'm going." 

"Won't you wait and see my mother?" asked 
Florida, with her awkward self-constraint again upon 
her. 

"No, thanks," said Ferris, gloomily. "I haven't 
time, I just dropped in for a moment, to blast an in- 
nocent man's reputation, and destroy a young lady's 
peace of niind." 

"Then you needn't go, yet," answered Florida, 
"for you haven't succeeded," 

"Well, Fve done my worst," returned Ferris, draw- 
ing the bolt. 

He went away, hanging his head in amazement 
and disgust at himself for his clumsiness and bad 
taste. It seemed to him a contemptible part, first to 
embarrass them with Don Ippolito's acquaintance, if 
it was an embarrassment, and then try to sneak out of 
his responsibility by these tardy cautions; and if it 
was not going to be an embarrassment, it was folly tp 
have approached the matter at alL 

, ?V 



lOO A FOREGONE CONCLIISION, 

What had he wanted to do, and with' what mo- 
tive? He hardly knew. As he battled the ground 
over and over again, nothing comforted him save the 
thought that, bad as it was to have spoken to Miss 
Vervain, it must have been infinitely worse to speak 
to her mother. 



i.Goo'^lc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



vriL 



It was late before Ferris forgot his chagrin in 
sleep, and when he woke the next morning, the sun 
was making the solid green blinds ■ at his window 
odorous of their native pine woods with its heat, and 
tbrustiag a golden spear at the heart of Don Ippolito's 
effigy where he had left it on the easel. 

Marina brought a letter with his coffee. The letter 
was from Mre.Vervain, and it entreated him to come 
to lunch at twelve, and then join them on an ex- 
cuision, of which they had all oilen talked, up the 
Canal of the Brenta. "Don IppoUto has got his per- 
mission — think of his not being able to go to the 
mainland without the Patriarch's leave! and can go 
with us to-day. So I try to make this hasty arrange- 
ment. You musl come — it aU depends upon you." 

"Yes, so it seems," groaned the painter, and went. 

In the garden he found Don Ippolito and Florida, 
si the fountain where he had himself parted with her 
tiie evening before; and he observed with a ^ilty 
relief that Don Ippolito was talking to her in the 
happy unconsciousness habitual with him, 

Florida cast at the painter- a swift glance ax latent 



102 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

appeal and intelligence, which he refused, and in the 
same instant she met him with another look, as if she 
now saw Tiim for the fiist time, and gave him her 
hand in greeting. It was a beautiful hand; he could 
not help worshipping its lovely forms, and the lily 
whiteness and softness of the hack, the rose of the 
palm and finger-tips. 

She idly resumed the great Venetian fan which 
hung from hei waist by a chain. "Don Ippolito has 
been talking about the viUtggiatura on the Brenta in 
the old days," she explained. 

"Oh, yes," s^ the painter, "they used to have 
meny times in the villas then, and it was wwth while 
being a priest, or at least an <Maie M case. I should 
think you would sigh for a return of those good old 
days, Don Ippolito. Just imagine, if you were abbate 
di casa with some patrician family about the close of 
the last century, you might be the instructor, com- 
panion, and spiritual adviser of Ulustrisdma at the 
theatres, card-parties, and masquerades, all winter; and 
at this season, instead of going up the Bienta for a 
day's pleasure with us barbarous Yankees, you might 
be setting out with Illnstrissima and all the 'Strissimi 
and 'Strissime, big and little, for a spring villeggiatura 
ther& You would be going in a gilded barge, with 
songs and fiddles and dancing, instead of a com- 
mon gondola, and you would stay a month, walking, 
going to parties and ca0i^, drinking chocolate and 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, tO^ 

lemonade, gaming, sonneteering, and butterflying about 
generally." 

"It was doubtless a beautiful life," answered the 
priest, with simple indifference. "But I never have 
thought of it with regret, because I have been pre- 
occupied with other ideas than those of social plea- 
sures, though perhaps they were no wiser." 

Florida had watched Don Ippolito's face while 
Ferris was speaking, and she now asked gravely, "But 
don't you think their life nowadays is more becoming 
to the clergy?" 

"Why, madamigella? What harm was there in 
those gayeties? I suppose the bad features of the old 
life are exaggerated to us." 

"They couldn't have been worse than the amuse- 
ments of the hard-drinking hard-riding, hard-swearing, 
fox-hunting English parsons about the same time," said 
Ferris. "Besides, the abbate di casa had a charm of 
his own, the charm of all rococo things, which, what- 
ever you may say of them, are somehow elegant and 
refined, or at least refer to elegance and refinement 
I don't say they're etmobling, but they're fascinating. 
I don't respect them, but I love them. When I think 
about liie past of Venice, I don't care so much to see 
any of the heroically historical things; but I should 
like immensely to have looked in at the Ridotto, when 
the place was at its gayest with w^ and masks, hoops 
and small-dothes, fans and rapiers, bows and courte- 



J04 A FOREGONE CONCLUSIOlf. 

sies, whispers and glances. I ^axe say I should have 
found Don Ippolito there in some becoming disg:ui5e." 

Florida looked from the painter to the priest and 
back to the painter, as Ferris spoke, and then she 
turned a little anxiously toward the terrace, and a 
shadow slipped from her face as her mother came 
rustling down the steps, catching at her drapery and 
shaking it into place. The young girl hurried to meet 
her, lifted her arms for what promised an embrace, 
and with firm hands set the elder lady's bonnet straight 
with her forehead. 

"I'm always getting it on askew," Mis. Vervain 
said for greeting to Ferris, "How do you do, Don 
Ippolito? But I suppose you think I've kept you long 
enough to get it on straight for once. So I have, I 
am a fuss, and I don't deny it. At my time of life, 
it's much harder to make yourself shipshape than it is 
when you're younger. I tell Florida that anybody 
would take her for the n/i/'lady, she does seem to give 
so httle care to getting up an appearance." 

"And yet she has the effect of a styUsh young 
person in the bloom of youth," observed Ferris, with a 
touch of caricature. 

"We had better lunch with our things on," said 
Mrs. Vervain, "and then there needn't be any delay 
in starting. I thought we would have it here," she 
added, as Nina and the house-servant appeared with 
trays of dishes and cups. "So that we can start in a 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. I05 

real picnicky" spiiit. I knew you'd think it a woman- 
ish lunch, Mr. Fenis — Don Ippolito likes what wt do 
— and so I've provided you with a chicken salad; and 
I'm going to ask you for a taste of it; I'm really 
hungry." 

There was salad for all, in fact; and it was quite 
one o'clock before the lunch was ended, and wraps of 
just the right thickness and thinness were chosen, and 
the party were comfortably placed under the striped 
linen canopy of the gondola, which they had from a 
public station, the house-gondola being engaged that 
day. They rowed through the narrow canal skirting 
the garden out into the expanse before the Giudecca, 
and then struck across the lagoon towards Fusina, 
past the island-church of San Gioi^o In Alga, whose 
beautiful tower has flushed and darkened in so many 
pictures of Venetian sunsets, and past the Austrian 
lagoon forts with theii coronets of guns threatening 
every point, and the Croatian sentinels pacing to and 
fro on their walls. They stopped long enough at one 
of the customs baizes to declare to the swarthy, 
amiable ofiiceis the innocence of their freight, and at 
Hie mouth of the Canal of the Brenta they paused 
before the station while a policeman came out and 
scanned them. He bowed to Don Ippolito's cloth, 
and then they began to push up the sluggish canal, 
shallow and overrun with weeds and mosses, into the 
heart of the land. 



I06 A FOREGONE COMcLOSIOJf. 

The spring, which in Venice comes in the soften- 
ing air and the perpetud azure of the heavens, was 
renewed to their senses in £dl its miraculous loveH- 
ness. The garden of the Vervains had indeed con- 
fessed it in opulence of leaf and bloom, but there it 
seemed somehow only like a novel effect of the artifice 
which had been able to create a garden in that dty 
of stone and sea. Here a vernal world suddenly 
opened before them, with wide-stretching fields of 
green under a dome of perfect blue; against its walls 
only the soft curves of far-off hills were traced, and 
near at hand the tender forms of full-foliaged trees. 
The long garland of vines that festoons all Italy 
seemed to begin in the neighboring orchards; the 
meadows waved their tall grasses in the sun, and 
broke in poppies as the sea-waves break in iridescent 
spray; the well-grown maize shook its gleaming blades 
in the light; the poplars ntarched in stately procession 
on either side of the straight, white road to Padua, 
till they vanished in the long peispective. The 
blossoms had fallen from the trees many weeks be- 
fore, but the air was full of the vague sweetness of 
the perfect spring, which here and there gathered and 
defined itself as the spic^ odor of the grass cut on 
the shore of the canal , and drying in the mellow heat 
of the sun. 

The voyagers spoke ftcm lime to time of some 
peculiarity of the villas that succeeded each other 



A foregome conclusion. 107 

along the canaL Don Ippolito knew a few of them, 
the gondoliers knew others; but after aH, their names 
were nothing. These haunts of old-time splendor and 
idleness weaiy of themselves, and unable to escape, 
are sadder than anything in Venice, and they be- 
longed, as far as the Americans were concerned, to a 
wc»id as strange as any to which they should go in 
another life, — the world of a faded fashion and an 
alien history. Some of the villas were kept in a sort 
of repair; some were even maintained in the state of 
old; but the most showed marks of greater or less 
decay, and here and there one was falling to ruin. 
They had gardens about them, tangled and wild- 
grown; a population of decrepit statues in the rococo 
taste strolled in their walks or simpered from their 
gates. Two or three houses seemed to be occupied; 
the rest stood empty, each 

"Close latticed to the brooding heat, 
And silent m its dusty vines." 

The pleasuie-paity had no fixed plan for the day 
further than to ascend the canal, and by and by take 
a carriage at some convenient village and drive to the 
famous Villa Fisani at Stri. 

"These houses are veiy well," said Don Ippolito, 
who had visited the villa once, and with whom it had 
remained a memory almost as signal as that night in 
Padua when' he wore civil dress, "but it is at Sui 



ro8 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

that you see something really worthy of the roy^d 
splendor of the patridans of Venice. Royal? The 
villa is now one of the palaces of the ex-Emperor of 
Austria, who does not find it less imperial than his 
Other palaces." Don Ippolito had celebrated the villa 
at Suk in this strain ever since they had spoken of 
going up the Brenta: now it was the magnificent con- 
servatories and orangeries that he sang, now the vast 
garden with its statued walks between rows of dipt 
cedars and fiis, now the stables with their stalls for 
numberless hoises, now the palace itself with its 
frescoed halls and treasures of art and veriu. His 
enthusiasm for the villa at Strii had become an amiable 
jest with the Americans. Ferris laughed at his fresh 
outburst, he dedarcd himself tired of the gondola, 
and he asked Florida to disembark with him and 
walk under the trees of a pleasant street running on 
one side between the villas and the canal. "We arc 
going to find something much grander than the Villa 
Fisani," he boasted, with a look at Don Ippolito. 

As they sauntered along the path together, they 
came now and then to a stately palace like that of 
the Contarini, where the lions, that give their name 
to one branch of the family, crouch in stone before 
the grand portal; but most of the houses were in- 
teresting only from their unstoried possibilities to the 
imagination. They were generally of stucco, and 
glared with fresh whitewash through the foliage of 



A FOREGONE COMCLUSIOff. 10^ 

their gardens. When a peasant's cottage broke their 
line, it gave, with its bams and straw-stacks and its 
beds of pot-herbs, a homely reUef from the decaying 
gentility of the villas. 

"What a pity, Miss Vervain," said the painter, 
"that the blessings of this world should be so un- 
equally divided! Why should all this sketchable 
adversity be lavished upon the neighborhood of a city 
that is so rich as Venice in picturesque dilapidation? 
It's pretty hard on us Americans, and forces people of 
sensibility into exile. What wouldn't cultivated per- 
sons give for a stretch of this street in the suburbs of 
Boston, or of your own Providence? I suppose the 
New Yorkers will be setting up something of the kind 
one of these days, and giving it a French name — 
they'll call it Aux bords du Brtnia. There was one 
of them carried back a gondola the other day to put 
on a pond in their new park. But the worst of it is, 
you can't take home the sentiment of these things." 

"I thought it was the business of painters to send 
home the sentiment of them in pictures," said Florida. 

Ferris talked to her in this way because it was 
his way of talking; it always surprised him a little 
that she entered into the spirit of it; he waf not quite 
sure that she did; he sometimes thought she waited 
till she could seize upon a point to turn against him, 
and so give herself the air of having comprehended 
the whole. . He.Uugbed; "Oh yes, a poor little frag- 



110 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

jnentaiy, faded-out reproduction of their sentiment — 
which is 'as moonlight unto sunlight and as water 
unto wine,' when compared with the real thing. Sup- 
pose I made a picture of this very bit, ourselves in 
the foreground, looking at the garden over there where 
that amusing Vandal of an owner has just had his 
statues painted white: would our Mends at home 
nnderstand it? A whole history must be left unex- 
pressed. I could only hint at an entire situation. 
Of course, people with a taste for olives would get 
the flavor; but even they would wonder that I chose 
such an unsuggestive bit. Why it is just the most 
maddeningly suggestive thing to be found here! And 
if I may put it modestly, for my share in it, I think 
we two young Americans looking on at this supreme 
excess of the rococo, are the very essence of the 
sentiment of the scene; but what would the honored 
■connoisseurs — the good folks who get themselves up 
on Ruskin and try so honestly hard to have some 
little ideas about art — make of us? To be sure they 
■might justifiably praise the grace of your pose, if I 
were so lucky as to catch it, and your way of putting 
your hand under the elbow of the arm that holds 
your parasol," — Florida seemed disdainfully to keep 
her attitude, and the painter smiled, — "but they , 
wouldn't know what it all meant, and couldn't imagine 
that we were inspired by this rascally little villa to 
sigh longingly over the wicked past" .... 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1 1 1 

"Excuse me," interrupted Florida, with' a touch of 
trouble in her proud manner', 'Tm not sighing over it, 
for one, and I don't want it back. I'm glad that I'm 
American and that there is no past for me. I can't 
understand how you and Don IppoHto can speak so 
tolerantly of what no one can respect," she added, in 
almost an aggrieved tone. 

If Miss Vervain wanted to turn the talk upon Don 
Ippolito, Ferris by no means did; he had had enough 
of that subject yesterday; he got as lightly away from 
it as he could. 

"Oh, Don Ippolito's a pagan, I tell you; and I'm 
a painter, and the rococo is my weakness, I wish I 
could paint it, but I can't; I'm a hundred years too 
late. I couldn't even paint myself in the act of senti- 
mentalizing it" 

While he talked, he had been making a few lines 
in a small pocket sketch-book, with a furtive glance 
or two at Florida, When they returned to the boat, 
he busied himself again with the book, and presently 
he handed it to Mrs. Vervain, 

"Why, it's Florida!" cried the lady. "How very 
nicely you do sketch, Mr. Ferris." 

"Thanks, Mfs. Vervain; you're always flattering 
me." 

"No, but seriously, I wish that 1 had paid more 
attention to my drawing when I was a girl. And now, 



112 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Florida — she won't touch a pencil. I wish you'd talk 
to her, Mr. Ferris," 

"Oh, people who are pictures needn't trouble 
themselves to be painters," said Ferris, with a little 
burlesque. 

Mrs. Vervain began to look at the sketch through 
her tubed hand; the painter made a grimace. "But 
you've made her too proud, Mi. Ferris. She doesn't 
look like that." 

"Yes she does — to those unworthy of her kindness, 
I have taken Miss Vervain in the act of scorning the 
rococo, and its humble admirer, me, with it." 

"Fm sure / don't know what you mean, Mr. Ferris; 
but I can't think that this proud look is habitual with 
Florida; and I've heard people say — very good judges 
— that an artist oughtn't to perpetuate a temporary 
expression. Something like that." 

"It can't be helped now, Mrs. Vervain: the sketch 
is irretrievably immortal. I'm sorry, but it's too late." 

"Oh, stuff! As if you couldn't turn up the cor- 
ners of the mouth a little. Or something." 

"And give her the appearance of laughing at me? 
Never!" 

"Don Ippolito," said Mrs. Vervain, turning to the 
priest, who had been listening intently to all this trivial 
talk, "what do you think of this sketch?" 

He took the book with an eager hand, and perused 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 1 13 

the sketch as if trying to read some secret there. After 
a minute he handed it back with a light sigh, ap- 
parently of relief, but said nothing. 

"Well?" asked Mrs. Vervain. 

"Oh! I ask pardon. No, it isn't my idea of 
madamigella. It seems to me that her likeness must 
be sketched in color. Those lines are true, but they 
need color to subdue them; they go too far, they are 
more than true." 

"You're quite right, Don Ippolito," said Feins. 

"Then you dou't think she always has this proud 
look?" pursued Mrs. Vervain. 

The painter fancied that Florida quelled in hei^lf 
a movement of impatience; he looked at her with an 
unused smile, 

"Not always, no," answered Don Ippolito. "Some- 
times her face expresses the greatest meekness in the 

"But not at the present moment," thought Ferris, 
fascinated by the stare of angry pride which the giri 
bent upon the unconscious priest, 

"Though I confess that I should hardly know how 
to characterize her habitual expression," added Don 
Ippolito, 

"Thanks," said Florida, peremptorily. "I'm tired 
of the subject; it isnt an important one." 

"Oh yes it is, my dear," said Mrs. Vervain. "At 



114 '^ FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

least it's important to me, if it isa't to you; for I'm 
your mother, and really, if I thought you looked like 
this, as a general thing, to a casual observer, I should 
consider it a reflection upon myself." Ferris gave a 
provoking laugh, as she continued sweetly, "I must 
insist, Don Ippotito: now did you ever see Florida 
look so?" 

The gbl leaned back, and began to wave ber Can 
slowly to and fro before her face. 

"I never saw her look so -v^you, dear madama," 
said the priest with an anxious. glance at Florida, who 
let her fan fall folded into ha: lap, and sat still. He 
went on with priestly smoothness, and a touch of some- 
thing like invoked authority, such as a man might 
show who could dispense indulgences and inflict 
penances., "No one could help seeing b« devotedness 
to you, and I have admired from the first an obedience 
and tenderness that I have never known equaled. In 
all her relations to you, madamigella has seemed to 

Florida started forwMd. "You are not asked to 
comment on my behavior to my mother; you are not 
invited to speak of my conduct at all!" she burst out 
with sudden violence, her visage flaming, and her blue 
eyes burning upon Don Ippolito, who shrank frmn the 
astonishing rudeness as from a blow in the face. "What 
is it to you how I treat my mother?" 



A FOREGOKE CONCLUSION. I 1 5 

She sank back again upon the cushions, and open- 
lag the fan with a clash swept it swiftl}' bcfoK her. 

"Florida!" said her mother gravely. 

Ferris turned away in cold disgust, like one who 
has witnessed a cruelty done to some helpless thing. 
Don ]jppolito's speech was not fortunate at the best, 
but it might have come from a foreigner's misapprehen- 
sion, and at the worst it was good-natured and well- 
meant. "The girl is a perfect bnite, as I thought in 
the beginnii^," the painter said to himself. "How 
could I have ever thought differently? I shall have to 
lell Don IppoUto that Fm ashamed of her, and disclaim 
all responsibility. Paht I wish I was out of this." 

The pleasute of the day was dead. It could not 
rally from that stroke. They went on to Stik, as they 
had planned, but the glory of the Villa Ksani was 
eclipsed for Don Ippolito. He plainly did not know 
what to do. He did not address Florida agaio, whose 
savagery he would not probably have known how to 
resent if he had wished to resent it Mrs. Vervain 
prattled away to him with unrelenting kindness; Feins 
kept neax him, and with affectionate zeal tried to make 
him talk of the villa, but neither the frescoes, nor the 
orangeries, nor the green-houses, nor the stables, nor 
the gardens could lOUse him from the listless daze in 
which he moved, though Ferris found liiem ail as 
wonderful as he had jaid. Amidst this heavy embar- 



1 16 A FOKEGONE CONCLUSION. 

rassment no one seemed at ease but die author of it. 
She did not, to be suie, speak to Don Ippohto, but 
she followed her mother as usual with her assiduous 
cares, and she appeared tranquilly unconscious of the 
sarcastic civility with which Ferris rendered her any 
■service. 

It was late in the afternoon when they got back to 
their boat and b^aii to descend the canal towards 
Venice, and long before they reached Fusina the day 
had passed. A sunset of melancholy red, streaked 
with level lines of murky cloud, stretched across the 
flats behind them, and faintly tinged with its reflected 
light the eastern horizon which the towers and domes 
of Venice had not yet begun to break. The twilight 
came, and then through the overcast heavens the moon 
shone 'dim; a light blossomed here and there in the 
villas, distant voices called musically; a cow lowed, a 
dog barked; the rich, sweet breath of the vernal land 
mingled its odors with the sultry air of the neighboring 
lagoon. The wayfarers spoke little; the time hung 
heavy on all, no doubt; to Ferris it was a burden 
almost intolerable to hear the creak of the oars and 
the breathing of the gondoliers keeping time together. 
At last the boat stopped in front of the police-station 
in Fusina; a soldier with a sword at his side and a 
lantern in his hand came out and briefly parleyed with 
the gondoliers; they stepped ashore, and he marched 
them into the station before him. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 11/ 

"We have nothing left to wish for now," said Ferris, 
breaking into an ironical laugh. 

"What does it all mean?" asked lifo. Vervdn. 

"I think I had better go see." 

"We will go with you," said Mrs. Vervain. 

"Pazienza!" replied Ferris, 

The ladies rose; but Don Ippolito remained seated; 
"Aren't you going loo, Don Ippolito?" asked Mrs. 
Vervain. 

"Thanks, madama; but I prefer to stay here." 

Lamentable cries and shrieks, as if the prisoners 
had immediately been put to the torture, came from 
the station as Ferris opened the door. A lamp of 
petroleum lighted the scene, and shone upon the figures 
of two fishermen, who bewailed themselves unintel- 
ligibly in the vibrant accents of Chiozza, and from time 
to time advanced upon the gondoliers, and shook their 
heads and beat their breasts at them. A few police- 
guards reclined upon benches about the room, and 
surveyed the spectacle with mild impassibility. 

Ferris politely asked one of them the cause of the 
detention. 

"Why, you see, signore," answered the guard 
amiably, "these honest men accuse your gondoliers of 
having stolen a rope out of their boat at Dolo," 

"It was my blood, you know!" howled the elder of 
the fishermen, tossing his arms wildly abroad, "it was 
my own heart," he cried, letting the last vowel die 



Il8 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

away and rise again in mournful refrain, white he 
stared tragically into Fems's face. 

"Wliat it the matter?" aaked Mrs. Vervain, putting 
up her glasses, and trying with graceful futility to focus 
the melodrama. 

"Nothing," said Ferris; "our gondoliers have had 
the heart's blood of this respectable Dervish; that is to 
say, they have stolen a rope belonging to him." 

"Our gondoliers! I don't believe it. .They've no 
right to keep us here all night Tell them you're the 
American consul." 

"I'd rather not try my dignity on these under- 
lings, Mrs. Vervain; there's no American squadron here 
that I could order to bombard Fusina, if they didn't 
mind me. But I'll see what I can do further in 
quality of courteous foreigner. Can you perhaps tell 
me how long you will be obliged to detain us here?" 
he asked of the guard again. 

"I am very sorry to detain you at all, signore. But 
what can I do? The commissary is unhappily absent. 
He may be here soon." 

The guard renewed his apathetic contemplation of 
the gondoliers, who did not speak a word; the windy 
lamentation of the fishermen rose and fell fitfully. 
Presently they went out of doors and poured forth 
their wrongs to the moon. 

The room was close, and with some trouble Ferris 
persuaded Mrs. Vervain to return to the gondola, 



A FORKGONE CONCLUSION. II9 

Fkvida secondiog bis argumeots with gentle good 
sense. 

It seemed a long time till the commissary came, 
but his coming ijistantly simplified the situatioa. Per- 
haps because he had never been able to beMend a 
consul in trouble before, he befriended Ferns to the 
utmost. He had met him with rather a brow-beating 
air; but after a glance at his card, he gave a kind of 
roar of deprecation and apology. He had the ladies 
and Don Ippolito in out of the gondola, and led them 
to an upper chamber, where he made them all repose 
Uieir honored persons upon his sofas. He ordered up 
his housekeeper to make them coffee, which he served 
with his own hands, excusing its hurried feebleness, 
and he stood by, rubbing his palms together and smil- 
ing, while they refreshed themselves. 

"They need never tell me again that the Austrians 
are tyrants," said Mra. Vervain in undertone to the 
consul. 

It was not easy for Ferris to remind his host of 
the malefactors; but he brought himself to this un- 
graciousness. The commissary begged pardon, and 
asked him to accompany him below, where he con- 
fronted the accused and the accusers. The tragedy 
was acted over again with blood-curdling effectiveness 
by the Chiozzotti; the gondoliers maintaining the calm 
3 innocence. 



I20 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Ferris felt outraged by the trumped-up diarge 
against them. 

"Listea, you others the prisoners," said the com- 
missary. "Your padrone is anxious to return to Venice, 
and I wish to inflict no further displeasures upon him. 
Restore their rope to these honest men, and go about 
your business." 

The injured gondoliers spoke in low tones together; 
then one of them shrugged his shoulders and went 
out He came back la a moment and laid a rope be- 
fore the commissary. 

"Is that the rope?" he asked. "We foimd it 
floating down the canal, and picked it up that we 
might give it to the rightful owner. But now I 
wish to heaven we had let it sink to the bottom of 
the sea." 

"Oh, a beautiful story!" wailed the Chiozzotti. 
They flung themselves upon the rope, and lugged it 
off to their boat; and the gondoliers went out, too. 

The commissary turned to Ferris with an amiable 
smile. "I am sony that those rogues should escape," 
said the American. 

"Oh," said the Italian, "they are poor fellows, it is 
a little matter; I am glad to have served you." 

He took leave of his involuntary guests with effu- 
sion, following them with a lantern to the gondola. 

Mrs. Vervain, to whom Ferris gave an account of 
this trial as they set out again on their long-hindered 



A FOREGONE CONCLUStOtf. 121 

fttum, had no mind save for the magical effect of his 
consular quality upoa the cotmnissary, and accused 
him of a vain and culpable modesty, 

"Ah," said the diplomatist, "there's nothing like 
knowing just when to produce your dignity. There 
are some officials who' know too little, — like those 
guards; and there are some who know too much, — 
like the commissary's superiors. But he is just in that 
golden mean of ignorance where he supposes a consul 
is a person of importance." 

IS&s. Vervain disputed this, and Ferris submitted 
in silence. Presently, as they skirted the shore to get 
their bearings for the route across the lagoon, a fierce 
voice in Venetian shouted from the darkness, "Indrto, 
indriol" (Back, back!) and a gleam of the moon 
through the pale, watery clouds revealed the figure of 
a gendanne on the nearest point of land. The gon- 
dohers bent to their oars, and sent the boat swiftly 
out into the lagoon. 

"There,' for example, is a person who would be 
quite insensible to my greatness, even if I had the 
consular seal in my pocket To him we are possible 
smugglers;* and I must say," he continued, taking out 
his watch, and staring hard at it, "that if I were a 
disinterested person, and heard his suspicion met with 
the explanation that we were a little party out here 



122 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

for pleasure at half past twelve p.m^ I should say he 
was right. At any rate we won't engage him in ctm- 
troversy. Quick, quick!" he added to the gondoliers, 
glancing at the receding shore, and then at the fiist 
of the lagoon forts which they were approaching. A 
dim shape moved along the top of the wall, and 
seemed to linger and scrutinize them. As they drew 
nearer, the challenge, "Wer da?" rang out. 

The gondoliers eagerly answered with the one 
word of German known to dieir craft, "freuuJ*," and 
stru^led to ui;ge the boat forward; the oar of the 
gondolier in front slipped from the high rowlock, and 
fell out of his hand into the water. The gcmdola 
lurched, and then suddenly ran aground coi the shal- 
low. The sentry halted, dropped his gun from his 
shoulder, and ordered them to go on, while the gon- 
doliers clamored back in the high key of fear, and 
one of them screamed out to his passengers to do 
something, saying that, a few weeks before, a sentinel 
had fired upon a fisherman and killed him. 

"What's that he's talking about?" diananded Mis. 
Vervain. "If we don't get on, it will be that man's 
duty to fire on us; he has no choice," she said, nerved 
and interested by the presence of this danger. 

The gondoliers leaped into the water and tried to 
push the boat off. It would not move, and without 
wamii^, Don Ippotito, who had sat silent since they 
left Fusina, stepped over the side of the gondola, and 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1 23 

thnistmg an oar under its bottom lifted it free of the 
shallow. 

"Oh, liow very imnecessaTy!" cried Mra. Vervain, 
as the priest and the gondoliers clambered back into 
the boat 'He will take his death of cold." 

"Ifs ridiculous," said Ferns, "You ought to have 
told these wratfaless rascals what to do, Don ip- 
polito. You've got yourself wet for nothing. It's too 
badl" 

"It's nothing," said Don Ippolito, taking his seat 
on the little prow deck, and quietly dripping where 
the waia would not incommode the othen. 

"Oh, berel" cried Mrs. Vervain, gathering some 
shawls together, "make bim wrap those about him. 
He'll die, I know be will — with that reeking skirt of 
his. If you must go into the water, I wish you 
had worn your abbate's dress. How couid yoo, Don 
Ippolito?" 

The gondoliers set their oars, but before they had 
given a stroke, they were arrested by a sharp "Haiti" 
from the fort Another figure had jcMoed the sentty, 
and stood looking at them. 

"Well," said Fwris, "now what, I wonder? That's 
an ofiicer. If I had a Uttle German about me, I might 
state the situation to him." 

He felt a light touch on his arm. "I can speak 
German," said Florida timidly. 

"Then you had better speak it now," said Ferris. . 



124- A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

She rose to her feet, and in a steady voice briefly 
explained the whole affair. The figures listened tno- 
tionless; then the last comer politely replied, begging 
her to be in no uneasiness, made her a shadowy salute, 
and vanished. The sentry resumed his walk, and took 
no further notice of them. 

"Brava!" said Ferris, while Mrs. Vervain babbled 
her satisfaction, "I will buy a German Ollendorff to- 
morrow. The language is indispensable to a pleasure 
excursion in the l^oon." 

Florida made no reply, but devoted herself to re- 
storing her mother to that state of defense against the 
discomforts of the time and place, which the common 
agitation had impaired. She seemed to have no sense 
of the presence of any one else. Don Ippolito did not 
speak again save to protect himself from the anxieties 
and reproaches of Mrs. Vervain, renewed and reiterated 
at intervals. She drowsed after a while, and when- 
ever she woke she thought they had just touched her 
own landing. By fits it was cloudy and moonlight; 
they began to meet peasants' boats going to the Rialto 
market; at last, they entered the Canal of the Zattere, 
then they slipped into a narrow way, and presently 
stopped at Mrs. Vervain's gate; this time she had not 
expected it. Don Ippolito gave her his hand, and en- 
tered the garden with her, while Ferris lingered behind 
with Rorida, helping her put together the wraps strewn 
about the gondola. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 125 

"Wait!" she commanded, as they moved up the 
garden walk. "I want to speak with you about Don 
IppoUto. What sliatl I do to him for my rudeness? You 
must tell me — you shall," she said in a fierce whisper, 
gripping the arm which Ferris had given to help her 
up the landing-stairs. "You arc — older than I am!" 

"Thanks. I was afraid you were going to say 
wiser. I should thiiik your own sense of justice, your 
own sense of" — 

"Decency, Say it, say itl" cried the girl passion- 
ately; "it was indecent, indecent— that was itl" 

— "would tell you what to do," (xincluded the 
painter diyly. 

She flung away tlie arm to which she had been 
clinging, and ran to where the priest stood with h» 
mother at the foot of the terrace stairs. "Don Ippo- 
lito," she cried, "I want to tell you that I am sonyj I 
want to ask your pardon — how can you ever foi^ve 
me? — for what I said." 

She instinctively stretched her hand towards him. 

"Oh!" said the priest, with an indescribable, long, 
trembling sigh. He cau^t her hand in his, held it 
tight, and then pressed it for an instant against his 
■breast. 

Ferris made a little start forward. 

"Now, that's right, Florida," said her mother, as the 
four stood in the pale, estranging moonlight. "I'm 
sure Don Ippolito can't cherish any resentment. If he 



126 A FORECONI CONCLUSION. 

does, he must come in and wash it out with a glass of 
wine — that's a good old fashion. I want you to have 
the wine at any rate, Don Jppolito; itil keep you frtwn 
takii^ cold. You really must" 

"Thanks, madama; I cannot lose mote time, now; 
I must go home at once. Good night." 

Before Mrs. Vervain could frame a protest, or lay 
hold of him, he bowed and hurried out of the land- 
gate. 

"How perfectly absurd for him to get into the wa- 
ter in that way," she said, looking mechanically jn the 
direction in which he had vanished. 

"Well, Mrs. Vervain, it isn't best to be too grateful 
to people," said Ferris, "but I think we must allow 
that if we were in any danger, stickily there in the 
mud, Don Ippolito got us out of it by putting his 
shoulder to the oar." 

"Of course," assented Mrs. Vervain. 

"In fact,", continued Ferris, "I suppose we may say 
that, under Providence, we probably owe our lives to 
Don Ippolito's self-saciifice and Miss Vervain's know- 
ledge of German. At any rate, it's what I shall always 
maintain." 

"Mother, don't you think you had better go in?" 
asked Florida, gently. Her gentleness ignored the 
presence, the existence of Ferris, "I'm afraid you will 
be sick after all this fatigue." 

"There, Mrs. Vervain, itil be no use offerii^ me a 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 12; 

glass of wine. I'm sent away, you see," said Ferris. 
"And Miss Vervain is quite right. Good night." 

"Oh — good night, Mr. Ferris," said Mrs. Vervain, 
giving her hand. "Thank you so much." 

Florida did not lode towards him. She gathered 
her mother's shawl about her shoulders for the twen- 
Uelh time that day, and softly urged her in doors, while 
Fenis let himself out into the campa 



D,nlz-nf,G00g[c 



l FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



Florida began to prepare the bed for her mother's 
lying down. 

"What are you doing that for, my dear?" asked 
Mrs. Vervain. "I can't go to bed at once." 

"But, mother" — 

"No, Florida. . And I mean it You are too head- 
strong. I should think you would see yourself how 
you suffer in the end by giving way to your violent 
temper. What a day you have made for us!" 

"I was very wrong," murmured the proud girl, 
meekly. 

"And then the mortification of an apology; you 
might have spared yourself that" 

"It didn't mortify me; I didn't care for it," 

"No, I really believe you are too haughty to mind 
humbling yourself. And Don Ippolito had been so 
uniformly kind to us. I begin to believe that Mr. Fer- 
ris caught your true character in that sketch. But 
your pride will be broken some day, Rorida," 

"Won't you let me help you undress, mother? You 
can talk to me while you're undressing. You must try 
to get some rest," 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 12g 

"Ves, I am all imstning. Why couldn't you have 
let him come in and talk awhile? It would have been 
the best way to get me quieted down. But no; you 
must always have your own way. Don't twitch me, my 
dear; I'd rather undress myself. You pretend to be 
veiy careful of me. I wonder if you really care for 
me." 

"Oh, mother, you are all I have in the worldl" 

Mrs. Vervain began to whimper. "You talk as if I 
were any better off. Have I anybody besides you? 
And I have lost so many." 

"Don't think of those things now, mother." 

Mis. Vervain tenderly kissed the young girl. "You 
art good to your mother. Don Ippolito was right; no 
one ever saw you offer me disrespect or unkindness. 
There, there! Don't cry, my darling. I think I Aad 
better lie down, and 111 let you undress me." 

She suffered hereelf to be helped into bed, and 
TTorida went softly about the room, putting it in order, 
and drawing the curtains closer to keep out the near 
dawn. Her mother talked a little while, and presently 
fell from incoherence to silence, and so to sleep. 

Florida looked hesitatingly at her for a moment, 
and then set her candle on the floor and sank wearily 
into an ann-chaii beside the bed. Her hands fell into 
her lap; her head drooped sadly forward; the light 
flung the shadow of her face grotesquely exaggerated 
and foreshortened upon the ceiling. 



1 30 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

By and by a biid piped in the garden; the shriek 
of a swallow made itself heard Irom a distance; the 
vernal day was b^inning to stir from the light, brief 
drowse of the vernal night. A crown of angry red 
fonned npon the candle wick, which toppled over in 
the socket and guttered out with a sharp hiss. 

Florida started from her chair. A streak of sun- 
shine pierced shutter and curtain. Her mother was 
supporting herself on one elbow in the bed, and look- 
ing at her as if she had just called to her. 

"Mother, did you speak?" asked the giri. 

Mrs. Vervain turned her face away; she sighed 
deeply, stretched her thin hands <ml the pillow, and 
seemed to be sinking, sinking down through the bed. 
She ceased to breathe and lay in a dead faint 

Florida felt rather than saw it alL She did not 
cry out nor call for help. She brou^ water and 
cologne, and bathed her mother's face, and then chafed 
Jier hands. Mrs. Vervain slowly revived; she opened 
her eyes, then closed them; she did not speak, but 
afier a while she began to fetch her breath wi^ the 
long and even respirations of sleep, 

FlcMida noiselessly opened the door, and met the 
servant with a tray of coffee. She put her finger to 
her lip, and motioned her not to enter, asking in a 
whisper: "What lime is it, Nina? I forgot to wind my 
watch." 

"It's nine o'clock, signorina; and I thought you 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. I3I 

would be tired this monuDg, and would like your 
coffee in bed. Oh, misericordial" aied the girl, still 
ia whisper, with a glance through the doorway, "you 
haven't been in bed at all!" 

"My mother doesn't seem well. I sat down beside 
her, and fell asleep in iny chair without knowing it" 

"Ah, poor little thing! Then you must drink your 
coffee at once. It refreshes." 

"Yes, yes," said Flfflida, closing the door, and 
pointing to a table in the next room, "put it down 
here. I will serve myself, Nina. Go call the gon- 
dola, please. I am going oul, at once, and I want you 
to go with me. Tell Checa to come here and stay 
with my mother till I ojtae back." 

She poured out a cup of coffee with a trembling 
hand, and hastily drank it; then bathing her eyes, she 
went to the glass and bestowed a touch or two upon 
yesterday's toilet, studied the effect a moment, and 
turned away. She ran badi for another look, and the 
nest moment she was walking down to the water-gate, 
where she found Nina waiting her in the gcmdola. 

A rapid course brought them to Ferris's landing. 
"Sing," she said to the gondolier, "and say that one 
of the American ladies wishes to see the consul." 

Ferris was standing on the balcony over her, where 
he had been watching her approach in mute wonder. 
"Why, Miss Vervain," he called down, "what in the 
world is the matter?" 



132 -A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"I don't know. I want to see you," said Rorida, 
looking up with a wistful face. 

TU come down." 

"Yes, please. Or no, I had better come up. Yes, 
Nina and I will come up." 

Ferris met them at the lower door and led them 
to his apartment, Nina sat down in the outer room, 
and Florida followed the painter into Iiis studio. 
Though Tier face was so wan, it seemed to him that 
he had never seen it lovelier, and he had a strange 
pride in her being there, though the disorder of the 
place ought to have humbled him. She looked over 
it with a certain childlike, timid curiosity, and some- 
thing of that lofty compassion with which young ladies 
regard the haunts of men when they come into them 
by chance; in doing this she had a haughty, slow turn 
of the head that fascinated him. 

"I hope," he said, "you don't mind the sraell," 
which was a mingled one of oil-colors and tobacco- 
smoke. "The woman's putting ray office to rights, 
and if s all in a cloud of dust. So I have to bring 
you in here." 

Florida sat down on a chair iionting the easel, 
and found herself looking into the sad eyes of Don 
Ippolito, Ferris brusquely turned the back of the 
■canvas toward her, "I didn't mean you to see that 
It isn't ready to show, yet," he said, and then he stood 
expectantly before her. He waited for her to speak, 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. I33 

for he never knew how to take Miss Vervain; he was 
willii^ enough to make light of her grand moods, but 
now she was too evidently iinhappy for mocking; at 
the same time he did not care to invoke a snub by a. 
prematurely sympathetic demeanor. His mind ran on 
the events of the day before, and he thought this visit 
probably related somehow to Don Ippolito. But his 
visitor did not speak, and at last he said: "I hope 
there's nothing wrong at home, Miss Vervain. It's 
rather odd to have yesterday, last night, and next 
morning all run together as they have been for me in 
the last twenty-four hours. I trust Mrs. Vervain is 
turning the wbole thing into a good solid oblivion." 

"It's about — it's about — I came to see you" — said 
Florida, hoarsely. "I mean," she hurried on to say, 
"that I want to ask you who is the best doctor here?" 

Then it was not about Don Ippolito. "Is your 
mother sick?" asked Ferris, eagerly. "She must have 
been fearfully tired by that unlucky expedition of 
ours, , I hope there's nothing serious?" 

"No, no! But she is not well. She is very frail, 
you know. You must have noticed how frail she is," 
said Florida, tremulously, 

Ferris had noticed that all his countrywomen, past 
their girlhood, seemed to be sick, he did not know 
how or why; he supposed it was all right, it was so 
common. In Mrs. Vervain's case, though she talked a 
great deal about her ill-health, he had noticed it rather 



134 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

less than usual, she had so great spirit He recalled 
now that he had thought her at times rather a shadowy 
presence, and that occasionally it had amused him 
that so slight a structure should hang together as it 
did — not only successfully, but triumphantly. 

He said yes, he knew that Mrs. Vervain was not 
strong, and Florida continued: "Ifs only advice that I 
want for her, but I think we had better see some one 
— or know some one that we could go to in need. 
We are so far from any one we know, or help of any 
kind." She seemed to be trying to account to herself, 
rather than to Ferris, for what she was doing. "We 
mustn't let anything pass unnoticed" .... She looked 
at him entreatingly, but a shadow, as of some wound- 
ing memory, passed over her face, and she said no 
more. 

"m go widi you to a doctor's," said Ferris, kindly. 

"No, please, I won't trouble you." 

"It's no trouble." 

"I don't want you to go with me, please. • I'd 
rather go alone." Ferris looked at her perplexedly, 
as she rose. "Just give me the address, and I shall 
manage best by myself. Pm used to doing it" 

"As you like. Wait a moment" Ferris wrote the 
address. "There," he said, giving it to her; "biU isn't 
there anything I can do for you?" 

"Yes," answered Florida with awkward hesitation, 
and a half-defiant, balf-imploring look at him. "You 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSIOK, I^J 

must have all scots of people applyii^ to you, as a 
consul; and you look after theii affaiis — and tiy to 
foi^ them" — 

"Well ?" said Ferris. 

"I wish you wouldn't remember that I've asked 
this favor of you; that you'd consider it a" — 

"Consular service? With all my heart," answered 
Ferris, thinking for the third or fourth time how very 
young Miss Vervain was. 

"You are very good; you are kinder than I have 
any right," said Florida, smiling piteously. "I only 
noean, don't speak of it to my mother. Not," she 
added, "but what I want her to know everything I do; 
but it would worry her if she thought I was anxious 
about her. Oh I I wish I wouldn't." 

She began a ha^ search for her handkerchief; 
he saw her lips tremble and his soul trembled with 
them. 

In another moment, "Good-monung," she said 
briskly, with a sort of airy sob, "I don't wiuit you to 
come down, please." 

She drifted out of the room and down the stairs, 
the servant-maid falling into her wake. 

Ferris filled his pipe and went out on his balcony 
again, and stood watching the gondola in its course 
toward the address he had given, and smoking thought- 
fully. It was really the same girl viiio had given poor 
Don Ippolito that cruel slEtp in the face, yesterday. 



136 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

But that seemed no more out of reason than her 
Eudden, generous, exaggerated remorw;; both were of 
a piece with her coming to him for help now, holding 
him at a distance, flinging herself upon his sympathy, 
aud then trying to snub him, and breaking down in 
the effort. It was all of a piece, and the piece was 
bad; yes, she had an ugly temper; and yet she had 
magnanimous traits too. These contradictions, which 
in his reverie he felt rather than formulated, made kim 
smile, as he stood on his balcony bathed by the morn- 
ing air and sunUght, in fresh, strong i^orauce of the 
whole mystery of women's nerves. These ca,prices 
even channed him. He reflected that he had gone 
on doing the Vervains one favor after another in spite 
of Florida's childish petulanciesj and he resolved that 
be would not stop dow; her whims should be nothing 
to him, as they had been nothing, hitherto. It is 
flattering to a man to be indispensable to a woman 
£0 long as he is uot obliged to it; Miss Vervain's de- 
pendent relation to himself in this visit gave her a 
grace in Ferris's eyes which she had wanted before. 

In the mean time he saw her gondola slop, turn 
round, and come back to the canal that bordered the 
Vervain garden. 

"Another change of mind," thought Ferris, com- 
placently; and risii^ superior to the whole fitful sex, 
he released himself from uneasiness on Mrs. Vervain's 
account But m the evening he went to ask after her. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. I37 

He first sent his card to Florida, having written on it, 
"I hope Mrs. Vervain is better. Don't let me come in 
if it's any disturbance." He looked for a moment at 
what he had written, dimly conscioas that it was 
patronizing, and when he entered he saw that Miss 
Vervain stood on the defensive and from some wilful- 
ness meant to make him feel that he was presumptuous 
in coming; it did not comfort him to consider that she 
was very young. "Mother will be in directly," said 
Florida in a tone that relegated their morning's inter- 
view to the age of fable, 

Mre. Vervain came in smiling and cordial, appai> 
ently better and not worse for yesterday's misad- 
ventures. 

"Oh, I pick up quickly," she explained. "Fm an 
old campaigner, you know. Perhaps a little too old, 
now. Years do make a difference; and you'll find it 
out as you get on, Mr, Ferris," 

"I suppose so," said Ferris, not cuing to have 
Mrs. Vervain treat him so much like a boy. "Even 
at twenty-six I found it pleasant to take a nap this 
afternoon. How does one stand it at seventeen. Miss 
Vervain?'' he asked. 

"I haven't felt the need of sleep," replied Florida, 
indiSerently, and he felt shelved, as an old fellow. 

He had an empty, frivolous visit, to his thinking. 
Mrs. Vervain asked if he had seen Don Ippolito, and 
wondered that the priest had not come about, all day. 



1 38 A roRscoNE coNcmsioN. 

She told a long story aod at the end tapped hetself 
on the mouth with her fan to punish a yawn. 

Fenis rose to go. Mrs. Vervain wondered again in 
the same words why Don IppoUto had not been near 
them all day. 

"Because he's a wise man," said Ferris with bit- 
terness, "and knows when to time his visits." Mis. 
Vervain did not notice his bitterness, but something 
made Florida follow him to the outer door. 

"Why, it's moonlight!" she exclaimed; and she 
glanced at him as though she had some purpose of 
atonement in her mind. 

But he would not have it, "Yes, there's a moon," 
he said moodily. "Good-night" 

"Good-night," answered Florida, and she impul- 
sively offered him her hand. He thought that it ^ook 
in his, but it was probably the agitation of his own 
nerves. 

A soreness that had been lifted firom his heart, 
came back; he walked home disappointed and de- 
feated, he hardly knew why or in what He did not 
laugh now to think how she had asked him that morn- 
ing to forget her coming to him for help; he was 
outraged that he should have been repaid in this sort, 
and the rebuff with which his sympathy had just been 
met was vulgar; there was no other name for it but 
vulgarity. Yet he could not relate this quality to the 
face of the young giil as he constanUy beheld it in 



A POREGONi; COMCLUSIOM, t^g 

his homeward walk. It did not defy him or repulse 
Jiim; it looked up at him wistfully as from the gondola 
that mcffnii^. Nevertheless he hardened his heart. 
The Vervains should see him next when they had 
sent for him. Afler all, one is not so very old at 
twenty-six. 



f,Goo«^lc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



"Don Ippolito has come, signorina," said Nina, 
the next morning, approaching Florida, where she sat 
in an attitude of. listless patience, in the garden. 

"Don Ippolito!" echoed the young girl in a weaiy 
tone. She rose and went into the house, and they 
met with the constraint which was but too natural 
after the events of their last parting. It is hard to 
tell which has most to overcome in such a case, the 
forgiver or the forgiven. Pardon rankles even in a 
generous soul, and the memory of having pardoned 
embarrasses the sensitive spirit before the object of its 
clemency, humbling and malting it ashamed. It would 
be well, I suppose, if there need be nothing of the 
kind between human creatures, who cannot sustain 
such a relation without mutual distrust It is not so 
ill with them when apart, but when they meet they 
must be cold and shy at first 

"Now I see what you two are thinking about," 
said Vbs. Vervain, and a faint blush tinged the cheek 
of the priest as she thus paired him off with her 
daughter. "You are thinking about what happened 
the other day; and you had better forget it There is 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSIOH. I4I 

no use brooding over these matters. Dear mel if / 
had stopped to brood over every little unpleasant 
thing that happened, I wonder where I should be 
now? By the Way, where were^oK all day yesterday, 
Don Ippolito?" 

"I did not come to disturb you because I thought 
you must be very tired. Besides I was quite busy." 
"Oh yes, those inventions of yours, I think you 
are so ingenious! But you mustn't apply too closely. 
Now really, yesterday, — after all you had been through, 
it was too much for the brain." She tapped herself 
on the forehead with her fan. 

"I was not busy with my inventions, madama," 
answered Don Ippolito, who sat in the womanish at- 
titude priests get from their drapery, and fingered the 
cord round his three-cornered hat "I have scarcely 
touched them of late. But our parish takes part in 
the piocession of Corpus Domini in the Piazza, and I 
had my share of the preparations." 

"Oh, to be sure! When is it to be? We must 
all go. Our Nina has been telling Florida of the 
grand sights, — little children dressed up like John the 
Baptist, leading lambs. I suppose if s a great event 
with you." 

The priest shrugged his shonldCTS, and opened 
both his hands, so that his hat slid to the floor, bump- 
ing and tumbling some distance away. He rscovered 



142 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

it and sat down ag^. "It's an observance," he said 
coldly. 

"And shall you be in the procession?" 

"I shall be there with the other priests of my 
parish," 

"Delightful!" cried Mrs. Vervain, "We shall be 
looking out for you. I shall feel greatly honored to 
think I actually know some one in the procession. I'm 
going to give you a little nod. You won't think it 
very wrong?" 

She saved him from the embarrassment he might 
have felt in replying, by an abrupt lapse from all ap- 
parent interest in the subject. She turned to her 
daughter, and said with a querulous accent, "1 wish 
you would throw the afghan over ray feet, Florida, and 
make me a little comfortable before you begin your 
reading this morning." At the same time she feebly 
disposed herself among the sofa cushions on which 
she reclined, and waited for some final touches from 
her daughter. Then she said, "Tm just going to close 
my eyes, but I shall hear every word. You are getting 
a beautiful accent, my dear, I know you are, I should 
think Goldoni must have a very smooth, agreeable 
Btyle; hasn't he now, in Italian?" 

They began to read the comedy; after fifteen or 
twenty minutes Mrs. Vervain opened her eyes and said, 
"But before you commence, Florida, I wish you'd play 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 143 

a little, to get me quieted down. I feel so very flighty. 
I suppose it's this siioco). And I believe I'll lie down 
in the next room." 

Florida followed her to repeat the arrangements 
for her comfort Then she returned, and sitting down 
at the piano struck with a sort of soft firmness a few 
low, soothing chords, out of which a lolling melody grew. 
With her fingers still resting on the keys she turned 
her stately head, and glanced through the open door 
at hei mother. 

"Don Ippolito," she asked softly, "is there any- 
thing in the air of Venice that makes people very 
drowsy?" 

"I have never heard that, madamigella." 

"I wonder," continued the young girl absently, 
"why my mother wants to sleep so much." 

"Perhaps she has not recovered from the fatigues 
of the other night," suggested the priest 

"Perhaps," said Florida, sadly looking toward her 
mother's door. 

She turned again to the iuEtrument, and let her 
fingeis wander over the keys, with a drooping head. 
Pres^itly she lifted her face, and smoothed back trom 
her temples some straggling tendrils of hair. Without 
lookii^ at the priest she asked with the child-like 
bluntness that characterized her, "Why dont you like 
■to walk in the procession of Corpus Domiai?" 



144 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Don Ippolito's color came and went, and he an- 
swered evasively, "I have not said that I did not like 
to do so." 

"No, that is true," said Florida, letting her fingers 
drop again on the keys. 

Don Ippolito rose from the sofa where he had 
been sitting beside her while they read, and walked 
the length of the room. Then he came towards her 
and said meekly, "Mad^nigella, I did not mean to 
repel any interest you feel in me. But it was a strange 
question to ask a priest, as I remembered I was wheu 
you asked it." 

"Don't you always remember that?" demanded the 
girl, still without turning her head. 

"No; sometimes I am suiFered to forget it," he said 
with a tentative accent. 

She did not respond, and he drew a long breath, 
and walked away in silence. She let her bands fall 
into her lap, and sat in an attitude of expectation. 
As Don Ippolito came near her again he paused a 
second time. 

"It is in this house that I forget my priesthood," 
he began, "and it is the first of your kindnesses that 
you suffer me to do so, your good mother, there, and 
you. How shall I repay you? It cut me to the heart 
that you should ask forgiveness of me when you did, 
though I was hurt by your rebuke. Oh, had you not 
the right .to rebuke nie if I abused tjie delicate unfc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 145 

reserve with which you had always treated me? But 
believe me, I meant no wrong, then." 

His voice shook, and Florida broke in, "You did 
nothing wiong. It was I who was cruel for no cause." 

"No, no. You shall not say that," he returned. 
"And why should I have cared for a few words, when 
all your acts had expressed a trust of me that is like 
heaven to my soul?" 

She turned now and looked at him, and he went 
on. "Ah, I see you do not understand! How could 
you know what it is to be a priest in this most un- 
happy city? To be haunted by the strict espionage 
of all your own class, to be shunned as a spy by all 
who are not of it! But you two have not put up that 
barrier which everywhere shuts me out &om my kind. 
You have been willing to see the man in me, and to 
let me forget the priest" 

"I do not know what to say to you, Don Ippolito. 
I am only a foreigner, a girl, and I am very ignorant 
of these tliit^," said Florida with a slight alarm. "I 
am afraid that you may be saying what you will be 
sorry for." 

"Oh never! Do not fear for me if I am &ank with 
you. It is my refuge from despair." 

The passionate vibration of his voice increased, as 
if it must break in tears. She glanced towards the 
other. room with a little movement or stir. 



146 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"All, you needn't be afraid of listening to me!" 
cried the priest bitteriy. 

"I will not wake her," said Florida calmly, after an 



"See how you speak the thing you mean, always, 
always, always! You could not deny that you meant 
to wake her, for you have the hfe-long habit of the 
truth. Do you know what it is to have the life-long 
habit of a lie? It is to be a priest Do you know 
what it is to seem, to say, to do, the thing you are 
not, think not, will not? To leave what you believe 
unspoken, what you will undone, what you are un- 
known? It is to be a priest!" 

Don Ippolito spoke in Italian, and he uttered these 
words in a voice carefully guarded from every listener 
but the one before his face. "Do you know what it 
is when such a moment as this comes, and you would 
fling away the whole fabric of falsehood that has clotiied 
your life — do you know what it is to keep still so 
much of it as will help you to unmask silently and 
secretly? It is to be a priest!" 

His voice had lost its vehemence, and his manner 
was strangely subdued and cold. The sort of gentle 
apathy it expressed, together with a certain sad, im- 
peisonal surprise at the difierence between his own 
and the happier fortune with which he contrasted it, 
was more touching than any ti^c demonsttatwn. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION; I47 

As if she felt the fascination of the pa.thos which 
she could not fiilly analyze, the young girl sat silent. 
Aiter a time, in which she seemed to be trying to 
thiak it all out, she asked in a low, deep murmur: 
"Why did you become a priest, then?" 

"It is a long story," said Don Ippolito. "I will not 
trouble you with it now. Some other time." 

"No; now," answered Florida, in English. "If you 
hate so to be a priest, I can't undeistand why you should 
have allowed yourself to become one. We should be 
very unhappy if we could not respect you,^-not trust 
you as we have done; and how could we, if we knew 
you were not true to yourself in being what you are?" 

"Madamigella," said the priest, "I never dared be- 
lieve that I was in the smallest thing necessary to 
your happiness. Is it true, then, that you care for my 
being rather this than that? That you are in the least 
grieved by any wrong of mine?" 

"I scarcely know what you mean. How could we 
help being grieved by what you have said to me?" 

"Thanks; but ^ly do you care whether a priest of 
my churdi loves his calling or not, — ^you, a PMtestant? 
It IB that you are sony for me as an unhappy man, is 
it not?" 

"Yes; it is that and more. I am no Catholic, but 
we are both Christians" — 

Son Ippolito gave the faintest movement of his 
shoulders. 



148 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

— "and I cannot eoduie to think of your doing the 
things you must do as a priest, and yet hating to be 
a priest It is terrible!" 

"Are all the priests of your faith devotees?" 
"They cannot be. But are none of yours so?" 

"Oh, God forbid that I should say that. I have 
known real saints among them. That friend of mine 
in Padua, of whom I once told you, became such, and 
died an angel fit for Paradise. And I suppose that my 
poor Uhcle is a saint, too, in his way." 

"Your uncle? A priest? You have never men- 
tioned him to us." 

"No," said Don Ippolito. After a certain pause 
he began abruptly, "We are of the people, my family, 
and in each generation we have sought to honor our 
blood by devoting one of the race to the church. 
When I was a child, I used to divert myself by making 
little figures out of wood and pasteboard, and I drew 
rude copies of the pictures I saw at church. We lived 
in the house where I live now, and where I was bom, 
and my mother let me play in the small chamber 
where 1 now have my forge; it was anciently the ora- 
tory of the noble family that occupied the whole 
palace. I contrived ao altar at one end of it; I stuck 
my pictures about the walls, and I ranged the pup- 
pets in the order of worshippers on the floor; then 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. I49 

I played at saying mass, and preached to them all 
day long. 

"My mother was a widow. She used to watch me 
with tears in her eyes. At last, one day, she brought 
my uncle to see me: I remember it all far better than 
yesterday. 'Is it not the will of God?' she asked. My 
uncle called me to him, and asked me whether I should 
like to be a priest in good earnest, when I grew up? 
'Shall I then be able to make as many little figures 
as I tike, and to paint pictures, and carve an altar hke 
that in your church?' I demanded. My uncle an- 
swered that I should have real men and women to 
preach to, as he had, and would not that be much 
finer? In my heart I did not think so, for I did not 
care for that part of it; I only liked to preach to my 
puppets because I had made them. But I said, 'Oh 
yes,' as children do, I kept on contriving the toys 
that I played with, and I grew used to hearing it told 
among my mates and about the neighborhood that I 
was to be a priest; I cannot remember any other talk 
with my mother, and I do not know how or when it 
was decided. Whenever I thought of the matter, I 
thought, 'That will be very well. The priests have 
very little to do, and they gain a great deal of money 
with their masses; and I shall be able to make what- 
ever I like.' I only considered the oftice then as a 
means to gratify the passion that has always filled my 
soul for inventions and works of mechanical skill and 



ISO A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

ingenuity. My inclination was purely secular, but I 
was as inevitably becoming a priest as if I had been 
bora to be one." 

"But you were not forced? There was no pressure 
upon you?" 

"No, there was merely an absence, so fax as they 
were concerned, of any other idea. I think they meant 
jusUy, and assuredly they meant kindly by me. I 
grew in years, and the time came when 1 was to be- 
gin my studies. It was my uncle's influence that 
placed me in the Seminary of the Salute, and there I 
repaid his care by the utmost diligence. But it was 
not the theological studies that I loved, it was the 
mathematics Mid their practical application, and among 
the classics 1 loved best the poets and the historians. 
Yes, I can see that I was always a mundane spirit, 
and some of those in charge of me at once divined it, 
I think. They used to take us to walk, — you have 
seen the little creatures in their priest's gowns, which 
they put on when they enter the school, with a couple 
of young priests at the head of the file, — and once, 
for an uncommon pleasure, they took us to the Arsenal, 
and let us see the shipyards and the museum. You 
know the wonderful things that are there: the flags and 
the guns captured from the Turks; the Strange weapons 
of all devices; the famous suits of armor. I came back 
half-crazed; I wept that I must leave the place. But 
I set to work the best I could to carve out in wood an 



A FOREGONE CONCLCSION. I5I 

inyentaon which the model of one of the antique galleys 
had suggested to me. They found it, — nothing can 
be concealed ontside of youi own breast in such a 
school, — and they carried me with my contrivance be- 
fore the superior. He looked kindly but gravely at 
me: 'My son,' said he, 'do you wish to be a priest?' 
'Surely, reverend father,' I answered in alarm, 'why 
not?' 'Because these things are not for priests. Their 
thoughts must be upon other things. Consider well 
of it, my son, while there is yet time,' he said, and he 
addressed me a long and serious discourse upon the 
life on which I was to enter. He was a just and con- 
scientious and affectionate man; but every word fell 
like burning (ire in my heart. At the end, he took 
my poor plaything, and thrust it down among the 
coals of his scaldino. It mad^ the scaldino smoke, and 
he bade me cany it out with me, and so turned again 
to his book. 

"My mother was by this time dead, but I could 
hardly have gone to her, if she had still been living. 
'These things are not for priests!' kept repeating 
itself night and day in my brain. I was in despair, I 
was in a fury to see my uncle. I poured out my heart 
to him, and tried to make him understand the illusions 
and vain hopes in which I had lived. He received 
coldly my sorrow and the reproaches which I did not 
spare him; he bade me consider my inclinations as so 
many temptations to be overcome for the good of my 



152 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

soul and the glory of God. He warned me against 
the scandal of attempting to withdraw now &om the 
path marked out for me. I said that I never would be 
a priest. 'And what will you do?' he asked. Alas! 
what could I do? I went back to my prison, and in 
due course I became a priest. 

"It wag not without sufficient warning that I took 
one order after another, but my uncle's words, 'What 
will you do?' made me deaf to these admonitions. 
All that is now past I no longer resent nor hate; I 
seem to have lost the power; but those were days 
when my soul was filled with bitterness. Something 
of this must have showed itself to those who had me 
in their charge. I have heard that at one time my 
superiors had grave doubts whether I ought to be 
allowed to take orders. My examination, in which the 
difficulties of the sacerdotal life were brought before 
me with the greatest clearness, was severe; I do not 
know how I passed it; it must have been in grace to 
my uncle. I spent the next ten days in a convent, to 
meditate upon the step I was about to take. Poor 
helpless, fiiendless wretch! Madamigella", even yet 1 
cannot see how I was to blame, that I came forth and 
received the first of the holy orders, and in their time 
the second and the third. 

"I was a priest, but no more a priest at heart than 
those Venetian conscripts, whom you saw earned away 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1 53 

last week, are Austrian soldiers. I was bound as they 
are bound, by an inexorable and inevitable law. 

"You have asked me why I became a priest. Per- 
haps I have not told you why, but I have told you 
how — ^I have given you the slight outward events, not 
the processes of my mind — and that is all that I can 
do. If the guilt was mine, I have suffered for it. If 
it was not mine, still I have suffered for it Some ban 
seems to have rested "upon whatever I have attempted. 
My work, — oh, I know it well enough! — has all been 
cursed with futility; my labors are miserable failures 
or contemptible successes. I have had my unselfish 
dreams of blessing mankind by some great discovery 
or invention; but my life has been barren, barren, 
barren; and save for the kindness that I have known 
in this house, and that would not let me despair, it 
would now be without hope," 

He ceased, and the girl, who had listened with her 
proud looks transfigured to an aspect of grieving pity, 
fetched a long sigh, "Oh, I am sorry for you!" she 
said, "more sorry than I know how to tell. But yon 
must not lose courage, you must not give up!" 

Don Ippolito resumed with a melancholy smile. 
"There are doubtless temptations enough to be false 
under the best of conditions in this world. But some- 
thing — I do not know what or whom; perhaps no 
more my uncle or my mother than I, for they were 



154 ■* FOREGONE CONCLUSIOM. 

only as the past had made them — caused me to begin 
by living a lie, do you not see?" 

"Yes, yes," reluctantly assented the girl. 

"Perhaps — who knows? — that is why no good has 
come of me, nor can come. My uncle's piety and 
repute have always been my efficient help. He is the 
principal priest of the church to which I am attached, 
and he has had infinite patience with me. My ambi- 
tion and my attempted inventions are a scandal to 
him, for he is a priest of those like the Holy Father, 
who believe that all the wickedness of the modem 
world has come from the devices of science; my in- 
difference to the things of religion is a terror and sor- 
row to him which he combats with prayers and pen- 
ances. He starves himself and goes cold and faint 
that God may have mert^ and turn my heart to the 
things on which his own is fixed. He loves my soul, 
but not me, and we are scarcely friends." 

Florida continued to look at him with steadfast, 
compassionate eyes. "It seems very strange, almost 
like some dream," she murmured, "that you should be 
saying all this to me, Don Ippolito, and I do not know 
why I should have asked you anything." 

The pity of this virginal heart must have been veiy 
sweet to the man on whom she looked it His eyes 
worshipped her, as he answered her devoutly, "It was 
due to the truth in you that I should seem to jrou 
what I am." 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSIOS. I55 

"Indeed, you make me ashamed!" she cried with 
a blush. "It was selfish of me to ask you to speak. 
And now, after what you have told me, I am so help- 
less and I know so very little that I don't understand 
how to comfort or encourage you. But surely you can 
somehow help yoiii^f. Arc men, that seem so strong 
and able, just as powerless as women, after all, when 
it comes to real trouble? Is a man" — 

"I cannot answer. I am only a priest," said Don 
Ippolito coldly, letting his eyes drop to the gown that 
fell about him like a woman's skirt. 

"Yes, but a priest should be a man, and so much 
more; a priest" — 

Don Ippolito shrugged his shoulders. 

"No, no!" cried the girl. "Your own schemes have 
all failed, you say; then why do you not think of be- 
coming a priest in reality, and getting the good there 
must be in such a calling? It is singular that I should 
venture to say such a thing to you, and it must seem 
presumptuous and ridiculous for me, a Protestant — 
but our ways are so different." .... She paused, color- 
ing deeply, th«i controlled herself, and added with 
grave composure, "If you were to pray" — 

"To what, madamigella?" asked the priest, sadly. 

"To whitt!" she echoed, opening her eyes AiUupoa 
him. "To God!" 

Don IppoUto made no answer. He let his head 



156 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

fall so low upon his breast that she could see the 
sacerdotal tonsure. 

"You must excuse me," she said, blushing again. 
"I did not mean to wound your feelings as a Catholic 
J have been very bold and intrusive. I ought to have 
remembered that people of your church have different 
ideas — that the saints" — 

Don IppoUto looked up with pensive irony. 

"Oh, the poor saints!" 

" I don't understand you ," said Florida, very 
gravely. 

"I mean that I believe in the saints as little as 
you do." 

"But you believe in your Church?" 

"I have no Church." 

There was a silence in which Don IppoUto again 
dropped his head upon his breast Florida leaned 
forward in her eagerness, and murmured, "You believe 
in God?" 

The priest lifted his eyes and looked at her be- 
seechingly. "I do not know," he whispered. 

She met his gaze with one of dumb bewilderment ■ 
At last she said: "Sometimes you baptize little children 
and receive them into the church in the name of God?" 
- "Yes." 

"Poor creatures come to you and confess their 
sins, and you absolve them, or order them to do 
penances?" 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. I57 

"Yes." 

"And sometimes when people are dfing, you must 
stand by their death-beds and give them the last con- 
solations of religion?" 

"It is trae." 

"Oh!" moaned the girl, and fixed on Don Ippolito 
a long look of wonder and reproach, which he met 
with eyes of silent anguish. 

"It is terrible, madamigella," he said, rising. "I 
know it I would fain have lived single-heartedly, for 
I think 1 was made so; but now you see how black 
and deadly a lie my life is. It is worse than you could 
have imagined, is it not? It is worse than the life of 
the cruelest bigot, for he at least believes in himself." 

"Worse, far worsel" 

"But at least, dear young lady," he went on 
piteously, "believe me that I have the grace to abhor 
myself. It is not much, it is very, very little, but it is 
something. Do not wholly condemn mel" 

"Condemn? Oh, I am sorry for you with my whole 
heart. Only, why must you tell me all this? No, no; 
you are not to Wame. I made you speak; I made you 
put yourself to shame." 

"Not that, dearest madamigella. I would unsay 
nothing now, if I could, unless to take away the pain 
I have given you. It has been more a relief than a 
shame to have all this known to you; and even if you 
should despise me" — 



IjS A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"I don't despise you; that isn't for me; bat oh, I 
wish that 1 could help you!" 

Don Ippohto shook his head. "You canuot help 
me; but I thank you for your coiapassion; I shall never 
forget it," He lingered irresolutely with his hat in his 
hand. "Shall we go on with the reading, madami- 
gella?" 

"No, we will not read any more to-day," she an- 
swered. 

"Then I relieve you of the disturbance, madam- 
igella," he said; and after a moment's hesitation he 
bowed sadly and went 

She mechanically followed him to the door, with 
some little gestures and movements of a desire to keep 
him &om going, yet let him go, and so turned back 
and sat down with her hands resting noiseless on the 
keys of the piano. 



D,nlz-nf,G00J^lc 



^ FOREGONE CONCLUSIOK. 



The next morning Don Ippolito did not come, but 
in the afternoon the postman brought a letter for Mrs. 
Vervain, couched in the priest's English, beting her 
indulgence until after the day of Corpus Chiisti, up to 
which time, he said, he should be too occupied for his 
visits of ordinary. 

This letter reminded Mis. Vervain that they had 
not seen Mr. Ferris for three days, and she sent to ask 
him to dinner. But he returned an excuse, and he 
was not to be had to breakfast the next morning for 
the asking. He was in open rebelHon. Mis. Vervain 
had herself rowed to the consular landing, and sent 
up her gondolier with another invitation to dinner. 

The painter appeared on the balcony in the linen 
blouse which he wore at his work, and looked down 
with a ftown on the smiling face of Mrs. Vervain for a 
moment without speaking. Then, "I'll come," he said 
gloomily. . 

"Come with me, then," returned Mrs. Vervain, 

"I shall have to keep yoa waiting." 

"I don't mind that Voull be ready in five 



Florida met the painter with such gentleness that 



l60 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

he felt his resentment to have been a stupid caprice, 
for which there was no ground in the world. He tried 
to recall his fading sense of outrage, bat he found 
nothing in his mind but penitence. The sort of dis- 
traught humility with which she behaved gave her a 
novel fascination. 

The dinner was good, as Mra. Vervain's dinners 
always were, and there was a compliment to the painter 
in the presence of a favorite dish. When he saw this, 
"Well, Mrs. Vervain, what is it?" he asked. "You 
needn't pretend that you're treating me so well for 
nothing. You want something." 

"We want nothing but that you should not neglect 
your friends. We have been utterly deserted for three 
or four days. Don Ippolito has not been here, either; 
but he has some excuse; he has to get ready for 
Corpus Christi. He's going to be in the procession." 

"Is he to appear with his flying machine, or his 
portable dining-table, or his automatic camera?" 

" For shame ! " cried Mrs. Vervain, beaming reproach. 
Florida's face clouded, and Ferris made haste to say 
that he did not know these inventions were sacred, 
and that he had no wish to blaspheme them. . 

"You know well enough what I meant," answered 
Mrs. Vervain. "And now, we want you to get us a 
window to look out on the procession." 

"Oh, thafs what you want, is it? I thought yOtt 
merely wanted me not to neglect ray friends." 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. l6l 

"Well, do you call that neglecting them?" 

"Mrs. Vervain, Mrs, Vervain 1 What a mind you 
have! Is there anything else you want? Me to go 
with you, for example?" 

"We don't insisL You can take us to the window 
and leave us, if you like." 

"This demency is indeed unexpected," relied 
Ferris. "I'm really qnite unworthy of it" 

He was goii^ on with the badinage customaiy be- 
tween Mis. Vervain and himself, i^en Florida pro- 
tested,— 

"Mother, I think we abuse Mr. Fcnis's kindness." 

"I know it, my dear — I know it," cheerfully as- 
sented Mrs. V«Tain. "It's perfectly shocking. But 
what are we to do? We must abuse somebody i kindness." 

"We had bett^ stay at home. I'd much rather not 
go," said the girl, tremulously, 

"Why, Miss Vervain," said Ferris gravely, "I'm very 
sorry if you've misunderstood my joking. I've never 
yet seen the procession to advantage, and f d like very 
much to look on with you." 

He could not tell whether die was grateful for his 
words, or annoyed. She rcsoiutely said no more, but 
her mother took up the strain and discoursed long 
upon it, arranging all the particulars of their meeting 
and going together. Ferris was a little piqued, and 
began to wonder why Miss Vervain did not stay at 
hoBie if she did not WEmt to go. To be sure, she went 

A Forrgoru Cffncftuio*, 1 ' I ^ 



l62 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION,- 

everywhere with her mother; but it was strange, with 
her habitual violent ^ubmissivcness, that she should 
have said anything in opposition to hei mother's wish 
or purpose. 

After dinner, Mrs, Vervain frankly withdrew for 
her nap, and Florida seemed to make a little haste to 
take some sewing in her hand, and sat down with the 
air of a woman willing to detain her visitor. Ferris 
was not such a stoic as not to be dimly flattered by 
this, but he was too much of a man to be fully aware 
how great an advance it might seem. 

"I suppose we shall sec most of the priests of 
Venice, and what they are hke, in the procession to- 
morrow," she said. "Do you remember speaking to 
me about priests, the other day, Mr. Ferris?" 

"Yes, I remember it very well. I think I over- 
did it; and I couldn't perceive afterw^ds that I had 
shown any motive but a desire to make trouble for 
Don Ippolito," ■ 

"I never thought that," answered Florida, seriously, 
"What you said was true, wasn't it?" 

"Yes, it was and it wasn't, and I don't know that 
it differed &om anything else in the world, in that 
respect It is true that there is a great distrust of the 
priests amongst the Italians. The young men hate 
them — or think they do — or say they do- Most 
educated men in middle life are materialists, and of 
course unfriendly to the priests. There are evca 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 163 

women who are skeptical about leligion. But I sus- 
pect that the largest number of all those who talk 
loudest against the priests are really subject to them, 
Vou must consider how very intimately they are bound 
up with every family in the most solemn relations of 
life." 

"Do you think the priests are generally bad men?" 
asked the young girl shyly. 

"I don't, indeed. I don't see bow things could 
hang together if it were so. There must be a great 
basis of sincerity and goodness in them, when all is 
said and done. It seems to me that at the worst 
they're merely professional people — poor fellows who 
have gone into the church for a living. You know it 
isn't often now that the sons of noble families take 
orders; the priests are mostly of humble origin; not 
that they're necessarily the worse for that; the patricians 
used to be just as bad in another way." 

"I wonder," said Florida, with her head on one 
side, considering her seam, "why there is always some- 
thing so dreadful to us in the idea of a priest" 

"They do seem a kind of alien creature to us 
Protestants. I can't make out whether they seem so 
to Catholics, or not. But we have a repugnance to 
all doomed people, haven't we? And a priest is a 
man under sentence of death to the natural ties be- 
tween himself and the human race. He is dead to 
ifs. That malLes him dreadful. The spectre of oui 



164 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

dearest friend, father or mother, would be terrible. 
And yet," added Ferris, musingly, "a nun isn't ter- 
rible." 

"No," answered the girl, "that's because a woman's 
life even in the world seems to be a constant giving 
up. No, a nun isn't unnatural, but a priest is." 

She was silent for a time, in whidi she sewed 
swiftiy; then she suddenly dropped her work into her 
lap, and pressing it down with both hands, she asked, 
"Do you believe that priests themselves are ever 
skeptical about religion?" 

"I suppose it must happen now and then. In the 
best days of the church it was a fashion to doubt, 
you know. I've often wanted to ask our friend Don 
Ippolito something about these matters, but I didn't 
see how it could be managed." Ferris did not note the 
change that passed over Florida's face, and he con- 
tinued. "Our acquaintance hasn't become so intimate 
as I hoped it might But you only get to a certain 
point with Italians. They like to meet you <mi the 
street; maybe they haven't any indoors" 

"Yes, it must sometimes happen, as you say," re- 
plied Florida, with a quick sigh, rev«ting to the be- 
ginning of Ferris's answer. "But is it any worse for a 
false priest than for a hypocritical minister?" 

"It's bad enough for either, but ifs worse for the 
priest. You see. Miss Vervain, a minister doesn't set 
up for so much. He doesn't pretend to foi^ve us 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 165 

our' sins, and tie doesn't ask us to confess them;' he 
doesn't offer us the veritable body and blood in the 
sacrament, and he doesn't bear allegiance to the visible 
and tangible vicegerent of Christ upon earth. A hypo- 
critical parson may be absurd; but a skeptical priest is 

"Yes, oh yes, I see," murmured the girl, with a 
grieving face. "Are they always to blame for it? 
They must be induced, sometimes, to enter the church 
before they've seriously thought about it, and then 
don't know how to escape from the path that has been 
marked out for them from their childhood. Should 
you think such a priest as that was to blame for being 
a skeptic?" she asked very earnestly. 

"No," said Ferris, with a smile at her seriousness, 
"I should think such a skeptic as that ^as to blame 
for being a priest." 

"Shouldn't you be very sorry for him?" pursued 
Florida still mote solemnly. 

"I should, indeed, if I liked him. If I didn't, I'm 
afraid I shouldn't," said Ferris; but he saw that his 
levity jarred upon her. "Come, Miss Vervain, you're 
not going to look at those fat monks and sleek priests 
in the procession to-morrow as so many incorporate 
tragedies, are you? Vou'll spoil my pleasure if you 
do. I dare say thcyil be all of them devout believers, 
acc%iting everything, down to the animalcula in the 
holy water." 



1 56 A FOKEGONE CONCLUSION. 

"If you were that kind of a priest," persisted 
the girl, without heeding his jests, "what should 
you -do?" 

"Upon my word, I don't know. I can't imagine 
it. Why," he continued, "think what a helpless crea- 
ture a priest is in everything but his priesthood — more 
helpless than a woman, even. The only thing he 
could do would be to leave the church, and how 
could he do that? He's in the world, but he isn't of 
it, and I don't see what he could do with it, or it 
with him. If an Italian priest were to leave the 
church, even the liberals, who distrust him now, would 
despise him still more. Do you know that they have 
a pleasant fashion of calling the Protestant converts 
apostates? The first thing for such a priest would be 
exile. But I'm not supposably the kind of priest you 
mean, and I don't think just such a priest supposable. 
I dare say if a priest found himself drifliug into doubt, 
he'd try to avoid the disagreeable subject, and, if he 
couldn't, he'd philosophize it some way, and wouldn't 
let his skepticism wony him." 

"Then you mean that they haven't consciences 
like us?" 

"They have consciences, but not like us. The 
Italians are kinder people than we are, but they're 
not so just, and I should say that they don't think 
truth the chief good of life. They believe there are 
pleasanter and better things. Perhaps they're right." 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1 67 

"No, no; you don't believe that, you know you 
doo't," said Florida, anxiously. "And you haven't an- 
swered my question." 

"Oh yes, I have. Tve told you it wasn't a sup- 
posable case." 

"But suppose it was." 

"Well, if I must," answered Ferris with a laugh. 
"With my unfortunate bringing up, I couldn't say less 
thA that such a man ought to get out of his priest- 
hood at any hazard. He should cease to be a priest, 
if it cost him kindred, friends, good fame, country, 
everything. I don't see how there can be any living 
in such a lie, though I know there is. In all reason, 
it ought to eat the soul out of a man, and leave him 
helpless to do or be any sort of good. But there 
seems to be something, I don't know what it is, that 
is above all reason of outs, something that saves each 
of us for good in spite of the bad that's in us. It's 
very good practice, for a man who wants to be modest, 
to come and live in a Latin country. He learns to 
suspect his own topping virtues, and to be lenient 
to the novel combinations of right and wrong that 
he sees. But as for our insupposable priest — yes, I 
should say decidedly he ought to get out of it by all 

Florida fell back in her chair with an aspect of 
such relief as comes to one from coniirmation on an 



CONCLUSION. 

important point. She passed her hand over the sew- 
ing in her lap, but did not speak. 

Ferris went on, with a doubting look at her, for 
be had "been shy of introducing Doh Ipp<dito's name 
since the day on the Brenta, and he did not know 
what effect a recurrence to him in this talk migl^ 
have. "I've often wondered if our own clerical friend 
were not a little shaky in his faith. I don't think 
nature meant him for a priest. He always strikes. me 
as an extremely secular-minded person. I doubt if 
Tie's ever put the question whether he is what he pro- 
fesses to be, squarely to himself — he's such a mere 
dreamer." 

Florida changed her posture slightly, and looked 
down at her sewing. She asked, "But shouldn't you 
abhor him if he were a skeptical priest?" 

Ferris shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I don't find 
it such an easy matter to abhor people. It would be 
interesting," he continued musingly, "to have such a 
dreamer waked up, once, and suddenly confronted with 
what he realized as perfect truthfulness, and couldn't 
help contrasting himself with. But it would be a little 
cruel." 

"Would you rather have him left as he was?" 
asked Florida, lifting her eyes to his. 

"As a moralist, no; as a huinaaitarian, yes, Miss 
Vervain, He'd be much happier as he was." 



A FORECONS CONCLUSIOM. 1 69 

"What time ought we to be ready for you to-mor- 
tow?" demanded the girl in a tone of decision. 

"We ought to be in the Piazza by nine o'clock,' 
said Ferris, carelessly accepting the change of subject 
and he told her of his plan for seeing the procession 
from a window of the Old Procuratie. 

When he rose to go, he said lightly, "Perhaps, after 
all, we may see the type of tragicai priest we've been 
talking about Who can tell? I say his nose will be 
red." 

"Pcriiaps," answered Florida, with unheeding gravity. 



f,Goo«^lc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



XII, 



The day was ooe of those which can come to the 
■world only in early June at Venice, The heaven was 
without a cloud, but a blue haze made mystery of the 
horizon where the lagoon and sky met unseen. The 
breath of the sea bathed in freshness the city at whose 
feet her tides sparkled and slept. 

The great square of St. Mark was transformed 
from a mart, from a talon, to a temple. The shops 
under the colonnades that inclose it upon three sides 
were shut; the cafTte, before which the circles of idle 
coffee-drinkers and sherbet-eaters ordinarily spread out 
into the Kazza, were repressed to the limits of their 
own doors; the stands of the wat^-venders, the baskets 
of those that sold oranges of Palermo and black cher- 
ries of Padua, had vanished from the base of the 
church of St. Mark, which with its dim splendor of 
mosaics and its carven luxury of pillar and arch and 
flnial rose like the high-altar, ineffably rich and beau- 
tiful, of the vaster temple whose enclosure it completed. 
Before it stood the three great red flag-staffs, like 
painted tapers before an altar, and from them hung 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. I7I 

the Austriaa flags of red aad white, aod yellow and 
black. 

In the middle of the square stood the Austrian 
military band, motionless, encircling their leader with 
his goldea-headed staff uplifted. During the night a 
light colonnade of wood, roofed with blue doth, had 
been put up around the inside of the Piazza, and un< 
der this now paused the long pomp of the ecclesiastical 
procession — the priests of all the Venetian diurcbes in 
their richest vestments, followed in their order by fae- 
chini, in white sandals and gay robes, with caps of 
scarlet, white, green, and blue, who bore huge painted 
candles and silken banners displaying the symbol or 
the portrait of the titular saints of the sev'eral churches, 
and supported the canopies under which the host of 
each was elevated. Before the clergy went a company 
of Austrian soldiers, and behind the facchini came a 
long array of religious societies, charity-school boys in 
uniforms, old paupers in holiday dress, little naked ur- 
chins with shepherds' crooks and bits of fleece about 
their loins like John the Baptist in the Wilderness, 
little girls with angels' wings and crowns, the monks of 
the various orders, and civilian penitents of alt sorts in 
cloaks or dress-coats, hooded or bareheaded, and car- 
rying each a lighted taper. The corridors under the 
Imperial Palace and the New and Old Procurarie were 
packed with spectators; from every window up and 
do¥m the fronts of the palaces, gay stuffs were flung; 



171 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

the staxtied doves of St Maik perched upoa the cor- 
nices, oi fluttered uneasily to and fro above the 
crowd. 

The baton of the band leader descended with a 
crash Of martial music, the priests dianted, the cha- 
rity-boys sang shrill, a vast noise of shuflUng feet arose, 
mixed with the foliage-like rustling of the sheets of 
tinsel attached to the banners and candles in the pro- 
cession: the whole strange, gorgeous picture came to 
life. 

After all hex plans and preparations, Mrs. Vervain 
had not felt well enough that morning to come to the 
spectacle which she had counted so much upon see- 
ing, but she had therefore insisted the more that her 
daughter should go, and Ferris now stood with Florida 
alone at a window in the Old Frocuiatie. 

, "Well, what do you think, Miss Vervain?" he asked, 
when their senses had somewhat accustomed themselves 
to the noise of the procession; "do you say now that 
Venice is too gloomy a city to have ever had any pos- 
sibility of gayety in her?" 

"I never said that," answered Florida, opening her 
eyes upon htm. 

"Neidio: did I," returned Fenis, "but I've often 
thought it, aod Vm not sure now but I'm right. ITiere's 
stHsething extremely melancholy to me in all this. I 
don't care so much for what one may call the deplor- 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 173 

able superstition expTessed in the spectacle, but the 
mere splendid sight and the music are enough to make 
one shed tears, I don't know anything more affecting 
except a procession of lantern-lit gondolas and foaiges 
on the Grand Canal. It's phantasmd. It's the spec- 
tral resurrection of the old dead fonns into the pre- 
sent It's not even the ghost, it's the corpse, of other 
ages thaf s haunting Venice, The city ought to have 
been destroyed bj Napoleon when he destroyed the 
Republic, and thrown overboard — St Mark, Winged 
Lion, Bucentaur, and all. There is no land like 
America for true cheerfulness and light-heartedness. 
Think of our Fourth of Julys and our State Fairs. 
Selahl" 

Ferris looked into the girl's serious face with twink- 
ling eyes. He liked to embarrass her gravity with 
his antic speeches, and enjoyed her endeavors to find 
an earnest meaning in tliein, and her evident trouble 
when she could find none. 

"I'm curious to know how our friend will look," he 
b^an again, as he anranged the cushion on the win- 
dow-sill for Florida's greater comfort in watching the 
spectade, "but it won't be an easy matter to pick him 
out in this masquerade, I fancy, Candle-^anying, as 
well as the other acts of devotion, seems rather out of 
character with Don Ippolito, and I can't imagine his 
putting' much soul into it. However, very few of the 
tlergy appear to do that. Look at those holy men 



174 A FOREGOHE CONCLUSION. 

with their eyes to the wind! They are wondering who 
is the bella Honda at the window here." 

Florida listened to his persiflage with an air of sad 
distraction. She was intent upon the procession as it 
approached from the other side of the Piazza, and she 
replied at random to his comments on the difierent 
bodies that formed it 

"It's very hard to decide which are my favorites," 
he continued, surveying the long column through an 
opera-glass. "My religious disadvantages have been 
such that I don't care much for priests or monks, or 
young John the Baptists, or small female cherubim, 
but I do like little chanty-boys with voices of pins 
and needles and hair cut d la dead-rabbit I should 
Uke, if it were consistent with the consular dignity, to 
go down and rub their heads. I'm fond, also, of oid 
charity-boys, I find. Those paupers make one in love 
with destitute and dependent age, by their aspect of 
irresponsible enjoyment. See how briskly each of 
them topples along on the leg that he hasn't got in 
the grave! How attractive likewise are the civilian 
devotees in those imperishable dress-coats of theirs I 
Observe their high collars of the era of the Holy 
AlUauce: they and their fathers and their grandfathers 
before them have worn those dress-coats; in a hundred 
years from now their posterity will keep holiday in 
them. I should like to know the elixir by which the 
diess-coats of civil employees render themselves im- 



A FOREGONX CONCLUSION, 1 75 

mortal. Those penitents in the cloaks aad cowls are 
not bad, either, Miss Vervain. Come, they add a very 
pretty touch of mysteiy to this spectacle. They're the 
soit of thing that painteis axe expected to paint in 
Venice — that people sigh over as so peculiarly Venetian. 
If you've a single sentiment about you, Miss Vervain, 
now is the time to produce it." 

"But I haven't I'm afraid I have no sentiment at 
all," answered the girl ruefully. "But this makes me 
dreadfully sad." 

"Why that's just what I was saying a while ago. 
Excuse me, Miss Vervain, hut your sadness lacks 
novelty; it's a sort of plagiarism." 

"Don't, please," she pleaded yet more earnestly. 
"I was just thinking — I don't know why such an awful 
thought should come to me — that it might all be a 
mistake after all; perh^s there might not he any other 
world, and every bit of this power and display of the 
church— our church as well as the rest — might be only 
a cruel blunder, a dreadful mistake. Peiiiaps there 
isn't even any God! Doj'ou think there is?" 

"I don't iiink it," said Ferris gravely, "I know it 
But I don't wonder that this sight makes you doubt. 
Great God! How far it is from Christ! Look there, 
at those troops who go before the followers of the 
Lamb: their trade is murder. In a minute, if a dozen 
men called out, 'Long live the King of Italy!' it would 
be the duty of thoss soldiers to fire into the helpless 



176 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

crowd. Look at the silken and gilded pomp of the 
servants of the carpenter's son! Look at those miser- 
able monks, voluntary prisoners, beggars, aliens to their 
kind! Look at those penitents who think that they 
can get forgiveness foe their sins by carrying a candle 
round the square! And it is nearly two thousand 
years since the world turned Christian! It is pretty 
slow. But I suppose God lets men learn Him from 
their own experience of evil. I imagine the kingdom 
of heav^ is a sort of rep^blic, and that God draws 
men to Him only through their perfect freedom." 

"Yes, yes, it must be so," answered Florida, star- 
ing down on the crowd with unseeing eyes, "but I 
can't fix my mind on it I keep thinking the whole 
time of what we were talking about yesterday. I never 
could have dreamed of a priest's disbelieving; but now 
I can't dream of anything else. It seems to me that 
none of these priests or monks can believe anything. 
Their faces look false and sly and bad — ail of them!" 

"No, no, Miss Vervain," said Ferris, smiling at her 
despair, "you push matters a little beyond — as a wo- 
man has a right to do, of coune. I don't think their 
faces are bad, by any means. Some of them are dull 
and torpid, and some are frivolous, just like the faces 
of other people. But I've been noticing the number 
of good, kind, friendly faces, and they're in the 
majority, just as they are amongst other people; for 
there are very few souls, altogether out of drawing, in 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1 77 

my opinion. I've even caught sight of some faces in 
which there was a real rapture of devotion, and now 
and then a very innocent one. Here, for instance, is 
a man I should like to bet on, if he'd only look up." 

The priest whom Ferris indicated was slowly ad- 
vancing toward the space immediately under their 
window. He was dressed in robes of high ceremony, 
and in his hand he carried a lighted taper. He moved 
with a gentle tread, and the droop of his slender 
figure iatimated a sort of despairing weariness. While 
most of Ms fellows stared carelessly or curiously about 
them, his face was downcast and averted. 

Suddenly the procession paused, and a hush fell 
upon the vast assembly. Then the silence was broken 
by the rustle and stir of all those thousands going 
down upon their knees, as the cardinal-patriarch lifted 
his hands to bless them. 

The priest upon whom Ferris and Florida had 
fixed their eyes faltered a moment, and before he 
knelt his next neighbor had to pluck him by the skirt. 
Then he too knelt hastUy, mechanically lifting his head, 
and glancing along the front of the Old Procuratie, 
His face had that weariness in it which his figure and 
movement had suggested, and it was very pale, but it 
was yet more singular for the troubled innocence which 
its traits expressed. 

"There," whispered Fenis, "that's what I call an 
uncommonly good face." 

A FfrtptH Ctmttmun. 1* 



lyS A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Florida raised her haad to silence him, and the 
heavy gaze of the priest rested on them coldly at first. 
Then a light of recognition shot into his eyes and a 
flush sufitised his pallid visage, which seemed to grow 
the more haggard and desperate. His head fell again, 
and he dropped the candle from his hand. One of 
those beggars who went by the side of the procession, 
to gather the drippings of the tapers, restored it to 
him. 

"Why," said Ferris aloud, "it's Don Ippolito! Did 
you know him at first?" 



D,nlz-nf,G00J^lc 



I FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



The ladies were sitting on the terrace when Don 
Ippolito came next morning to say that he could not 
read with Miss Vervain that day nor for several days 
after, alleging in excuse some priestly duties proper to the 
time. Mrs. Vervain began to lament that she had not 
been able to go to the procession of the day before. 
"I meant to have kept a sharp lookout for you; Florida 
saw you, and so did Mr. Ferris. But it isn't at all the 
same thing, you know. Florida has no faculty for 
describing; and now I shall probably go away irom 
Venice without seeing you in your real character 
once." 

Don Ippolito suffered this and" more in meek 
silence. He waited his opportunity with unfailing 
politeness, and then with gentle punctUio took his 
leave. 

"Well, come again as soon as your duties will let 
yon, Don Ippolito," cried Mrs. Vervain. "We shall 
miss you dreadfully, and I begrudge everyone of your 
readings that Florida loses." 

The priest passed, with the sliding step which his 
impedi)^ diwpetj imposed, down the garden walk, and 



l8o A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

was half-way to the gate, when Florida, who had stood 
watching him, said to her mother, "I must speak to 
him again," and lightly descended the steps and swiftly 
glided in pursuit 

"Don Ippolito!" she called. 

He already had his hand upon the gate, but he 
turned, and rapidly went back to meet her. 

She stood in the walk where she had stopped when 
her voice arrested him, breathing quickly. Their eyes 
met; a painhil shadow overcast the face of the young 
girl, who seemed to be trying in vain to speak. 

Mrs. Vervain put on her glasses and peered down 
at the two with good-natured curiosity. 

"Well, madamigelia," said the priest at last, "what 
do you command me?" He gave a faint, patient 
sigh. 

The tears came into her eyes. "Oh," she began 
vehemently, "I wish there was some one who had the 
right to speak to you!" 

"No one," answered Don Ippolito, "has so much 
the right as you." 

"I saw you yesterday," she began again, "and 1 
thought of what you had told me, Don Ippolito." 

"Yes, I thought of it, too," answered the priest; I 
have thought of it ever since." 

"But haven't you thought of any hope for yourself? 
Must you still go on as before? How can you go 
back now to those things, and pretend to think them. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. iSl 

holy, and all the time have no heart or faith in them? 
It's terrible!" 

"What would you, madamigella?" demanded Don 
Ippolito, with a moody shrug. "It is my profession, 
my trade, yon know. You might say to the prisoner," 
he added bitterly, "'It is terrible to see you chained 
here.' Yes, it is terrible. Oh, 1 don't reject your com- 
passion! But what can I do?" 

"Sit down with me here," said Florida in her 
blunt, child-hke way and sank upon the stone seat 
beside the walk. She clasped her hands together in 
her lap with some strong, bashfiil emotion, while Don 
Ippolito, obeying her command, waited for her to 
speak. Her voice was scarcely more than a hoarse 
whisper when she began. 

"I dont know how to begin what I want to say. 
I am not fit to advise any one. I am so young, and 
so very ignorant of the world." 

"I too know little of the worid," said the priest, as 
much to himself as to her. 

"It may be all wrong, all wrong. Besides," she 
said abruptly, "how do I know that you are a good 
man, Don Ippolito? How do I know that you've 
been telling me the truth? It may be all a kind of 
trap" — 

He looked blankly at her. 

"This is in Venice; and you may be leading me 



1 82 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

on to say things to you that will make trouble for my 
mother and me. You may be a spy" — 

"Oh no, no, no!" cried the priest, springing to his 
feet with a kind of moan, and a shudder, "God for- 
bid!" He swiftly touched her hand with the tips of 
his fingers, and then kissed them: an action of inex- 
pressible humility. "Madamigella, I sweai to you by 
everything you believe good that I would rather die 
than be false to you in a single breath or thought" 

"Oh, I know it, I know it," she murmured. "I 
don't see how I could say such a cruel thing." 

"Not cruel; no, madamigella, not cruel," softly 
pleaded Don Ippolito. 

"But — but is there no escape for you?" 

They looked steadfastly at each other for a moment, 
and then Don Ippolito spoke. 

"Yes," he said very gravely, "there is one way of 
escape, I have often thought of it, and once I thought 
I had taken the first step towards it; but it is beset 
with many great obstacles, and to be a priest makes 
one timid and insecure." 

He lapsed into his musing melancholy with the 
last words; but she would not suffer him to lose what- 
ever heart he had begun to speak with. "That's no- 
thing," she said, "you must think again of that way of 
escape, and never turn from it till you have tried it. 
Only take the first step and you can go on. Friends 
will rise up everywhere, and make it easy for you. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 1 85 

Come," she implored him fervently, "you must pro- 
mise," 

He bent his dreamy eyes upon her. 

"If I should take this only way of escape, and it 
seemed desperate to all others, would you still be my 
friend?" 

"I should be your friend if the whole world turned 
against you." 

"Would you be my friend," he asked eageriy in 
lower tones, and with signs of an inward struggle, "if 
this way of escape were for me to be no longer a 
priest?" 

"Oh yes, yes! Why not?" cried the girl; and her 
face glowed with heroic sympathy and defiance. It is 
from this heaven-bom ignorance in women of the in- 
superable difficulties of doing right that men take fire 
and accomplish the sublime impossibilities. Our sense 
of details, our fatal habits of reasoning paralyze us; we 
need the impulse of the pure ideal which we can get 
only bOTa them. These two were alike children as 
regarded the world, but he had a man's dark prevision 
of the means, and she a heavenly scorn of everything 
but the end to be achieved. 

He drew a long breath. "Then it does not seem 
terrible to you?" 

"Terrible? No! I don't see how you can rest till 
it is draie!" 



184 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"Is it true, then, that you urge me to this step, 
which indeed I have so long desired to take?" 

"Yes, it is, true! Listen, Don IppoUto: it is the 
very thing that I hoped you would do, but I wanted 
you to speak of it first. You must have all the honor 
of it, and I am glad you thought of it before. You 
win never regret it!" 

She smiled radiantly upon him, and he kindled 
at her enthusiasm. In another moment his face 
darkened again. "But it will cost much," he mur- 
mured, 

"No matter," cried Florida. "Such a man as you 
ought to leave the priesthood at any risk or hazard. 
You should cease to be a priest, if it cost you kindred, 
friends, good fame, country, everything!" She blushed 
with irrelevant consciousness. "Why need you be 
downhearted? With your genius once free, you can 
make country and fame and friends everywhere. Leave 
Venice! There are other places. Think how inventors 
succeed in America" — 

"In America!" exclaimed the priest. "Ah, how 
long I have desired to be there!" 

"You must go. You will soon be famous and 
honored there, and you shall not be a stranger, even at 
the first. Do you know that we are going home very 
soon? Yes, my mother and I have been talking of it 
to-day. We are both homesick, and you see that she 
is not well. You shall come to us there, and make 



A FOKECONE CONCLUSION. 185 

our house your home till you have formed some plans 
of your own. Eveiything will be easy, God U good," 
she said in a breaking voice, "and you may be sure 
he will befriend you." 

"Some CHie," answered Don Ippolito, with tears in 
his eyes, "has aheady been very good to me. I thought 
it wis you, but I will call it God!" 

"Hush! You mustn't say such things. But you 
must go, now. Take time to think, but not too much 
time. Only, — be true to yourself." 

They rose, and she laid her hand on his ann with 
an instinctive gesture of appeal. He stood bewildered. 
Then, "Thanks, madamigella, thanks!" he said, and 
caught her fragrant hand to his hps. He loosed it 
and lifted both his arms by a bhnd impulse in which 
he arrested himself with a burning blush, and turned 
away. He did not take leave of her with his wonted 
formalities, but hurried abruptly toward the gate. 

A panic seemed to seize her as she saw him open 
it. She ran after him. "Don Ippolito, Don Ippolito," 
she said, coming up to him; and stammered and 
faltered. "I don't know; I am Mgbtened. You must 
do nothing from me; I cannot let you; Fm not fit to 
advise you. It must be wholly from your own con- 
science. Oh no, don't look so! I will be your friend, 
whatever happens. But if what you think of doing 
has seemed so terrible to you, perhaps it is more ter- 
rible than I can understand. If it is the only way, it 



i86 A fouegone conclusion- 

Is right But is there no other? What I mean is, have 
you no one to talk all this over with? I mean, can't 
you speak of it to — to Mr. Ferris? He is so true and 
honest and just" 

"I was going to him," said Don Ippohto, with a 
dim trouble in his face. 

"Oh, I am so glad of that! Remember, I don't 
take anything back. No matter what happens, I 
will be your friend. But he will tell you just what 
to do." 

Don Ippohto bowed and opened the gate. 

Fl«ida went back to her mother, who asked her, 
"What in the world have you and Don Ippolito been 
talking about so earnestly? What makes you so pale 
and out of breath?" 

"I have been wanting to tell you, mother," said 
Florida. She drew her chair in front of the elder lady, 
and sat down. 



D,nlz-nf,G00J^lc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 187 



XIV. 

Don Ippouto did not go directly to the painter's, 
He walked toward his house at first, and then turned 
aside, and wandered out through the noisy and popu- 
lous district of Canaregio to the Campo di Martc. A 
squad of cavalry which had been goii^ through some 
exercises there was moving off the parade ground; a 
few infantry soldiers were strolling about under the 
trees. Don Ippcdito walked across the field to the 
border of the lagoon, where he began to pace to and 
fro, with his head sunk in deep thought He moved 
rapidly, but sometimes he stopped and stood still iu 
the sun, whose heat he did not seem to feel, though a 
perspiration bathed his pale face and stood in drops 
on his fotehead under the shadow of his nicchio. Some 
little dir^ children of the poor, with which this region 
swarms, looked at him from the sloping shore of the 
Campo di Giusttzia, where the executions used to take 
place, and a small boy began to mock his movements 
and pauses, but was arrested by one of the girls, who 
shook him and gesticulated wamingly. 



i.GtHl'jIc 



l88 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

At this point the long raihoad bridge which con- 
nects Venice with the mainland is in full sight, and 
now from the reverie in which he continued, whether 
he walked or stood still, Don Ippolito was roused by 
the whistle of an outward train. He followed it with 
his eye as it streamed along over the fai-stretching 
arches, and struck out into the flat, salt maishes be- 
yond. When the distance hid it, he put on his hat, 
which he had unknowingly removed, and turned his 
rapid steps toward the railroad station. Arrived there, 
he lingered in the vestibule for half an hour, watching 
the people as they bought their tickets for departure, 
and had their baggage examined by the customs of- 
ficers, and weighed and registered by the railroad 
porters, who passed it through the wicket shutting out 
the train, while the passengers gathered up their small- 
er parcels and took their way to the waiting-rooms. 
He followed a group of English people some paces in 
this direction, and then returned to the wicket, through 
which he looked long and wistfully at the train. The 
baggage was all passed through; the doors of llie wait- 
ing-rooms were thrown open witJi harsh proclamation 
by the guards, and the passengers flocked into the 
carriages. Whistles and betls were sounded, and the 
train crept out of the stadon. 

A man in the company's uniform approached the 
unconscious priest, and striking his hands softly to- 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 189 

gether, said with a pleasant smile, "Your servant, Don 
Ippolito, Are you expecting some one?" 

"Ah, good dayl" answered the priest, with a tittle 
start. "No," he added, "I was not looking for any 
one." 

"I see," said the other. "Amusing yourself as usual 
with the machinery. Excuse the freedom, Don Ippolito; 
but you ought to have been of our profession, — ha, ha! 
When you have the leisure, I should like to show you 
the drawing of an American locomotive which a friend 
of mine has sent mc from Nuova York. It is very 
different from ours, veiy curious. But monstrous in 
size, you know, prodigious! May I come with it to your 
house, some evening?" 

"You will do me a great pleasure," said Don Ip- 
polito. He gazed dreamily in the direction of the 
vanished train. "Was that the train for Milan?" he 
asked presently. 

"Exactly," said the man, 

"Does it go all the way to Milan?" 

"Oh, no! it stops at Peschiera, where the pas- 
sengers have their passports examined; and then 
another train backs down from Desenzano and takes 
them on to Milan. And after that," continued the 
man with animation, "if you are on the way to Eng- 
land, for exaftiple, another train carries you to Susa, 



I go A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

and there you get the diligence over the mountain to 
St Michel, where you take railioad again, and so on 
up through Paris to Boulogne-surMer, and then by 
steamer to Folkestone, Mid then by lailioad to London 
and to Liverpool. It is at Liverpool that you go on 
board the steamer for America, and piff! in ten days 
you are in Nuova York. My Mend has written me all 
about it." 

"Ah yes, your Mend. Does he like it there in 
America?" 

"Passably, passably. The Americans have no man- 
ners; bat they are good devils. They are governed by 
thebish. And the wine is dear. But he likes America; 
yes, he likes it. Nuova York is a fine dty. But 
immense, you know! Eight times as large as Venice!" 

"Is your friend prosperous there?" 

"Ah heigh! That is the prettiest part of the stoiy. 
He has made himself rich. He is employed by a 
large house to make designs for mantlepieces, and 
marble tables, and tombs; and he has — listen! — six 
hundred francs a month 1" 

"Oh per Baa»l" cried Don Ippolito. 

"Honestly. But you spend a great deal there. 
Still, it is mapiificent, is it not? If it were not for that 
blessed war there, now, that would be the place for 
you, Don Ippolito. He tells me the Americans are 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. IQI 

actually mad for inventioDS. Your servant Excuse 
the freedom, you know," said the man, bowii^ and 
moving away. 

" Nothing, dear, nothing," answered the priest He 
walked out of the station with a light step, and went 
to his own house, where he sought the room in which 
his inventions weie stored. He had not touched them 
for weeks. They were aU dusty and many were cob- 
webbed. He blew the dust from some, and bringing 
them to the light, examined them critically, finding 
them mostly disabled in one way or other, except the 
models of the portable furniture which he polished 
with his handkerchief and set apart, surveying them 
from a distance with a look of hope. He took up the 
breech-loading cannon and then suddenly put it down 
again with a little shiver, and went to the threshold of 
the perverted oratory and glanced in at his forge. 
Veneranda had carelessly left the window open, and 
the draught had carried the ashes about the floor. On 
the cinder-heap lay the tools which he had used in 
mending the broken pipe of the fountain at Casa 
Vervain, and had not used since. "ITie place seemed 
chilly even on that summer's day. He stood in the 
doorway with clenched hands. Then he called Vener- 
anda, chid her for leaving the window open, and bade 
her dose it, and so quitted the house and left her 
muttering. 

D,nlz-nf,G00«^lc 



jg2 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Ferris seemed surprised to see him when he ap- 
peared at the consulate near the middle of the after- 
noon, and seated himself in the place where he was 
wont to pose for the painter. 

"Were you going to give me a sitting?" asked the 
latter, hesitating. "The light is horrible, just now, 
with this glare from the canal. Not that I manf^ 
much better when it's good. I don't get on with you, 
Don Ippolito. There are too many of you. I shouldn't 
have known you in the procession yesterday." 

Don Ippolito did not respond. He rose and went 
toward his portrait on the easel, and examined it long, 
with a curious minuteness. Then he returned to his 
chair, and continued to look at it. "I suppose that it 
resembles me a great deal," he said, "and yet I do not 
/eei like that. I hardly know what is the fault It is 
as I should be if I were like other priests, perhaps?" 

"I know it's not good," said the painter. "It A 
conventional, in spite of everything. But here's that 
first sketch I made of you." 

He took up a canvas facing the wall, and set it on 
the easel The character in this charcoal sketch was 
vastly sincerer and sweeter. 

"Ah!" said Don Ippolito, with a sigh and smile of 
relief, "that is immeasurably better. I wish I could 
speak to you, dear friend, in a mood of yoUrs as 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, I93 

sympathetic as this picture records, of some matters 
that concern me very nearly. I have just come from 
the raihxKid station." 

"Seeing some friends off?" asked the painter, in- 
differently, hovering near the sketch with a bit of 
charcoal in his hand, and hesitating whether to give it 
a certain touch. He glanced with half-shut eyes at the 
priest 

Don Ippohto sighed again. "I hardly know. I 
was seeing o£F my hopes, my desires, my prayers, that 
followed the train to America!" 

The painter put down his charcoal, dusted his 
fingers, and looked at the priest without saying any- 

"Do you remember when I first came to you?" 
asked Don Ippolito. 

"Certainly," said Ferris. "Is it of that matter you 
want to speak to me? I'm very sorry to hear it, for I 
don't think it practical." 

"Practical, practical!" cried the priest hotly. "No- 
thing is practical till it has been tried. And why should 
I not go to America?" 

"Because you can't get your passport, for one 
thing," answered the painter diyly. 

"I have thought of that," rejoined Don Ippolito 
more patiently. "I can get a passport for France from 

A Ftrttau CimckHiati, 13 



194 * FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

the Austrian authorities here, and at Milan there must 
be ways in which I could change it for one from my 
own king" — it was by this title that patriotic Venetians 
of those days spoke of Victor Emmanuel — "that would 
carry me out of France into England." 

Ferris pondered a moment "That is quite tme," 
he said. "Why hadn't you thought of that when you 
first came to me?" 

"I cannot tell. I didn't know that I conld even get 
a passport for France till the other day," 

Both were silent while the painter filled his pipe. 
"Well," he said presently, "I'm very sorry. I'm afiraid 
you're dooming yourself to many bitter dis^point- 
ments in going to America, What do you expect to 
do there?" 

"Why, with my inventions" — 

"I suppose," interrupted the other, putting a lighted 
match to his pipe, "that a painter must be a very poor 
sort of American: his first thought is of coming to Italy. 
So I know very little directly about the fortunes of my 
inventive fellow-countrymen, or whether an inventor 
has any prospect of making a living. But once when 
I was at Washington I went into the Patent Office, 
where the models of the inventions are deposited; the 
building is about as large as the I>ucal Palace, and it 
is full of them. The people there told me nothing 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1 95 

was commoner than for the same invention to be re- 
peated over and over again by different inventors. 
Some few succeed, and then they have lawsuits with 
the infringers of their patents; some sell out their In- 
venti(»is for a trifie to companies that have capital,-and 
that grow rich upon them; the great number can never 
bring their ideas to the public notice at all. You can 
judge for yourself what your chances would be. You 
have asked me why you should not go to America. 
Well, because I think you would starve there." 

"I am used to that," said Don Ippc^ito; "and 
besides, until some of my inventions became known, 
I could give lessons in Italian." 

"Oh, bravo!" said Ferris, "you prefer instant 
death, then?" 

"But madamigella seemed to believe that my suc- 
cess as an inventor would be assured, there." 

Ferris gave a very ironical laugh. "Miss Vervain 
must have been about twelve years old when she left 
America. Even a lady's knowledge of business, at 
that age, is limited. When did you talk with her 
about it? Yon had not spoken of it to me, of late, 
and I thought you were more contented than you 
used to be." 

"It is true," said the priest "Sometimes within 
the last two months I have almost forgotten it." 
13* 



196 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"And what has brought it so forcibly to your mind 
again?" 

"That is what I so greatly desire to tell you," 
replied Don Ippolito, with an appealing look at the 
painter's face. He moistened his parched lips a little, 
waiting for further question from the painter, to whom 
be seemed a man fevered by some strong emotion 
and at that moment not quite wholesome. Ferris did 
not speak, and Doa Ippolito began again: "Even 
though I have not said so in words to you, dear 
friend, has it not appeared to you that I have no heart 
in my vocation?" 

"Yes, I have sometimes fancied that I had no 
right to ask you why." 

"Some day I will tell you, when I have the courage 
to go all over it again. It is partly my own fault, but 
it is more my miserable fortune. But wherever the 
wrong lies, it has at last become intolerable to me. 
I cannot endure it any longer and live. I must go 
away, I must fly from it" 

Ferris shrank from him a little, as men instinc- 
tively do from one who has set himself upon some 
desperate attempt "Do you mean, Don Ippolito, that 
you are going to renounce your priesthood?" 

' Don Ippolito opened his hands and let his priest- 
hood drop, as it were, to the ground. 



,;,lc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. igj 

'*You never spoke of this before, when you talked 
of going to America. Though to be sure" — 

"Yes, yes!" replied Don Ippolito with vehemence, 
"but now an angel has appeared and shown me the 
blackness of my life!" 

Ferris began to wonder if he or Don Ippolito were 
not perhaps mad. 

"An angel, yes," the priest went on, rising from his 
chair, "an angel whose immaculate truth has mirrored 
my falsehood in all its vileness and distortion — to 
whom, if it destroys me, I cannot devote less than a 
truthfulness like hers!" 

"Heis — hers?" cried the painter, with a sudden 
pang. "Whose? Don't speak in these riddles. Whom 
do you mean?" 

"Whom can I mean but only one? — madami- 
gellal" 

"Miss Vervain? Do you mean to say that Miss 
Vervain has advised you to renounce your priest- 
hood?" 

"In as many words she has bidden me forsake it 
at any risk, — at the cost of kindred, friends, good 
fame, country, everything." 

The painter passed his hand confusedly over his 
face. These were his own words, the words he had 
used in speaking with Florida of the supposed skep- 



igS A FOREGONE COHCLltSION. 

Ucal priest. He grew very pale, "May I ask," he 
demanded in a hard, diy voice, "how she came to 
advise such a step?" 

"I can hardly tell. Something had already moved 
her to learn from me the story of my life — to know 
that I was a man with neither faith nor hope. Her 
pure heart was torn by the thought of my wrong and 
of my error. I had never seen myself in such de- 
formity as she saw me even when she used me with 
that divine compassion. I was almost glad to be 
what I was because of her angelic pity for mel" 

The tears sprang to Don Ippolito's eyes, but Ferris 
asked in the same tone as before, "Was it then that 
she bade you be no longer a priest?" 

"No, not then," patiently replied tite other; "she 
was too greatly overwhelmed with my calamity to think 
of any cure for it. To-day it was that she uttered 
those words — words which I shall never fo^et, which 
will support and comfort me, whatever happens!" 

The painter was biting hard upon the stem of his 
pipe. He turned away and began ordering the color- 
tubes and pencils on a table against the wall, putting 
them close together in very neat, straight rows. 
Presently he said: "Perhaps Miss Vervain also advised 
you to go to America?" 

"Yes," answered the priest reverently. "She had 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. igg 

thought of everything. She has promised me a refuge 
under her mother's roof there, until I can make 
my inventions known; and I shall follow them at 
once," 

"Follow them?" 

"They are going, she told me. Madama does 
not grow better. They are homesick. They — but you 
must know all this already?" 

"Oh, not at all, not at all," said the painter with 
a veiy bitter smile. "You are telling me news. Pray 
go on." 

"There is no more. She made me promise to 
come to you and listen to your advice before I took 
any step. I must not trust to her alone, she said; 
but if I took this step, then through whatever hap- 
pened she would be my friend. Ah, dear friend, 
may I speak to you of the hope that these words 
gave me? You have seen — have you not? — you must 
have seen that" — 

The priest faltered, and Ferris stared at him 
helpless. When the next words came he could not 
find any strangeness in the fact which yet gave him 
so great a shock. He found that to his nether con- 
sciousness it had been long familiar — ever since that 
day when .he had lirst jestingly proposed Don Ippolito 
as Miss Vervain's teacher. Grotesque, tragic, im- 



200 /l foregone conclusion. 

possible — it had still been the under-cutrcnt of all his 
reveries; or so now it seemed to have been. 

Don Ippolito anxiously drew nearer to him and 
laid an imploring touch upon bis arm, — "I love 
her!" 

"What!" gasped the painter. "You? You! A 
priest?" 

"Priest! priest!" cried Don Ippolito, violently. 
"From this day I am no longer a priest! From this 
hour I am a man, and I can offer her the honorable 
love of a man, the truth of a most sacred marriage, 
and fidelity to death!" 

Ferris made no answer. He began to look very 
coldly and haughtily at Don Ippolito, whose heat died 
away under his stare, and who at last met it with a 
glance of tremulous perplexity. His hand had dropped 
from Fenis's arm, and he now moved some steps from 
him. "What is it, dear friend?" he besought him. 
"Is there something that offends you? 1 came to you 
for counsel, and you meet me with a repulse little 
short of enmity. I do not understand. Do I intend 
anything wrong without knowing it? Oh, I conjure 
you to speak plainly!" 

"Wait! Wait a minute," said Ferris, waving his 
hand like a man tormented by a passing pajn. "I 
am trying to think. What you say is .... I cannot 
imagine it!" 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 201 

"Not imagine it? Not imagine it? And why? 
Is she not beautiful?" 

-Yes." 

"And good?" 

"Without doubt" 

"And young, and yet wise beyond her years? 
And true, and yet angelically kind?" 

"It is all as you say, God knows. But .... a 
priest" — 

"Oh! Always that accuised word! And at heait, 
what is a priest, then, but a man? — a wrrtched, 
masked, imprisoned, banished man! Has he not 
blood and nerves like you? Has he not eyes to see 
what is fair, and ears to hear what is sweet? Can he 
live near so divine a flower and not know her grace, 
not inhale the fragrance of her soul, not adore her 
beauty? Oh, great God I And if at last he would 
tear ofi' his stifling mask, escape from his prison, 
return from his exile, would you gainsay him?'* 

"No!" said the painter with a kind of groan. He 
sat down in a tall, carven gothic chair, — ^Ibe ftuniture 
of one of his pictures, — and rested his head i^ainst' 
its high back and looked at the priest across the room. 
"Excuse me," he continued with a strong effort. "I 
am ready to befriend you to the utmost of my power. 
What was it you wanted to ask me? I have told you 



202 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

tjuly what I thought of youi sdieme of going to America; 
but I may very well be mistaken. Was it about that 
Miss Vervain desired you to consult me?" His voice 
and manner hardened again in spite of hiuL "Or did 
she wish me to advise you about the renunciation of 
your priesthood? You must have thought that carefully 
over for yourself." 

"Yes, I do not think you could make me see that 
as a greater difficulty than it has appeared to me," 
He paused with a confused and daunted air, as if some 
important point had slipped his mind. "But I must 
take tlie step; the burden of the double part I play is 
unendurable, is it not?" 

"You know better than I." 

"But if you were such a man as i, with neither 
love for your vocation nor faith in it, should you not 
cease to be a priest?" 

"If you ask me in that way, — yes," answered the 
pabter. "But I advise you nothing. I could not 
counsel another in such a case." 

"But you think and feel as I do," said the priest, 
"and I am right, then." 

"I do not say you are wrong," 

Ferris was silent while Don Ippolito moved up and 
down the room, with his sliding step, like some tall, 
gaunt, unhappy gir). Neither could put an end to this 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. SOJ 

interview, so fiiU of intangiUe, inctnclusive miseiy. 
Ferris drew a long breath, and then said steadily, "Don 
Ippolito, I suppose you did not ^leak idly to me of 
your — your feeling for Miss Vervain, and that I may 
speak plainly to you in return." 

"Surely," answered the priest, pausing in his walk 
and fixing bis eyes upon the painter. "It was to you 
as the friend of both that I spoke of my love, and my 
hope — which is oflener my despair." 

"Then you have not much reason to believe that 
she returns your — feeling?" 

"All, bow could she consciously return it? I have 
been hitherto a priest to her, and the thoi^ht of me 
would have been impurity. But hereafter, if I can 
prove myself a man, if I can win my place in the 
world .... No, even now, why should she care so 
much few my escape from these bonds, if she did not 
care for me more than she knew?" 

"Have you ever thought of that extravagant 
generosity of Mias Vervain's character?" 

"It is divinel" 

"Has it seemed to you that if such a woman knew 
herself to have once wrongly given you pain, her 
atonement might be as headlong and excessive as her 
offense? That she could have no reserves in her re- 
paration?" 

D,nlz-nf,G00g[c 



204 * FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Don Ippolito looked at Feiris, but did not inter- 
pose. 

"Miss Vervain is very religious in her way, and 
she is truth itself. Are you sure that it is not con- 
cern for wliat seems to her your terrible position, that 
has made her show so much anxiety on your account?" 

"Do I not know that well? Have I not felt the 
balm of her most heavenly pity?" 

"And may she not be only trying to appeal to 
something in you as high as the impulse of her own 
heart?" 

"As high!" cried Don Ippolito, almost angrily. 
"Can there be any higher thing in heaven or on earth 
than love for such a woman?" 

"Ves; both in heaven and on earth," answered 
Ferris. 

"I do not understand you," said Don Ippolito with . 
a puzzled stare. 

Ferris did not reply. He fell into a dull reverie 
in which he seemed to forget Don Ippolito and the 
whole affair. At last the priest spoke again: "Have 
you nothing to say to me, signore?" 

"I? What is there to say?" returned the other 
blankly. 

"Do you know any reason why I should not lore 
her, save that I am — have been — a priest?" 

.^Coo.)lc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 205 

"No, I know none," said the painter, weariljr. 

"Ah," exclaimed Don Ippolito, "there is something 
on your mind that you will not speak. I beseech you 
not to let me go wrong. I k)ve her so well that I 
would rather die than let my love offend her. I am a 
man with the passions and hopes of a man, but with- 
out a man's experience, or a man's knowledge of what 
is just and right in these relations. If you can be my 
friend in this so far as to advise or warn me; if you 
can be her friend" — 

Ferris abruptly rose and went to his balcony, and 
looked out upon the Grand Canal. The time-stained 
palace opposite had not changed in the last half-hour. 
As on many another summer day, he saw llie black 
boats going by. A heavy, high-pointed barge from the 
Sile, with the captain's family at dinner in the shade 
of a matting on the roo^ moved sluggishly down the 
middle cmrent A party of Americans in a gondola, 
with their opera-glasses and guide-books in theii hands, 
pointed out to each other the eagle on the consular 
arms. They were all like sights in a mirror, or things 
in a world turned upside down. 

Fenis came back and looked dizzily at the priest, 
trying to believe that this unhuman, sacerdotal phan- 
tasm had been telling him that it loved a beautiful 
young girl of his own race, faith, and language. 



206 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

"Will you not answer me, signore?" meekly de- 
manded Don Ippolito. 

"In this matter," replied the painter, "I cannot 
advise or warn you. The whole affair is beyond my 
conception. I mean no unkindness, but I cannot con- 
sult with you about it There are reasons why I 
should not The mother of Miss Vervain is here with 
her, Mid I do not feel that her interests in such a 
matter are in my hands. If they come to me for help, 
that is different What do you wish? You tell me 
that you are resolved to renounce the priesthood and 
go to America; and I have answeied you to the best 
of my power. You tell me that you are in love with 
Miss Vervain. What can I have to say about that?" 

Don Ippolito stood listening with a patient, and 
then a wounded air. "Nothing," he answered proudly. 
*'I ask your pardon for troubling you with my affairs. 
Your former kindness emboldened me too much. I 
shall not trespass again. It was my ignorance, which 
I pray you to excuse. I take my leave, signore." 

He bowed, and moved out of the room, and a 
dull remorse filled the painter, as he heard the outer 
door close after him. But he could do nothing. If 
he bad given a wound to the heart that trusted him, 
it was ia an anguish which he had not been able to 
master, and whose causes he could not yet define. It 



A FOREGONS CONCLUSION. 20J 

was all a shapeless torment; it held him like the 
memoiy of some hideous nightmare prolonging its hor- 
ror beyond sleep. It seemed impossible that what had 
happened should have h^pened. 

It was long, as he sat in the ch^ from which he 
had talked with Don Ippolito, before he could reason 
about what had been said; and then the worst phase 
presented itself iiist He could not help seeing that 
the priest might have found cause for hope in the 
girl's behavior toward him. Her violent resentments, 
and her equally violent repentances; her fervent inter- 
est in his imhappy fortunes, and her anxiety that he 
should at once forsake the priesthood; her urging him 
to go to America, and her promising him a home 
under her mother's roof there: why might it not all be 
in fact a proof of her tenderness for him? She might 
have found it necessary to be thus coarsely explicit 
with him, for a man in Don Ippolito's relation to her 
could not otherwise have imagined her interest in him. 
But her making use of Ferris to confirm her own pur- 
poses by his words, her repeating them so that they 
should come back to him boia Don. Ippolito's lips, her 
letting another man go with her to look upon the pro- 
cessitai in which her priestly lover was to appear in 
his sacerdotal panoply; these things could not be ac- 
counted for except by that strain of insolent, passionate 
defiance which he had noted in her from the begin- 



D,nlz-nf,G00g[c 



208 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

ning. Why should she first tell Don Ippolito of their 
going away? "Well, I wish him joy of his bargain," 
said Ferris aloud, and rising, shrugged his shouldeis, 
and tried to cast off aU care of a matter that did not 
concern him. But one does not so easily cast off a 
matter that does not concern one. He found himself 
haunted by certain tones and looks and attitudes of 
the young girl, wholly allien to the character he had 
just constracted for her. They were child-like, trust- 
ing, unconscious, far beyond anything he had yet 
known in women, and they appealed to hira now with 
a maddening pathos. She was standing there before 
Don Ippolito's picture as on that morning when she 
came to Ferns, looking anxiously at him, her innocent 
beauty, troubled with some hidden care, hallowing the 
place. Feiris thought of the young fellow who told 
him that he had spent three months in a dull German 
town because he had the room there that was once 
occupied by the girl who had refused him; the 
painter remembered that the young fellow said he 
had just read of her marriage in an American news- 
paper. 

Why did Miss Vervain send Don Ippolito to him? 
Was it some scheme of her secret love ibi the priest; 
or mere coaise resentment of the cautions Ferris had 
once hinted, a piece of vulgar bravado? But if she 
had acted throughout in pure simplicity, in unwise 



A FOREGONE CONCLCSION. 209 

goodness of heart? If Don Ippolito were altogether 
self-deceived, and nothing but her unknowing pity had 
given him grounds of hope? He himself had sug- 
gested this to the priest, and now with a different 
motive he looked at it in his own behalf, A great 
Joad began slowly to lift itself from Ferris's heart, 
which could ache now for this most unhappy priest. 
But if his conjecture were just, his duty would be 
different. He must not coldly acquiesce and let things 
take their course. He had introduced Don Ippolito 
to the Vervains; he was in some sort responsible for 
him; he must save them if possible frnm the painful 
consequences of the priest's hallucination. But how 
to do this was by no means clear. He blamed him- 
self fOT not having been franker with Don Ippolito 
and tried to make him see that the Vervains might 
regard his passion as a presumption upon their kind- 
ness to him, an abuse of their hospitable friendship; 
and yet how could he have done this without out- 
rage to a sensitive and right-meaning soul? For a 
moment it seemed to him that he must seek Don 
Ippolito, and repair his fault; but they had hardly 
parted as friends, and bis action might be easily mis- 
construed. If he shrank from the thought of speaking 
to him of the matter again, it appeared yet more im- 
possible to bring it before the Vervains. Like a man 
of the imaginative temperament as he was, he ex- 

A Ftrtgnu Cmcbmm. '4 



210 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

aggerated the probable effect, and pictured their dis- 
may in colors that made his interference seem a 
ludicrous enormity; in fact, it would have been an 
awkward business enough for one not hampered by 
bis intricate obligations. He felt bound to the 
Vervains, the ignorant young girl, and the addle-pated 
mother; but if he ought to go to them and tell them 
what he knew, to which of them ought he to speak, 
and how? In an anguish of perplexity that made the 
sweat stand in drops upon his forehead, he smiled to 
think it just possible that Mis. Vervain might take the 
matter seriously, and wish to consider the propriety of 
Florida's accepting Don Ippolito. But if he spoke to 
the daughter, how should he approach the subject? 
"Don Ippolito tells me he loves you, and he goes to 
America with the expectation that when he has made 
his fortune with a patent back-action apple-corer, you 
will many him." Should he say something to this 
purport? And in Heaven's name what right had he, 
Ferris, to say anything at all? The' horrible ab- 
surdity, the inexorable delicacy of his position made 
him laugh. 

On the other hand, besides, he was bound to Don 
Ippolito, who had come to him as the nearest friend 
of both, and confided in him. He remembered with 
a tardy, poignant intelligence how in their first talk of 
the Vervains Don Ippolito had taken pains to inform 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 2 1 1 

himself that Ferris was not in love with Florida, 
Could he be less manly and generous than this poor 
priest, and violate the sanctity of his confidence? 
Ferris groaned aloud. No, contrive it as he would, 
call it by what fail name he chose, he could not com- 
mit this treachery. It was the more impossible to him 
because, in this agony of doubt as to what he should 
do, he now at least read his own heart clearly, and 
had no longer a doubt what was in it. He pitied her 
for the pain she must suffer. He saw how her simple 
goodness, her blind sympathy with Don Ippolito, and 
only this, must have led the priest to the mistaken 
pass at which he stood. But Feiris felt that the whole 
affair had been fatally carried beyond his reach; be 
could do nothing now but wait and endure. There 
are cases in which a man must not protect the woman 
he loves. This was one. 

The afternoon wore away. In the evening he 
went to the Piazza, and dranlc a cup of coffee at 
Florian's. Then he walked to the Public Gardens, 
where he watched the crowd tUl it thinned in the 
twilight and left him alone. He hung upon the 
parapet, looking off over the lagoon that at last he 
perceived to be flooded with moonlight. He des- 
perately called a gondola, and bade the man row him 
to the pubhc landing nearest the Vervains', and so 
walked up the calle, and entered the palace from the 
'4' 



212 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

pampo, through the court that od one side opened into 
the garden. 

Mrs. Vervain was alone in the room where be had 
always been accustomed to find her daughter with her, 
and a chill as of the impending change fell upon him. 
He felt how pleasant it had been to find them to- 
gether; with a vain, piercing regret he felt how much 
like home the place had been to him. Mrs. Vervain, 
indeed, was not changed; she was even more than 
ever herself though all that she said imported change. 
She seemed to observe nothing unwonted in him, and 
she began to talk in her way of things that she could 
not know were so near his heart. 

"Now, Mr. Ferris, I have a little surprise for you. 
Guess what it is!" 

"I'm not good at guessing. I'd rather not know 
what it is than have to guess it," said Ferris, trying to 
be light, under his heavy trouble. 

"You won't try once, even? Well, you're going to 
be rid of us soon! We are going away." 

"Yes, I knew that," said Ferris quietly. "Don 
Ippolito told me so to-day." 

"And is that all you have to say? Isn't it rather 
sad? Isn't it sudden? Come, Mr. Ferris, do be a 
little complimentary, for once]" 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 21^ 

"It's sudden, and I can assure you it's sad enough 
for me," replied the painter, in a tone which could not 
leave any doubt of his sincerity. 

"Well, so it is for us," quavered Mrs. Vervain. 
"You have been very, very good to US," she went on 
more collectedly, "and we shall never forget it 
Florida has been speaking of it, too, and she's ex- 
tremely grateful, and thinks we've quite imposed upon 
you." 

"Thanks." 

"I suppose we have, but as I always say, you're 
the representative of the country here. However, that's 
neither here nor there. We have no relatives on the 
face of the earth, you know; but I have a good many 
old friends in Providence, and we're going back there. 
We both think I shall be better at home; for I'm sorry 
to say, Mr. Ferris, that though I don't complain of 
Venice, — it's really a beautifiil place, and all that; 
not the least exaggerated, — still I don't think it's done 
my health much good; or at least I don't seem to 
gain, don't you know, I don't seem to gain." 

"Tm very sony to hear it, Mrs. Vervain." 

"Yes, I'm sure you are; but you see, don't you, 
that we must go? We are going next week. When 
we've once made up our minds, there's no object in 
prdonging the agony." 



214 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Mrs. Vervain adjusted her glasses with the thumb 
and finger of her right hand, and peered into Fenis's 
face with a gay smile. ''But the greatest part of the 
surprise is," she resumed, lowering her voice a little, 
"that Don Ippolito is going with us." 

"Ah!" cried Ferris sharply. 

"I knew I should surprise you," laughed Mrs. 
Veivain. "We've been having a regular confab — 
clave, I mean — about it here, and he's all on fire to 
go to America; though it must be kept a great secret 
on his account, poor fellow. He's to join us in France, 
and then he can easDy get into England, with us. 
You know he's to give up being a priest, and is going 
to devote himself to invention when he geU to America. 
Now, what do you think of it, Mr. Ferris. Quite strikes 
you dumb, doesn't it?" triumphed Mrs. Vervain. "I 
suppose it's what you would call a wild goose chase, 
— I used to pick up all those phrases, — but we shall 
cany it through." 

Ferris gasped, as though about to speak, but said 
nothing. 

"Don Ippolito's been here the whole afternoon," 
continued Mrs. Vervain, "or rather ever since about 
five o'clock. He took diimer with us, and we've been 
talking it over and over. He's so enthusiastic about 
it, and yet he breaks down every little while, and 



A FOREGONE CONCLCSION. 215 

seems quite to despair of the undertaking. ^Biit Florida 
won't let him do that; and really ifs funny, the way 
he defers to her judgment — you know / always regard 
Florida as such a mere child — and seems to take every 
word she says for gospel. But, shedding teare; now: 
it's dieadfiil in a man, isn't it? I wish Don Ippolito 
wouldn't do that It makes one creep. I can't feel 
that it's manly; can yon?" 

Ferris found voice to say something about those 
things being different with the Latin races. 

"Well, at any rate," said Mrs. Vervain, "I'm glad 
that Americant don't shed tears, as a general rule. 
Now, Florida: you'd think she was the man all through 
this business, she's so perfectly heroic about it; that is, 
outwardly: for I can see^women can, in each other, 
Mr. Ferris — just where she's on the point of breaking 
down, all the while. Has she ever spoken to you 
about Don Ippolito? She does think so highly of your 
opinion, Mr. Ferris." 

"She does me too much honor," said Fenis, with 
ghastly irony. 

"Oh, I don't think so," returned Mrs. Vervain. 
"She told me this morning that she'd made Don Ip- 
poHto promise to speak to you about it; but he didn't 
mention having done so, and — I hated, don't you 
know, to ask him. .... In fact, Florida had told me 



2l6 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

beforehand that I mustn't She said he must be left 
entirely to himself in that matter, and" — Mis. Vervain 
looked suggestively at Ferris. 

"He spoke to me about it," said Ferris. 

"Then why in the world did you let me run on? 
I suppose you advised him against it" 

"I certainly did." 

"Well, there's where I think woman's intuition is 
better than man's reason." 

The painter silently bowed his head. 

"Yes, I'm quite woman's rights in that respect," 
said Mrs, Verv^, 

"Oh, without doubt," answered Ferris, aimlessly. 

"I'm perfectly delighted," she went on, "at the idea 
of Don Ippolito's giving up the priesthood, and I've 
told him he must get married to some good American 
girl. You ought to have seen how the poor fellow 
blushed! But really, you know, there are lots of nice 
girls that would jump at him — to handsome and sad- 
looking and a genius." 

Ferris could only stare helplessly at Mis. Vervain, 
who continued: — 

"Yes, /think he's a genius, and I'm determined 
that he shall have a chance. I suppose we've got a 
job on our bands; but I'm not .sorry. I'll introduce 



A FOKEGONE CONCLUSION. 217 

Mm into society, and if be needs money be sball have 
it What does God give us money for, Mr. Ferris, but 
to help our fellow-creatures?" 

So miserable, as he was, from bead to foot, that it 
seemed impossible he could endure more, Ferris could 
not forbear laughing at this bui^ of piety. 

"What are you laughing at?" asked Mrs. Vervain, 
who had cheerfully joined him. "Something Fve been 
saying. Well, you won't have me to laugh at much 
longer. I do wonder whom you'll have next" 

Feiris's merriment died away in something like a 
groan, and when Mrs. Vervain i^ain spoke, it was in a 
tone of sudden querulousness. "I vHsh Florida would 
come! She went to bolt the land-gate after Don 
Ippolito, — I wanted her to,— but she ought to have 
been back long ago. It's odd you didn't meet them, 
coming ia She must be in the garden somewhere; 
I suppose she's sorry to be leaving it. But I need her. 
Would you be so very kind, Mr. Ferris, as to go and 
ask her to come to me?" 

Ferris rose heavily from the chair in which he 
seemed to have grown ten years older. He had hardly 
heard anything that he did not know already, but the 
clear vision of the affair with which he had come to 
the Vervains was hopelessly confused and darkened. 
He could make nothing of any phase of it He did 



2l8 A FOREGONE CONCLUSIOM. 

not know whether he cared now to see Florida or not.' 
He mechanically obeyed Mrs. Vervain, and stepping 
out upon the teirace, slowly descended the stairway. 
The mooD was shining brightly into the garden. 



f,Goo«^lc 



t. FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



Flokida and Don Ippolito had paused in the path- 
way which parted at the fountain and led in one direc- 
tion to the water-gate, and in the other out through 
^he palace-€ourt into the campo. 

"Now, you must not give way to despair again," 
she said to him. "You will succeed, I am sure, for 
you will deserve success." 

"It is all your goodness, madamigella," sighed the 
priest, "and at the bottom of my heart I am afraid 
that all the hope and courage I have are also youis." . 

"You shall never want for hope and courage then. 
We believe in you, and we honor your purpose, and 
we will be your steadfast Mends. But now you must 
think only of the present — of how you are to get away 
from Venice. Ob, I can understand how you must 
hate to leave it! What a beautifiil nightl You mustn't 
expect such moonlight as this in America, Don 
Ippolito." 

"It is beautifiil, is it not?" said the priest, kindling 
from her. "But I think we Venetians are never so 
s of the beauty of Venice as you strangers are." 

"I don't know. I only know that now, since we 



220 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

have made up our minds to go, and fixed the day and 
hour, it is more like leaving my own country than any- 
thing else IVe ever felL This garden, I seem to have 
spent my whole life in it; and when we are settled in 
Providence, Pm going to have mother send back for 
some of these statues. I suppose Signor Cavaletti 
wouldn't mind our robbing his place of them if he 
were paid enough. At any rate we must have this one 
that belcmgs to the fountain. You shall be the first 
to set the fountain playing over there, Don Ippolito, 
and then we'll sit down on this stone bench before it, 
and imagine ourselves in the garden of Casa Vervain 
at Venice." 

"No, no; let me be the last to set it playing here," 
said the priest, quickly stooping to the pipe at the 
foot of the figure, "and then we will sit down here, 
and imagine ourselves in the garden of Casa Vervain 
at Providence." 

Florida put her hand on his shoulder. "You 
mustn't do it," she said simply. "The padrone doesn't 
like to waste the water." 

"Oh, we'll pray the saints to rain it back on him 
some day," cried Don Ippolito with wilful levity, and the 
stream leaped into the moonlight and seemed to hai% 
there lite a tangled skein of silver. 

"But how shall I shut it off when you are gone?" 
asked the young girl, looking ruefiilly at ibe floating 
threads of gplendcv. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 221 

"Oh, I will shut it off before I go," answered Don 
Ippolito. "Let it play a moment," he continued, 
gazing rapturously upon it, while the moon painted 
his lifted face with a pallor that his black robes 
heightened. He fetched a long, sighing breath, as if he 
inhaled with that respiration all the rich odors of the 
flowers, blanched like his own visage in the white 
lustre; as if he absorbed into his heart at once the 
wide glory of the summer night, and the beauty of the 
young girl at his side. It seemed a supreme moment 
with him; he looked as a man might look who has 
climbed out of lifelong defeat into a single instant of 
release and triumph. 

Florida sank upon the bench before the fountain, 
indulging his caprice with that sacred, motherly tole- 
rance, some touch of which is in all womanly yielding 
to men's will, and which was perh!q>s present in 
greats degree in her feeling towards a man more than 
ordinarily orphaned and tmfriended. 

"Is Providence your native city?" asked Don Ippo- 
lito, abruptly, after a little silence. 

"Oh no; I was bom at St. Augustine in Florida." 

"Ah yes, I forgot; madama has told me about it; 
Providence is her city. But the two are near to- 
gether?" 

"No," said Florida, compassionately, "they are a 
thousand mijeg ^art," 



222 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION., 

"A thousand miles? What a vast country!" 

"Yes, it's a whole world." 

"Ah, a world, indeed!" cried the priest, softly. 
"I shall never comprehend it," 

"You never will," answered the young girl gravely, 
"if you do not think about it more practically." 

"Practically, practically!" lightly retorted the priest 
''What a word with you Americans! That is the con- 
sul's word: practical." 

"Then you have been to see him to-day?" asked 
Florida, with ea^mess. "I wanted to ask you" — 

"Yes, I went to consult the oracle, as you bade 
me." 

"Don Ippolito" — 

"And he was averse to my going to America. He 
said it was not practical." 

"Oh!" murmured the girl. 

"I think," continued the priest with vehemence, 
"that Signer Ferris is no longer my friend." 

"Did he treat you coldly — harshly?" she asked, 
with a note of indignation in her voice. "Did he 
know that I — that you came" — 

"Perhaps he was right Perhaps I shall indeed go 
to ruin there. Ruin, rain! Do I not live ruin here?" 

"What did he say — what did he tell you?" 

"No, no; not now, madamigella! I do not want to 
think of that man, now. I want you to help me once 
more to realize myself in America, where I shall never 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 223 

have been a priest, where I shall at least battle even- 
handed with the world. Come, let us forget himj the 
thought of him palsies all my hope. He could not see 
me save in this robe, in this figure that 1 abhor." 

"Oh, it was strange, it was not like him, it was 
cruel! What did he say?" 

"In everything but words, he bade me despair; he 
bade me look upon all that makes life dear and noble 
as impossible to me!" 

"Oh, how? Perhaps he did not understand you. 
No, he did not understand you. What did you say 
to him, Don Ippolito? Tell me!" She leaned to- 
wards him, in anxious emotion, as she spoke. 

The priest rose, and stretched out his anns, as if 
he would gather something of courage from the in- 
finite space. In his visage were the sublimity and the 
terror of a man who puts everything to the risk. 

"How will it really be with me, yonder?" he de- 
manded. "As it is with other men, whom their past 
life, if it has been guiltless, does not follow to that 
new world of freedom and justice?" 

"Why should it not be so?" demanded Florida. 
"Did he say it would not?" 

"Need it be known there that I have been a priest? 
Or if I tell it, will it make me appear a kind of 
monster, different from other men?" 

"No, nol" she answered ferveittly, "Your story 



224 ^ FOSEGOME CONCLUSION. 

would gain friends and honor for you everyiriiere in 
America. Did Ae" — 

"A moment, a moment!" cried Don Ippolito, catch- 
ing his breath. "Will it ever be possible for me 
to win something more than honw and friendship 
there?" 

She looked up at him askingly, confusedly. 

"If I am a man, and the time should ever come 
that a face, a look, a voice, shall be to me what they 
are to other men, will she remember it against me that 
I have been a priest, when I tell her — say to her, 
madamigella — how dear she is to me, offer her my 
hfe's devotion, ask her to he my wife?" .... 

Florida rose from the seat, and stood confronting 
him, in a helpless silence, which he seemed not to 
notice. 

Suddenly he clasped his hands together, and des- 
perately stretched them towards her. 

"Oh, my hope, my trust, my life, if it were jfou 
that I loved?" .... 

"Whatl" shuddered the girl, recoiling, with almost 
a shriek. "Fou? h. priest!" 

Don Ippolito gave a low ay, half sob: — 

"His words, his wordsl It is true, I cannot escape, 
I am doomed, I must die as I have lived!" 

He dropped his face into his hands, and stood with 
his head bowed before her; neither spoke for a long 
time, <x moved. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 225 

Then Florida said absently, in the husky murmur 
to which her voice fell when she was strongly moved, 
"Yes, I see it all, how it has been," and was silent 
again, staring, as if a procession of the events and 
scenes of the past months were passing before her; 
and presently she moaned to herself, "Oh, oh, ohi" 
and wrung her hands. 

The foolish fountain kept capering and babbling 
on. All at once, now, as a flame flashes up and then 
expires, it leaped and dropped extinct at the foot of 
the statue. 

Its going out seemed somehow to leave them in 
darkness, and under cover of that gloom she drew 
nearer the priest, and by such approaches as one 
makes toward a fancied apparition, when his fear 
will not let him fly, but it seems better to suffer the 
worst from it at once than to live in terror of it ever 
after, she lifted her hands to his, and gently taking 
them away from his face, looked into his hopeless 
eyes. 

"Oh, Don Ippolito," she grieved. "What shall I 
say to you, what can I do for you, now?" 

But there was nothing to do. The whole edifice 
of his dreams, his wild imaginations, had fallen into 
dust at a word; no magic could rebuild it; the end 
that never seems the end had come. He let her keep 
his cold hands, and presently he returned the entreaty 
of her tears with his wan, patient smile. 

A Fertgent Con'^lvsioH, 15 



226 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"You cannot help me; there is no help for an 
error like mine. Sometime, if ever the thought of me 
is a greater pain than it is at this moment, you can 
forgive me. Yes, you can do that for me." 

"But who, who will ever forgive me" she cried, 
"for my blindness! Oh, you must believe that I never 
thought, I never dreamt" — 

"I know it well. It was your fatal truth that did 
it; truth too high and fine for me to have discerned 
save through such agony as ... . You too loved my 
soul, like the rest, and you would have had me no 
priest for the reason that they would have had me a 
priest — I see it. But you had no right to love my 
soul and not me — you, a woman. A woman must not 
love only the soul of a man." 

"Yes, yes!" piteously explained the girl, "but you 
were a priest to me!" 

"That is true, madamigella. I was always a priest 
to you; and now I see that I never could be otherwise. 
Ah, the wrong began many years before we met. I 
was trying to blame you a little" — 

"Blame me, blame me; do!" 

— "but there is no blame. Think that it was an- 
other way of asking your forgiveness. ... O my God, 
my God, my God!" 

He released his hands from her, and uttered this 
cry under his breath, with his face lifted towards the 
heavens. When he looked at her again, he said; 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 22? 

"Madamigella, if my share of this misery gives me the 
right to ask of you" — 

"Oh ask anything of me I I will give everything, 
do everything!" 

He faltered, ajid then, "You do not love me," he 
said abruptly; "is there some one else that you 
love?" 

She did not answer. 

"Is it . . . he?" 

She hid her face. 

"I knew it," groaned the priest, "I knew that, too!" 
and he turned away. 

"Don Ippolito, Don Ippolito — oh, poor, poor Don 
Ippolito!" cried the girl, springing towards him. "Is 
this the way you leave me? Where are you going? 
What will you do now?" 

"Did I not say? I am going to die a priesL" 

"Is there nothing that you will let me be to you, 
hope for you?" 

"Nothing," said Don Ippolito, after a moment. 
"What could you?" He seized the hands imploringly 
extended towards him, and clasped them together and 
kissed them both. "Adieu!" he whispered; then he 
opened them, and passionately kissed either palm; 
"adieu, adieu!" 

A great wave of sorrow and compassion and 
despair for him swept through her. She flung her 
arms about his neck, and pulled his head down upon 



228 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

her heart, and held it tight there, weeping and moan- 
ing over him as over some hapless, harmless thing that 
she had unpurposely bruised or killed. Then she sud- 
denly put her hands against his breast, and thrust hlm,- 
away, and turned and ran. 

Ferris stepped back again into the shadow of the 
tree from which he had just emerged, and clung to 
its tnuik lest he should fall. Another seemed to creep 
out of the court in his person, and totter across the 
white glare of the campo and down the blackness of 
the calle. In the intersected spaces where the moon- 
light fell, this alien, miserable man saw the figure of a 
priest gliding on before him. 



f,Gooj^lc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



Florida swiftly mounted the terrace steps, but she 
stopped with her hand on the door, panting, and 
turned and walked slowly away to the end of the ter- 
race, drying her eyes with dashes of her handkerchief, 
and ordering her hair, some coils of which had been 
loosened by her flight. Then she went back to the 
door, waited, and sofUy opened it. Her mother was 
not in the parlor where she had left her, and she 
passed noiselessly into her own room, where some 
trunks stood open and half-packed against the wall. 
She began to gather up the pieces of dress that lay 
upon the bed and chairs, and to fold them with 
mechanical carefulness and put them in the boxes. 
Her mother's voice called from the other chamber, "Is 
that you, Florida?" 

"Yes, mother," answered the girl, but remained 
kneeling before one of the boxes, with that pale green 
robe in her hand which she had worn on the morning 
when Ferris had first brought Don Ippolito to see 
them. She smoothed its folds and looked down at it 
without making any motion to pack it away, and so 



230 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

she lingered while her mother advanced with one 
question after another; "What are you doing, Ilorida? 
Where are you? Why didn't you come to me?" and 
finally stood in the doorway. "Oh, you're packing. 
Do you know, Florida, I'm getting very impatient about 
going. I wish we could be off at once." 

A tremor passed over the young girl and she 
started fixmi her languid posture, and laid the dress in 
the trunk. "So do I, mother. I would give the world 
if we could go to-morrow!" 

"Yes, but we can't, you see. Fm a&aid we've 
undertaken a great deal, my dear. It's quite a weight 
upon my mind, already; and I don't know what it wiff 
be. If we were free, now, I should say, go to-morrow, 
by all means. But we couldn't arrange it with Don 
Ippolito on our hands." 

Rorida waited a moment before she replied. Theu 
she said coldly, "Doa Ippolito is not going with us, 
mother." 

"Not going with us? Why" — 

"He is not going to America. He will not leave 
Venice; he is to remain a priest," said Florida, dog- 
gedly. 

Mrs. Vervain sat down in the chair that stood be- 
side the door. "Not going to America; not leave 
Venice; remain a priest? Florida, you astonish me! 
But I am not the least surprised, not the least in the 
world. I thought Don Ippolito would give out, all 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 23I 

along. He is not what 1 should call fickle, exactly, 
but he is weak, or timid, rather. He is a good man, 
but he lacks courage, resolution. I always doubted if 
he would succeed in America; he is too much of a 
dreamer. But this, really, goes a little beyond any- 
thing. I never expected this. What did he say, Florida? 
How did he excuse himself?" 

"I hardly know; very little. What was there to 
say?" 

"To be sure, to be sure. Did you try to reason 
with him, Florida?" 

"No," answered the girl, drearily. 

"I am glad of that I think you had said quite 
enough already. You owed it to yourself not to do 
so, and he might have misinterpreted it. These 
foreigners are very different from Americans. No doubt 
we should have had a time of it, if he had gone with 
us. It must be for the best Tm sure it was ordered 
so. But all that doesn't relieve Don Ippolito from 
the charge of black ingratitude, and want of considera- 
tion for us. He's quite made fools of us." 

"He was not to blame. It was a very great step 
for him. And iP' . . . . 

"I know that. But he ought not to have talked of 
it. He ought to have known his own mind fully before 
speaking; that's the only safe way. Well, then, there 
is nothing to prevent our going to-morrow." 



2^2 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Florida drew a long breath, and rose to go on with 
the work of packing. 

"Have you been crying, Florida? Well, of course, 
you can't help feeling sorry for such a man. There's 
a great deal of good in Don Ippolito, a great deal. 
But when you come to my age you won't cry so easily, 
my dear. It's very trying," said Mrs, Vervain, She 
sat awhile in silence before she asked: "Will he come 
here to-morrow morning?" 

Her daughter looked at her with a glance of ter- 
rified inquiry. 

"Do have youf wits about you, my dear! We 
can't go away without saying good-by to him, and we 
can't go away without paying him," 

"Paying him?" 

"Yes, paying him — paying him for your lessons. 
It's always been very awkward. He hasn't been like 
other teachers, you know: more like a guest, or friend 
of the family. He never seemed to want to take the 
money, and of late, Fve been letting it run along, 
because I hated so to offer it, till now, it's quite a 
sum. I suppose he needs it, poor fellow. And how 
to get it to him is the question. He may not come 
to-morrow, as usual, and I couldn't trust it to the 
padrone. We might send it to him in a draft from 
Paris, but I'd rather pay him before we go. Besides, 
it would be rather rude, going away without seeing him 
again." Mrs. Vervain thought a moment; then, "I'll tell 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 233 

you," she resumed. "If he doesn't happen to come 
here to-morrow morning, we can stop on our way to 

the station and give him the money." 

Rorida did not answer. 

"Don't you think that would be a good plan?" 

"I don't know," replied the girl in a dull way. 

"Why, Florida, if you think from anything Don 
Ippolito said that he would rather not see us again — ■ 
that it would be painful to him — why, we could ask 
Mi. Ferris to hand him the money," 

"Oh no, no, no, mother!" cried Florida, hiding her 
face, "that would be too horribly indelicate!" 

"Well, perhaps it wouldn't be quite good taste," 
said Mrs. Vervain perturbedly, "but you needn't ex- 
press yourself so violently, my dear. It's not a matter 
of life and death. I'm sure I don't know what to do. 
We must stop at Don Ippolito's house, I suppose. 
Don't you think so?" 

"Yes," faintly assented the daughter. 

Mrs. Vervain yawned. "Well I can't think anything 
more about it to-night; I'm too stupid. But that's the 
way we shall do. Will you help me to bed, my dear? 
I shall be good for nothing to-morrow." 

She went on talking of Don Ippolito's change of 
purpose till her head touched the pillow, from which 
she suddenly lifted it again, and called out to her 
daughter, who had passed into the next room: "But 
Mr. Ferris — why didn't he come back with you?" 



234 * FOREGONE CONCLUSIOM. 

"Come back with me?" 

"Why yes, child. I sent hiin out to call you, just 
before you came in. This Don Ippolito business put 
him quite out of my head. Didn't you see him? .... 
Oh! What's that?" 

"Nothing: I dropped my candle." 

"You're sure you didn't set anything on fire?" 

"No! It went dead out" 

"Light it again, and do look. Now is everything 
right?" 

"Yes." 

"It's queer he didn't come back to say he couldn't 
find you. What do you suppose became of him?" 

"I don't know, mother." 

"It's very perplexing. I wish Mr. Ferris were not 
so odd. It quite borders on affectation. I don't know 
what to make of it We must send word to him the 
very first thing to-morrow morning, that we're going, 
and ask him to come to see us," 

Florida made no reply. She sat staring at the 
black space of the door-way into her mother's room. 
Mrs. Vervain did not speak again. After a while her 
daughter softly entered her chamber, shading the 
candle with her hand; and seeing that she slept, softly 
withdrew, closed the door, and went about the work 
of packing again. When it was all done, she fiung 
herself upon her bed and hid her face in the pillow. 



A Foregone conclusion. 235 

The next morning was spent in bestowing those 
inteiminable last touches which the packing of ladies' 
baggage demands, and in taking leave with largess (in 
which Mrs. Vervain shone) of all the people in the 
house and out of it, who had so much as touched a 
hat to the Vervains during their sojourn. The whole 
was not a vast sum; nor did the sundry extortions of 
the padrone come to much, though the honest man 
racked his brain to invent injuries to his apartments 
and furniture. Being unmuimuringly paid, he gave 
way to his real good-will for his tenants in many little 
useful offices. At the end he persisted in sending 
them to the station in his own gondola and could with 
difficulty be kept from going with them. 

Mrs, Vervain had early sent a message to Ferris, 
but word came back a first and a second time that he 
was not at home, and the forenoon wore away and he 
had not appeared. A certain indignation sustained 
her till the gondola pushed out into the canal, and 
then it yielded to an intolerable regret that she should 
not see him. 

"I can'i go without saying good-by to Mr. Ferris, 
Florida," she said at last, "and it's no use asking me. 
He may "have been wanting a little in politeness, but 
he's been io good all along; and we owe him too 
much not to make an effort to thank him before we 
go. We really must stop a moment at his house." 

Florida, who had regarded her mother's efforts to 



236 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

summon Ferris to them with passive coldness, turned 
a look of agony upon her. But in a moment she bade 
the gondolier stop at the consulate, and dropping her 
veil over her face, fell back in the shadow of the tenda- 
curtains. 

Mrs. Vervain sentimentalized their departure a lit- 
tle, but her daughter made no comment on the scene 
they were leaving. 

The gondolier rang at Fenis's door and returned 
with the answer that he was not at home. 

Mrs. Vervain gave way to despair. "Oh dear, oli 
dear! This is too bad! What shall we do?" 

"We'll lose the train, mother, if we loiter in this 
way," said Florida. 

"Well, wait I must leave a message at least." 
"How could _you he away," she wrote on her card, 
"when we called lo say good-by? We've changed our 
plans and we're going to-day. I shall write you a nice 
scolding letter from Verona — 'we're going over the Bren- 
ner—/or your behavior last night. Who will lieep you 
straight when I'm gone? Votive been very, very kind. 
Florida joins me in a thousand thanks, regrets, and 
good-byes." 

"There, I haven't said anything after all," she fret- 
ted, with tears in her eyes. 

The gondolier carried the card again to the door, 
where Ferris's servant let down a basket by a string 
and fished it up. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION; 237 

"If Don Ippolito shouldn't be in," said Mrs. Ver- 
vain, as the boat moved on again, "I don't know what 
I shall do with this money. It will be awkward be- 
yond anything.'* 

The gondola slipped from the Canalazzo into the 
network of the smaller canals, where the dense shad- 
ows were as old as the palaces that cast them, and 
stopped at the landii^ of a narrow quay. The gon- 
dolier dismounted and rang at Don Ippolito's door. 
There was no response; he rang again and again. At 
last from a window of the uppermost story the head 
of the priest himself peered out. The gondolier 
touched his hat and said, "It is the ladies who ask for 
you, Don Ippolito." 

It was a minute before tlie door opened, and the 
priest, bare-headed and blinking in the strong light, 
came with a stupefied air across the quay to the land- ■ 
ing-steps. 

"Well, Don Ippolito!" cried Mrs. Vervain, rising 
and giving him her hand, which she first waved at the 
trunks and bags piled up in the vacant space in the 
front of the boat, "what do you think of this? We 
are really going, immediately; we can change our. 
minds too; and I don't think it would have been too 
much," she added with a friendly smile, "if we had 
gone without saying good-by to you. What in the 
world does it all mean, your giving up that grand pro- 
ject of yours so suddenly?" 



238 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

She sat down again, that she might talk more at 
her ease, and seemed thoroughly happy to have Don 
Ippohto before her again. 

"It finally appeared best, raadama," he said quietly, 
after a quick, keen glance at Florida, who did lift her 
veU. 

"Well, perhaps you're partly right But I can't 
help thinking that you with your talent would have 
succeeded in America. Inventors do get on there, in 
the most surprising way. There's the Screw Company 
of Providence. It's such a simple thing; and now the 
shares are worth eight hundred. Are you well to-day, 
Don Ippolito?" 

"Quite well, madama." 

"I thought you looked rather pale. But I believe 
you're always a little pale. Vou mustn't work too 
hard. We shall miss you a great deal, Don Ip- 
polito." 

"Thanks, madama." 

"Yes, we shall be quite lost without you. And I 
wanted to say this to you, Don Ippolito, that if ever 
you change your mind again, and conclude to come to 
America, you must write to me, and let me help you 
just as I had intended to do." 

The priest shivered, as if cold, and gave another 
look at Florida's veiled face. 

"You are too good," he said. 

"Yes, I really think I am," replied Mrs. Vervain, 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 2^^ 

playfully. " Considering that you were going to let me 
leave Venice without even trying to say good-by to me, 
I think I'm very good indeed." • 

Mrs. Vervain's mood became overcast, and her eyes 
filled with tears: "I hope you're sorry to have us going, 
Don Ippolito, for you know how very highly I prize 
your acquaintance. It was rather cruel of you, I 
think." 

She seemed not to remember that he could not 
have known of their change of plan. Don Ippolito 
looked imploringly into her face, and made a touching 
gesture of deprecation, but did not speak. 

"I'm really afraid you're not well, and I think it's 
too bad of us to be going," resumed Mrs, Vervain; 
"but it can't be helped now: we are all packed, don't 
you see. But I want to ask one favor of you, Don 
Ippolito; and that is," said Mrs. Vervain, covertly tak- 
ing a little rouleau from her pocket, "that you'll leave 
these inventions of yours for a while, and give your- 
self a vacation. You need rest of mind. Go into the 
country, somewhere, do. That's what's pressing upon 
you. But we must really be off, now. Shake hands 
with Florida — Pm going to be the last to part with 
you," she said, with a tearful smile. 

Don Ippolito and Florida extended their hands. 
Neither spoke, and as she sank back upon the seat 
from which she had half risen, she drew more closely 



240 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

the folds of the veil which she had not lifted from her 
(ace. 

Mrs. Vervaiti gave a little sob as Don Ippolito took 
her hand and kissed it; and she had some difficulty 
in leaving with him the rouleau, which she tried art- 
fully to press into his palm. "Good-by, good-by," she 
said, "don't drop it," and attempted to close his fingers 
over it. 

Eut he let it lie carelessly in his open hand, as the 
gondola moved off, and there it still lay as he stood 
watching the boat slip under a bridge at the next cor- 
ner, and disappear. While he stood there gazing at 
the empty arch, a man of a wild and savage aspect ap- 
proached. It was said that this man's brain had been 
turned by the death of his brother, who was betrayed 
to the Austrians after the revolution of '48, by his 
wife's confessor. He advanced with swift strides, and 
at the moment he reached Don Ippohto's side he sud- 
denly turned his face upon him and cursed him 
through his clenched teeth: "Dog of a priest!" 

Don Ippolito, as if his whole race had renounced 
him in the maniac's words, uttered a desolate cry, 
and hiding his face in tiis hands, tottered into his 
house. 

The rouleau had dropped from his palm; it rolled 
down the shelving marble of the quay, and slipped 
into the water. 



A FOREGOME CONCLUSION. 24I 

The young beggar who had held Mrs. Vervain's 
gondola to the shore while she talked, looked up and 
down the deserted quay, and at the doors and win- 
dows. Then he began to take off his clothes for a 



A Fonfftat CenehniPM. 



' -GcH>glc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



Fereis returned at nightfall to his house, where he 
had not been since daybreak, and flung himself ex- 
hausted upon the bed. His face was burnt red with 
the sun, and his eyes were bloodshot. He fell into a 
doze and dreamed that he was still at Malamocco, 
whither he had gone that morning in a sort of craze, 
with some iishermen, who were to cast their nets 
there; then he was rowing back to Venice across the 
lagoon, that seemed a molten fire under the keel. He 
woke with a heavy groan, and bade Marina fetch him 
a light 

She set it on the table, and handed him the card 
Mrs, Vervain had left. He read it and read it again, and 
then he laid it down, and putting on his hat, he took 
his cane and went out "Do not wait for me, Marina," 
he said, "I may be late. Go to bed." 

He returned at midnight, and lighting his candle 
took up the card and read it once more. He could 
not tell whether to be glad or sony that he had failed 
to see the Vervains ^ain. He took it for granted that 
Don Ippolito was to follow; he would not ask himself 
what motive had hastened their going. The reasons 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 243 

were all that he should never more look upon the wo- 
man so hatefully lost to him, but a strong instinct of 
his heart struggled against them. 

He lay down in his clothes, and began to dream 
almost before he began to sleep. He woke early, and 
went out to walk. He did not rest all day. Once he 
came home, and found a letter from Mrs. Vervain, 
postmarked Verona, reiterating her lamentations and 
adieux, and explaining that the priest had relinquished 
his purpose, and would not go to America at all. The 
deeper mysteiy in which this news left him was not 
less sinister than before. 

In the weeks that followed, Ferris had no other 
purpose than to reduce the days to hours, the hours to 
minutes. The burden that felt upon him when he woke 
lay heavy on his heart till night, and oppressed him 
far into his sleep. He could not give his trouble cer- 
tain shape; what was mostly with him was a formless 
loss, which he could not resolve into any definite 
shame or wrong. At times, what he had seen seemed 
to him some baleful trick of the imagination, some 
lurid and foolish illusion. 

But he could do nothing, he could not ask himself 
what the end was to be. He kept indoors by day, 
trying to work, trying to read, marveling somewhat that 
he did not fall sick and die. At night he set out on 
long walks, which took him he cared not where, and 
often detained him till the gray lights of morning be- 
i6' 



244 * FOREGOKE CONCLUSION. 

gan to tremble through the nocturnal blue. But even 
by night he shunned the neighborhood in which the 
Vervains had lived. Their landlord sent him a package 
of trifles they had left behind, but he refiised to re- 
ceive them, sending back word that he did not know 
where the ladies were. He had half expected that 
%bs. Vervain, though he had not answered her last 
letter, might write to him again from England, but she 
did not. The Vervains had passed out of his world; 
he knew that they had been in it only by the torment 
they had left him. 

He wondered in a listless way that he should see 
nothing of Don Ippolito. Once at midnight he fancied 
that the priest was coming towards him across a campo 
he had just entered; he stopped and turned back into 
the calle: when ihe priest came up to Mm, it was not 
Don Ippolito. 

In these days Ferris received a dispatch from the 
Department of State, infonning him that his successor 
had been appointed, and directing him to deliver up the 
consular flags, seals, archives, and other proper^ of the 
United States. No reason for his removal was given; 
but as there had never been any reason for his ap- 
pointment, he had no right to complain; the balance 
was exactly dressed by this simple device of our tuvil 
service. He determined not to wait fix the coming of 
his successor before giving up the consular effects, and 
he placed them at once in the keeping of the worthy 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 245 

ship-chandler who had so often transferred them from 
departing to arriving consuls. Then being quite ready 
at any moment to leave Venice, he found himself in 
nowise eager to go; but he began in a desultory way 
to pack up his sketches and studies. 

One morning as he sat idle in his dismantled 
studio, Marina came to teli him that an old woman, 
waiting at the door below, wished to speak with him. 

"Well, let her come up," said Ferris wearily, and 
presently Marina returned with a very ill-favored 
beldam, who stared hard at him while he frowningly 
puzzled himself as to where he had seen that malign 
visage before. 

"Well?" he said harshly. 

"I come," answered the old woman, "on the part 
of Don Ippolito Rondinelli, who desires so much to see 
your excellency." 

Ferris made no response, while the old woman 
knotted the fringe of her shawl with quaking hands, 
and presently added with a tenderness in her voice 
which oddly discorded with the hardness of her face: 
"He has been very sick, poor thing, with a fever; but 
now he is in his senses again, and the doctors say he 
will get well. I hope so. But he is still very weak. 
He tried to write two lines to you, but he had not the 
strength; so he bade me bring you this word; That he 
liad something to say which it greatly concerned you 
to hear, and that he prayed you to forgive his not 



246 A FOltEGONE CONCLUSION. 

coming to revere you, for it was impossible, and that 
you should have the goodness to do him this favor, to 
come to find him the quickest you could." 

The old woman wiped her eyes with the comer of 
her shawl, and her chin wobbled pathetically while 
she shot a glance of baleful dislike at Ferris, who 
answered after a long dull stare at her, "Tell him I'll 

He did not believe that Don Ippolito could tell 

him anything that greatly concerned him; but he was 
worn out with going round in the same circle of con- 
jecture, and so far as he could be glad, he was glad of 
this chance to face his calamity. He would go, but 
not at once; he would Ihiok it over; he would go to- 
morrow, when he had got some grasp of the matter. 

The old woman lingered. 

"Tell him I'll come," repeated Ferris impatiently. 

"A thousand excuses; but my poor master has 
been very sick. The doctors say he will get well. I 
hope so. But he is very weak indeed; a little shock, 
a little disappointment .... Is the signore very, vtry 
much occupied this morning? He greatly desired, — 
he prayed that if such a thing were possible in the 
goodness of your excellency .... But I am offending 
the signore!" 

"What do you want?" demanded Ferris. 

The old wretch set up a pitiful whimper, and tried 
to possess herself of his hand; she kissed his coat- 



A, FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 247 

sleeve instead. "That you will return with me," she 
besought him. 

"Oh, I'll go!" groaned the painter. "I might as 
well go first as last," he added in English. "There, 
stop that! Enough, enough, I tell you! Didn't I say 
I was going with you?" he cried to the old woman. 

"God bless you!" she mumbled, and set off before 
him down the stairs and out of the door. She looked 
so miserably old and weary that he called a gondola 
to his landing and made her get into it with him. 

It tormented Don Ippolito's idle neighborhood to 
see Veneranda arrive in such state, and a passionate 
excitement arose at the caff^, where the person of the 
consul was known, when Ferris entered the priest's 
house with her. 

He had not often visited Don Ippolito, but the 
quaintness of the place had been so vividly impressed 
upon him, that he had a certain familiarity with the 
grape-arbor of the anteroom, the paintings of the par- 
lor, and the puerile arrangement of the piano and 
melodeon. Veneranda led him through these rooms 
to the chamber where Don Ippolito had first shown 
him his inventions. They were all removed now, and 
on a bed, set against the wall opposite the door, lay 
the priest, with his hands on his breast, and a faint 
smile on his lips, so peaceful, so serene, that the painter 
stopped with a sudden awe, as if he had unawares 
come into the presence of death. 



2^8 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"Advance, advance," whispered the old woman. 

Near the head of the bed sat a w;hite-haired priest 
wearing the red stockings of a canonico; his face was 
fanatically stem; but he rose, and bowed courteously 
to Ferris, 

The stir of his robes roused Don Ippolito. He 
slowly and weakly turned his head, and his eyes fell 
upon the painter. He made a helpless gesture of 
salutation with his thin hand, and began to excuse 
himself, for the trouble he had given, with a gentle 
politeness that touched the painter's heart through all 
the complex resentments that divided them. It was 
indeed a strange ground on which the two men met 
Ferris could not have described Don Ippolito as his 
enemy, for the priest had wittingly done him no wrong; 
he could not have logically hated him as a rival, for 
till it was too late he had not confessed to his own 
heart the love that was in it; he knew no evil of Don 
Ippolito, he could not accuse him of any betrayal of 
trust, or violation of confidence. He felt merely that 
this hapless creature, lying so deathlike before him, 
had profaned, however involuntarily, what was sacred- 
est in the world to him; beyond this all was chaos. 
He had heard of the priest's sickness with a fierce 
hardening of the heart; yet as he beheld him now, he 
began to remember things that moved him to a sort of 
remorse. He recalled again the simple loyalty with 
which Don Ippolito had first spoken to him of Miss 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 249 

Vervain and tried to learn his own feeling toward her; 
he thought how trustfully at their last meeting the 
priest had declared his love and hope, and how, when 
he had coldly received his confession, Don Ippolito 
had solemnly adjured him to be frank with him; aiid 
Ferris could not. That pity for himself as the prey of 
fantastically cfuel chances, which he had already 
vaguely felt, began now also to include the priest; 
ignoring all but that compassion, be went up to the 
bed and todc the weak, chill, nerveless hand in his 
own, ... 

The canonico rose and placed his chair for Ferris 
beside the pillow, on which lay a brass crucifix, and 
then softly left the room, exchanging a glance of af- 
fectionate intelligence with the sick man. 

"I might have waited a little while," said Don Ip- 
polito weakly, speaking in a hollow voice that was the 
shadow of his old deep tones, "but you will know how 
to forgive the impatience of a man not yet quite 
master of himself. I thank you for coming. I have 
been very sick, as you see; I did not think to live; I 
did not care. ... I am very weak, now; let me say to 
you quickly what I want to say. Dear friend," con- 
tinued Don Ippolito, fixing his eyes upon the painter's 
face, "I spoke to her that night after 1 had parted 
from you." 

The priest's voice was now firm; the painter ttuned 
his face away. 



250 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

"I spoke without hope," proceeded Don Ippolito, 
"and because I must. I spoke in vain; ail was lost, 
all was past in a moment." 

The coil of suspicions and mi^vings and fears in 
which Ferris had lived was suddenly without a clew; 
he could not look upon the pallid vis^e of the priest 
lest he should now at last find there fliat subtle ex- 
pression of deceit; the whirl of his thoughts kept him 
silent; Don Ippolito went on. 

"Even if I had never been a priest, I would still 
have been impossible to her. She" .... 

He stopped as if for want of strength to go on. 
All at once he cried, " Listen 1" and he rapidly re- 
counted the story of his life, ending with the fatal 
tragedy of his love. When it was told, he said calmly, 
"But now everything is over with me on earth. I 
thank the Infinite Compassion for the sorrows through 
which I have passed. I, also, have proved the 
miraculous power of the church, potent to save in all 
ages." He gathered the crucifix in his spectral grasp, 
and pressed it to his lips. "Many mercifiil things 
have befallen me on this bed of sickness. My unde, 
whom the long years of my darkness divided from 
me, is once more at peace with me. Even that poor 
old woman whom I sent to call you, and who had 
served me as I believed with hate for me as a false 
priest in her heart, has devoted herself day and night 
to my helplessness; she has grown decrepit with her 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 25! 

cares and vigils. Yes, I have had many and signal 
marks of the divine pity to be grateful for." He paused, 
breathing quickly, and then added, "They tell me that 
the danger of this sickness is past But none the less 
I have died in it. When I rise from this bed, it shall 
be to take the vows of a Carmelite friar." 

Ferris made no answer, and Don Ippolito re- 
sumed : — 

"I have told you how when I first owned to her 
the falsehood in which I lived, she besought me to 
try if I might not find consolation in the holy life to 
which I had been devoted. When you see her, dear 
friend, will you not tell her that I came to understand 
that this comfort, this refuge, awaited me in the cell 
of the Carmelite? I have brought so much trouble 
into her life that I would fain have her know I have 
found peace where she bade me seek it, that I have 
mastered my affliction by reconciling mjreelf to it 
Tell her that but for her pity and fear for me, I be- 
lieve that I must have died in my sins." 

It was perhaps inevitable from Ferris's Protestant 
association of monks and convents and penances 
chiefly with the machinery of fiction, that all thi^ af- 
fected him as unreally as talk in a stage-play. His 
heart was cold, as he answered: "I am glad that your 
mind is at rest concerning the doubts which so long 
troubled you. Not all men are so easily pacified; but, 
as you say, it is the privilege of your church to work 



252 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

miracles. As to Miss Vervain, I am sorry that I cannot 
promise to give her your message. I shall never see 
her again. Excuse me," he continued, "but your 
servant said there was something you wished to say 
that concerned me?" 

"You will never see her again!" cried the priest, 
struggling to lift himself upon his elbow and falling 
back upon the pillow. "Oh, bereft! Oh, deaf and 
blind! It was you that she loved! She confessed it 
to me that night." 

"Wait!" said Ferris, trying to steady his voice, 
and failing; "I was with Mrs. Vervain that night; she 
sent me into the garden to call her daughter, and I 
saw how Miss Vervain parted from the man she did 
not loVe! I saw" .... 

It was a horrible thing to have said it, he felt now 
that he had spoken; a sense of the indelicacy, the 
Shamefulness, seemed to alienate him from all high 
concern in the matter, and to leave him a mere self- 
convicted eavesdropper. His face flamed; the waver- 
ing hopes, the wavering doubts alike died in his heart 
He had fallen below the dignity of his own trouble. 

"You saw, you saw," softly repeated the priest, 
without looking at him, and without any show of 
emotion; apparently, the convalescence that had 
brought him perfect clearness of reason had left his 
sensibilities still somewhat dulled. He closed his lips 
and lay silent At last, he asked very gently, "And 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 253 

how shall I make you believe that what you saw was 
not a woman's love, but an angel's heavenly pity for 
me? Does it seem hard to believe this of her?" 

"Yes," answered the painter do^diy, "it is 
hard." 

"And yet it is the very truth. Oh, you do not 
know her, you never knew her! In the same moment 
that she denied me her love, she divined the anguish 
of my soul, and with that embrace she sought to con- 
sole me for the friendlessness of a whole life, past and 
to come. But I know that I waste my words on you," 
he cried bitterly. "You never would see me as I was; 
you would find no singleness in me, and yet I had a 
heart as full of loyalty to you as love for her. In 
what have I been false to you?" 

"You never were false to me," answered Ferris, 
"and God knows I have been true'to you, and at what 
cost We might well curse the day we met, Don Ip- 
polito, for we have only done each other harm. But 
I never meant you harm. And now I ask you to for- 
give me if I cannot believe you, I cannot — yet. I am 
of another race from you, slow to suspect, slow to 
trust. Give me a little time; let me see you again. 
I want to go away and think. I don't question your 
truth. Fm afraid you don't know. - I'm afraid that 
the same deceit has tricked us both. I must come to 
you to-morrow. Can I?" 

He rose and stood beside the couch. 



254 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"Surely, surely," answered the priest, looking into 
Ferris's troubled eyes with calm meekness. "You will 
do me the greatest pleasure. Yes, come again to- 
morrow. You know," he said with a sad smile, re- 
ferring to his purpose of taking vows, "that my time 
in the world is short. Adieu, to meet again!" 

He took Feiris's hand, hanging weak and hot by 
his side, and drew him gently down by it, and kissed 
him on either bearded cheek. "It is our custom, you 
know, ajaong friends. Farewell." 

The canonico in the anteroom bowed austerely to 
him as he passed through; the old woman refused 
with a harsh "Nothing!" the money he offered her at 
the door. 

He bitterly upbraided himself for the doubts he 
could not banish, and he still flushed with shame that 
he should have declared his knowledge of a scene 
which ought, at its worst, to have been inviolable by 
• his speech. He scarcely cared now for the woman 
about whom these miseries grouped themselves; he 
realized that a fantastic remorse may be stroi^r than 
a jealous love. 

He longed for the monow to come, that he might 
confess his shame and regret; but a reaction to this 
violent repentance came before the night felL As the 
sound of the priest's voice and the sight of his wasted 
face faded from the painter's sense, he began to see 
everything in the old light again. Then what Don 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 255 ' 

Ippolito had said took a character of ludiaous, of in- 
solent improbability. 

After dark, Ferris set out upon one of his long, 
rambling walks. He walked hard and fast, to try if 
he might not still, by mere fatigue of body, the anguish 
that filled his soul. But whichever way he went he 
came again and again to the bouse of Don Ippolito, 
and at last he stopped there, leaning against the 
parapet of the quay, and staring at the house, as 
though he would spell from the senseless stones the 
truth of the secret they sheltered. Far up in the 
chamber, where he knew that the priest lay, the windows 
were dimly lit 

As he stood thus, with his upturned face hazard 
in the moonUght, the soldier commanding the Austrian 
patrol which passed that way halted his squad, and 
seemed about to ask him what he wanted there. 

Ferris turned and walked swiftly homeward; but 
he did not even lie down. His misery took the shape 
of an intent that would not suffer him to rest He 
meant to go to Don Ippolito and tell him that his 
stoiy had failed of its effect, that he was not to be 
fooled so easUy, and, without demanding anything 
further, to leave him in his lie. 

At the earliest hour when he might hope to be ad- 
mitted, he went, and rang the bell furiously. The 
door opened, and he confironted the priest's servant. 
"I want to see Don Ippolito," said Ferris abruptly. 



256 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"It cannot be," she began. 

"I tell you I must," cried Ferris, raising his voice, 
"I tell you 

"Madman!" fiercely whispered the old woman, 
shaking both her open hands in his face, "he's dead! 
He died last night!" 



D,nlz-nf,G00g[c 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 



The terrible stroke sobered Ferris, he woke from 
his long debauch of hate and jealousy and despair; 
for the first time since that night in the garden, he 
faced his fate with a clear mind. Death had set his 
seal forever to a testimony which he had been able 
neither to refuse nor to accept; in abject sorrow and 
shame he thanked God that he had been kept from 
dealing that last cruel blow; but if Don Ippolito had 
come back from the dead to repeat his witness, Ferris 
felt that the miracle could not change his own passive 
state. There was now but one thing in the world for 
him to do: to see Rorida, to confront her with his 
knowledge of all that had been, and to abide by her 
word, whatever it was. At the worst, there was the 
war, whose drums had already called to him, for a 
refuge. 

He thought at first that he might perhaps overtake 
the Vervains before they sailed for America, but he 
remembered that they had left Venice six weeks be- 
fore. It seemed impossible that he could wait, but 
when he landed in New York, he was tormented in 
his impatience by a strange reluctance and hesitation, 

A Forrtmu CmcluiUm. I? 



ZjS A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

A fantastic light fell upon his plans; a sense of its 
wildness enfeebled his purpose. What was he going 
to do? Had he come four thousand miles to tell 
Florida that Don Ippolito was dead? Or was he going 
to say, "I have heard that you love me, but I don't 
believe it: is it true?" 

He pushed on to Providence, stifling these antic 
inisgivings as he might, and without allowing himself 
time to falter from his intent, he set out to find Mrs. 
Vervain's house. He knew the street and the number, 
for she had often given him the address in her invita- 
' tions against the time when he should return to Ame- 
rica. As he drew near the house a tender trepidation 
filled him and silenced all other senses in him; his 
heart beat thickly; the universe included only the fact 
that he was to look upon the face he loved, and this 
fact had neither past nor future. 

But a terrible foreboding as of death seized him 
when he stood before the house, and glanced up at 
its close-shuttered front, and round upon the dusty 
grass-plots and neglected flower-beds of the door-yard. 
With a cold hand he rang and rang again, and no 
answer came. At last a man lounged up to the fence 
from the next house-door. "Guess you won't make 
anybody hear," he said, casually, 

"Doesn't Mrs. Vervain live in this house?" asked 
Ferris, finding a husky voice in his throat that sounded 
to him like some other's voice lost there. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 259 

"She used to, but she isn't at home. Family's in 
Europe." 

They had not come back yet 

"Thanks," said Ferris mechanically, and he went 
away. He laughed to himself at this keen irony of 
fortune; he was prepared for the conlirmation of his 
doubts; he was ready for relief from them, Heaven 
knew; but this blank that the turn of the wheel had 
brought, this Nothing! 

The Vervains were as lost to him as if Europe weie 
in another planet. How should he find them there? 
Besides, he was poor; he had no money to get back 
with, if he had wanted to return. 

He took the first train to New York, and hunted 
up a young fellow of his acquaintance, who in the days 
of peace had been one of the governor's aides. He 
was still holding this place, and was an ardent re- 
cruiter. He hailed with rapture the expression of 
Ferris's wish to go into the war. "Look here!" he said 
after a moment's thought, "didn't you have some rank 
as a consul?" 

"Yes," replied Ferris with a dreary smile, "I have 
been equivalent to a commander in the navy and a 
colonel in the aimy — I don't mean both, but either." 

"Good!" cried his friend. "We must strike high. 
The colonelcies are rather inaccessible, just at present, 
and so are the lieutenant-colonelcies; but a majorship, 
Jiow" . . , , 

17' 



260 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"Oh no; don'tl" pleaded Ferris. "Make me a' cor- 
poral — or a cook. I shall not be so mischrevous to 
our own side, then, and when the other fellows shoot 
me, I shall not be so much of a loss." 

"Oh, they won't shoot you," expostulated his friend, 
high-he artedly. He got Ferris a commission as second 
lieutenant, and lent him money to buy a unifonn. 

Ferris's regiment was sent to a part of the south- 
west, where he saw a good deal of fighting and fever 
and ague. At the end of two years, spent alternately 
in the field and the hospital, he was riding out near 
the camp one morning in unusual spirits, when two 
men in butternut fired at him : one had the mortifica- 
tion to miss him; the bullet of the other struck him in 
the arm. There was talk of amputation at first, but 
the case was finally managed without In Ferris's state of 
health it was quite the same an end of his soldiering. 

He came North sick and maimed and poor. He 
smiled now to think of confronting Rorida in any 
imperative or challenging spirit; but the current of his 
hopeless melancholy turned more and more towards 
her. He had once, at a desperate venture, written to 
her at Providence, but he had got no answer. He 
asked of a Providence man among the anists in New 
York, if he knew the Vervains; the ftovidence man 
said that he did know them a little when he was much 
younger; they had been abroad a great dealj he be- 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. j6l 

lieved in a dim way that they were still in Europe. The 
young one, he added, used to have a temper of her own. 

"Indeed!" said Ferris stiffly. 

The one fast friend whom he found in New York 
was the govemoi's dashing aide. The enthusiasm of 
this recruiter of regiments had not ceased with Ferris's 
departure for the front; the number of disabled officers 
forbade him to lionize any one of them, but he be- 
friended Ferris; he made a feint of discovering the 
open secret of his poverty, and asked how he could 
help him. 

"I don't know," said Feiris, *it looks like a hope- 
less case, to Ae." 

"Oh no it isn't," retorted his friend,' as cheerfully 
and confidently as he had promised him that he should 
not be shot "Didnt you bring back any pictures from 
Venice with you?" 

"I brought back a lot of sketches and studies, 
I'm sorry to say that I loafed a good deal there; I used 
to feel that I had eternity before me; and I was a 
theorist and a purist and an idiot generally. There 
are none of them fit to be seen." 

"Never mind; let's look at them." 

They hunted out Ferris's property from a catch-all 
closet in the studio of a sculptor with whom he had 
left: them, and who expressed a pohte pleasure in 
handing them over to Ferris rather than to his heirs 
and assigns. , 



262 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"Well, I'm not sure that I share your , satisfaction, 
old fellow," SEud the painter ruefully; but he unpacked, 
the sketches. 

TTieir inspection certainly revealed a disheartening 
condition of half-work. "And I can't do anything to 
help the matter for the present," groaned Ferris, stop- 
ping midway in the business, and making as if to shut 
the case again. 

"Hold on," said his friend. "What's this? Why, 
this isn't so bad." It was the study of Don Ippolito 
as a Venetian priest, which Ferris beheld with a stupid 
amaze, remembering that he had meant to destroy it, 
and wondering how it had got where it' was, but not 
really caring much. "It's worse than you can imagine," 
said he, still looking at it with this apathy. 

"No matter; I want you to sell it to me. Cornel" 

"I can't!" replied Ferris piteously. "It would be 
flat burglary," 

"Then put it into the exhibition." 

The sculptor, who had gone back to scraping the 
chin of the famous public man on whose bust he was 
at work, stabbed him to the heart with his modeling- 
tool, and turned to Ferris and his friend. He slanted 
his broad red beard for a sidelong look at the picture, 
and said: "I know what you mean, Ferris. It's hard, 
and it's feeble in some ways; and it looks a little too 
much like experimenting. But it is n't so infernally bad." 

"Don't be fulsome," responded Ferris, jadedly. He 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 26^ 

was thinking in a thoroughly vanquished mood what a 
tragico-comic end of the whole business it was that 
poor Don Ippolito should come to his rescue in this, 
fashion, and as it were offer to succor him in his ex- 
tremity. He perceived the shamefulness of suffering 
such help; it would be much better to starve; but he 
felt cowed, and he had not courage to take anns 
against this sarcastic destiny, which had pursued him 
with a mocking smile from one lower level to another. 
He rubbed his forehead and brooded upon the picture. 
At least it would be some comfort to be rid of it; and 
Don Ippolito was dead; and to whom could it mean 
more than the face of it? 

His Iriend had his way about framing it, and it 
was got into the exhibition. The hanging-committee 
offered it the hospitalities of an obscure comer; but it 
was there, and it stood its chance. Nobody seemed 
to know that it was there, however, unless confronted 
with it by Ferris's friend, and then no one seemed to 
care for it, much less want to buy it Ferris saw so 
many much worse pictures soM all around it, that he 
began gloomily to respect it. At first it had shocked 
him to see it on the Academy's wall; but it soon came 
to have no other relation to him than that of creature- 
ship, like a poem in which a poet celebrates his love 
or laments his dead, and sells for a price. His pride 
as well as his poverty was set on having the picture 
sold; he had pothing to do, juid he used to lurk about, 



264 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

and see if it would not interest somebody at last But 
it remained unsold throughout May, and well into 
June, long after the crowds had ceased to frequent the 
exhibition, and only chance visitors from the country 
straggled in by twos and threes. 

One warm, dusty afternoon, when he turned into 
the Academy out of Fourth Avenue, the empty hall 
echoed to no footfall but his own. A group of weary 
women, who wore that look of wanting lunch which 
characterizes all picture-gallery-goers at home and 
abroad, stood faint before a certain large Venetian 
subject which Ferris abhorred, and the veiy name of 
which he spat out of his mouth with loathing for its 
unreality. He passed them with a sombre glance, as 
he took his way toward the retired spot where his own 
painting hung. 

A lady whose crapes would have betrayed to her 
own sex the latest touch of Paris stood a little way 
back from it, and gazed fixedly at it The pose of her 
head, her whole attitude, expressed a quiet dejection; 
without seeing her face one could know its air of 
pensive wistfiilness. Ferris resolved to indulge him- 
self in a near approach to this unwonted spectacle of 
interest in his picture; at the sound of his steps the 
lady slowly turned a face of somewhat heavily moulded 
beauty, and from low-growing, thick pale hair and level 
brows, stared at him with the sad eyes of Florida 
Vervain. She looked fully the last two yeais older. 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 265 

As though she were listening to the sound of his 
steps in the dark instead of having him theie visibly 
before her, she kept her eyes upon him with a dreamy 
unrecognition. 

"Yes, it is I," said Ferris, as if she had spoken. 

She recovered herself, and with a subdued, sor- 
rowful quiet in her old directness, she answered, "I 
supposed you must be in New York," and she in- 
dicated that she had supposed so from seeing this 
picture. 

Ferris feh the blood mounting to his head. "Do 
you think it is like?" he asked. 

"No," she said, "it isn't just to him; it attributes 
things that didn't belong to him, and it leaves out a 
great deal," 

"I could scarcely have hoped to please you in a 
portrait of Don Ippolito," Ferris saw the red light 
break out as it used on the girl's pale cheeks, and her 
eyes ddate angrily. He went on recklessly: "He sent 
for me after you went away, and gave me a. message 
for you. I never promised to deliver it^ but I will do 
so now. He asked me to tell you when we met, that 
he had acted on your desire, and had tried to recon- 
cile himself to bis calling and his religion; he was 
going to enter a Carmelite convent." 

Florida made no answer, but she seemed to expect 
him to go on, and he was constrained to do so. 

"He never carried out his purpose," Ferris said, 



266 A FOREGONi: CONCLUSION. 

with a keen glance at her; "he died the night after I 
saw him." 

"Died?" The fan and the parasol and the two or 
three light packages she had been holding slid down 
one by one, and lay at her feet. "Thank you for 
bringing me his last words," she said, but did not ask 
him anything more. 

Ferris did not offer to gather up her things; he 
Stood irresolute; presently he continued with a down- 
cast look: "He had had a fever, but they thought he 
was getting well. His death must have been sudden," 
He stopped, and resumed fiercely, resolved to have 
the worst out: "I went to him, with no good-will to- 
ward him, the next day after I saw him; but I came 
too late. That was God's mercy to me. I hope you 
have your consolation, Miss Vervain." 

It maddened him to see her so little moved, and 
he meant to make her share his remorse. 

"Did he blame me for anything?" she asked. 

"No!" said Ferris, with a bitter laugh, "he praised 
you." 

"I am glad of that," returned Florida, "for I have 
thought it all over many times, and I know that I was 
not to blame, though at first I blamed myself. I never 
intended him anything but good. That is my con- 
solation, Mr. Ferris. But you," she added, "you seem 
to make yourself my judge. Well, and what do^o« 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 267 

blame me for? I have a right to know what is in 
your mind." 

The thing that was in his mind had rankled there 
for two years; in many a black reverie of those that 
alternated with his moods of abject self-reproach and 
perfect trust of her, he had confronted her and flung 
it out upon her in one stinging phrase. But he was 
now suddenly at a loss; the words would not come; 
his torment fell dumb before her; in her presence the 
cause was unspeakable. Her lips had quivered a 
httle in making that demand, and there had been a 
corresponding break in her voice. 

"Florida! Florida!" Ferris heard himself saying, 
"I loved you all the time!" 

"Oh indeed, did you love me?" she cried, in- 
dignantly, while the tears shone in her eyes. "And 
was that why you left a helpless young girl to meet 
that trouble alone? Was that why you refused me 
your advice, and turned your back on me, and snubbed 
me? Oh, many thanks for your love!" She dashed 
the gathered tears angrily away, and went on. "Per- 
haps you knew, too, what that poor priest was think- 
ing of?" 

"Yes," said Ferris, stolidly, "-I did at last: he 
told me." 

"Oh, then you acted generously and nobly to let 
him go on! It was kind to him, and very, very kind 
to me!" 



268 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION; 

■What could I do?" demanded Ferris, amazed 
and furious to find himself on the defensive. "His 
telling me put it out of my power to act." 

"I'm glad that you can satisfy yourself with such 
a quibble! But I wonder that you can tell me — any 
woman of it!" 

"By Heavens, this is atrocious!" cried Ferris. 
"Do you think .... Look here!" he went on rudely. 
"I'll put the case to you, and you shall judge it. 
Remember that I was such a fool as to be in love 
with you. Suppose Don Ippolito had told me that 
he was going to risk everything — going to give up 
home, rehgion, friends — on the ten thousandth part of 
a chance that you might some day care for him. 
I did not believe he had even so much chance as 
that; but he had always thought me his friend, and 
he trusted me. Was it a quibble that kept me from 
betraying him? I don't know what honor is among 
women; but no man could have done it I confess to 
my shame that I went to your house that n^ht long- 
ing to betray him. And then suppose your mother 
sent me into the garden to call you, and I saw . . . 
what has made my life a hell of doubt for the last 
two years; what . . . No, excuse me! I can't put the 
case to you after all." 

"What do you mean?" asked Florida. "I don't 
understand you!" 

"What do I mean? You don't understand? Arc 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 269 

you SO blind as that, or are you making a fool of me? 
What could I think but that you had played with 
that priest's heart till your own" .... 

"Ohl" cried Florida with a shudder, starting away 
from him, "did you think I was such a wicked girl 
as that?" 

It was no defense, no explanation, no denial; it 
simply left the case with Ferris as before. He stood 
looking like a man who does not know whether to 
bless or curse himself, to laugh or blaspheme. 

She stooped and tried to pick up the things she 
had let fall upon the floor; but she seemed not able 
to find them. He bent over, and, gathering them 
together, returned them to her with his left hand, 
keeping the other in the breast of his coat. 

"Thanks," she said; and then after a moment, 
"Have you been hurt?" she asked timidly. 

"Yes," said Ferris in a sulky way. "I have had 
my share." He glanced down at his arm askance. 
"It's rather conventional," he added. "It isn't much 
of a hurt; but then, I wasn't much of a soldier. 

The girl's eyes looked reverently at the conven- 
tional aim; those were the days, so long past, when 
women worshipped men for such things. But she 
said nothing, and as Ferris's eyes wandered to her, 
he received a novel and painful impression. He said, 
hesitatingly, "I have not asked before: but your 
mother, Miss Vervain-rl hope she. is well?" 



ZJO A FOREGONE CONCLUSION, 

"She is dead," answered Florida, with stony quiet. 

They were both silent for a time. Then Ferris 
said, "I had a great affection for your mother." 

"Yes," said the girl, "she was fond of you, -too. 
But you never wrote or sent her any word; it used to 
grieve her." 

Her unjust reproach went to his heart, so long 
preoccupied with its own troubles; he recalled with a 
tender remorse the old Venetian days and the kind- 
liness of the gracious, silly woman who had seemed 
to like him so much; he remembered the charm of 
her perfect ladylikeness, and of her winning, weak- 
beaded desire to make eveiy one happy to whom she 
spoke; the beauty of the good-will, the hospitable soul 
that in an imaginably better world than this will 
outvalue a merely intellectual or sesthetic life. He 
humbled himself before her memory, and as keenly 
reproached himself as if he could h^ve made her hear 
from him at any time during the past two years. He 
could only say, "I am sony that I gave your mother 
pain; I loved her very truly. I hope that she did not 
suffer much before" — 

"No," said Florida, "it was a peaceful end; but 
finally it was very sudden. She had not been well for 
many years, with that sort of decline; I used some- 
times to feel troubled about her before we came to 
Venice; but I was very young. I never was really 
alanned till that day I went to you." 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 271 

""I remember," said Feiris contritely, 

"She had fainted, and I thought we ought to sec 
a doctor; but afterwards, because I thought that I 
ought not to do so without speaking to her, I did not 
go to the doctor; and that day we made up our minds 
to get home as soon as we could; and she seemed so 
much better, for a while; and then, everything seemed 
to happen at once. When we did start home, she 
could not go any farther than Switzerland, and in the 
fall we went back to Italy. We went to Sorrento, 
where the climate seemed to do her good. But she 
was growing frailer, the whole time. She died in 
March. I found some old friends of hers in Naples, 
and came home with them." 

The girl hesitated a little over the words, which 
she nevertheless uttered unbroken, while the tears fell 
quietly down her face. She seemed to have forgotten 
the angry words that had passed between her and 
Ferris, to remember him only as one who had known 
her mother, while she went on to relate some little 
facts in the history of her mother's last days; and she 
rose into a higher, serener atmosphere,' inaccessible to 
his resentment or his regret, as she spoke of her loss. 
The simple tale of sickness and death inexpressibly 
belittled his passionate woes, and made them look 
theatrical to him. He hung his head as they turned 
at her motion and walked away from the picture of 
Don Ippolito, and down the stairs toward the street- 



272 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

door; tlie people before the other Venetian picture 
had apparently yielded to their craving for lunch, and 
had vanished. 

"I have very little to tell you of my own life," 
Ferris began awkwardly. "I came home soon after 
you started, and I went to Providence to find you, 
but you had not got back." 

Florida stopped him and looked perplexedly into 
his face, and then moved on. 

"Then I went into the army. I wrote once to 
you." 

"I never got yotu' letter," she said. 

They were now in the lower hall, and near the 
door. 

"Florida," said Ferris, abruptly, "I'm poor and 
disabled; I've no more right than any sick beggar in 
the street to say it to you; but I loved you, I must 
always love you. I — Good-byl" 

She halted him again, and "You said," she grieved, 
"that you doubted me; you said that I had made your 
life a"— 

"Yes, I said that; I know it," answered Ferris. 

"You thought I could be such a false and cruel 
gill as that!" 

"Yes, yes: I thought it all, God help me!" 

"When I was only sorry for him, when it was you 
that I"~ 

"Oh, I know it," answered Ferris in a heartsick, 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 273 

hopeless voice. "He knew it, too. He told me so the 
day before he died." 

"And didn't you believe him?" 

Ferris could not answer. 

"Do you believe him now?" 

"I believe anything you tell me. When I look at 
you, I can't believe I ever doubted you." 

"Why?" 

"Because — because — I love you." 

"Oh! Thafs no reason." 

"I know it; but I'm used to being without a 
reason." 

Florida looked gravely at his penitent face, and a 
brave red color mantled her own, while she advanced 
an unanswerable argument: "Then what are you going 
away for?" 

The world seemed to melt and float away from be- 
tween them. It returned and solidified at the sound 
of the janitor's steps as he came towards them on his 
round through the empty building. Ferris caught her 
hand; she leaned heavily upon his arm as they walked 
out into the street. It was all they could do at the 
moment except to look into each other's faces, and 
walk swiftly on. 

At last, after how long a time he did not know, 
Ferris cried: "Where are we going, Florida?" 

"Why, I don't know!" she replied. "I'm stop- 
ping with those friends of ours at the Fifth Avenue 



2 74 ^ FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

Hotel We wtre going on to Providence to-morrow. 
We landed yesterday; and we stayed to do some shop- 
ping"— 

"And may I ask why you happened to give your 
first moments in America to the fine aits?" 

"The fine arts? Obi I Ihought I might find some- 
thing of yours, therel" 

At the hotel she presented him to her party as a 
firiend whom her mother and she had known in Italy; 
and then went to lay aside her hat. The Providence 
people received him with the easy, half-southern warmth 
of manner which seems to have floated northward as 
far as their dty on the Gulf Stream bathing the Rhode 
Island shores. The matron of the party had, before 
Florida came bade, an outline history of their ac- 
quaintance, which she evolved from him with so much 
tact that he was not conscious of parting with informa- 
tion; and she divined indefinitely more when she saw 
them together again. She was charming; but to Fer- 
ris's thinking she had a fault, she kept him too much 
from Florida, though she talked of nothing else, and at 
the last she was discreetly merciful, 

"Do you think," whispered Florida, very dose 
against his face, when they parted, "that I'll have a 
bad temper?" 

"I hope you will — or I shall be killed with kind- 
ness," he repHed. 

She stood a moment, nervously buttoning his coat 



A FOREGONE COMCLUSION. 275 

across his breast. "You mustn't let that picture be 
sold, Henry," she said, and by this touch alone did 
she express any sense, if she had it, of his want of 
feeling in proposing to sell it. He winced, and she 
added with a soft pity in her voice, "He did bring 
us together, after all. I wish yon had believed him, 
dear!" 

"So do I," said Ferris, most humbly. 

People are never equal to the romance of their 
youth in after life, except by fits, and Ferris especially 
could not keep himself at what he called the operatic 
pitch of their brief betrothal and the early days of 
their marriage. With his help, or even his encour^e- 
ment, his wife might have been able to maintain it. 
She had a gift for idealizing him, at least, and as his 
hurt healed but slowly, and it was a good while before 
he could paint with his wounded aim, it was an easy 
matter for her to believe in the meanwhile that he 
would have been the greatest painter of his time, but 
for his honourable disability; to hear her, you would 
suppose no one else had ever been shot in the service 
of his country. 

It was fortanate for Ferris, since he could not 
work, that she had money; in exalted moments he had 
thought this a barrier to their marriage; yet he could 
not recall any one who had refused the hand of a 
beautiful girl because of the accident of her wealth. 



276 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

and in the end he silenced his scruples. It might be 
said that in many other ways he was not her equal; 
but <me ought to reflect how veiy few men are worthy 
of their wives in any sense. After his fashion he cer- 
tainly Joved her alwaj^ — even when she tried him 
most, for it must be owned that she really had that 
hot temper which he had dreaded in her from the 
first. Not that her imperiousneas directly affected him. 
For a long time after their marriage, she seemed to 
have no other desire than to lose her outwearied will 
in his. There was something a little pathetic in this; 
there was a kind of bewilderment in her gentleness, 
as though the relaxed tension of her long self-devo- 
tion to her mother left her without a full motive; she 
apparently found it impossible to give herself with 
a satisfactory degree of abandon to a man who could 
do so many things for himself. When her children 
came they filled this vacancy, and afforded her scope 
for the greatest excesses of self-devotion. Ferris 
laughed to find her protecting them and serving them 
with the same tigerish tenderness, the same haughty 
humility, as that with which she used to care for poor 
Mrs, Vervain; and he perceived that this was merely 
the direction away from herself of that intense ar- 
rogance of nature which, but for her power and need 
of loving, would have made her intolerable. What 
she chiefly exacted fii>m them in return for her fierce 
devotedness was the truth in everything; she was con- 



A FOREGONE CONCLUSIOl*. 277 

tent that they should be rather less fond of her than 
of their father, whom indeed they found much more 
amusing. 

The Ferrises went to Europe some years after their 
marriage, revisiting Venice, but sojourning for the most 
part in Florence. Ferris had once imagined that the 
^gedy which had given him his wife would always 
invest her with the shadow of its sadness, but in this 
he was mistaken. There is nothing has really so strong 
a digestion as love, and this is very lucky, seeing what 
manifold experiences love has to swallow and assi- 
milate; and when they got back to Venice, Ferris 
found that the customs of their joint life exorcised all 
the dark associations of the place. These simply 
fonned a sombre back-ground, against which their 
wedded happiness relieved itself. They talked much 
of the past, with free minds, unashamed and unafraid. 
If it is a little shocking, it is nevertheless true, and 
trye to human nature, that they spoke of Don Ippolito 
as if he were a part of their love. 

Ferris had never ceased to wonder at what he 
called the unfathomable innocence of his wife, and he 
liked to go over all the points of their former life in 
Venice, and bring home to himself the utter simplicity 
of her girlish ideas, motives, and designs, which both 
confounded and delighted him. 

"It's amazing, Florida," he would say, "it's per- 
fectly amazing that you should have been wilUng to 

' l;oo;,Ic 



SyS A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

undertake the job of importing into America that poor 
fellow with his whole stock of helplessness, dreamery, 
and unpracticalitjr. What were you about?" 

"Why, I've often told you, Henry. I thought he 
oughtn't to continue a priest" 

"Yes, yes; I know." Then he would remaio lost 
in thought, softly whistling to himself. On one of 
these occasions he asked, "Do you think he was really 
very much troubled by his false position?" 

"I can't tell, now. He seemed to be so." 

*'That story he told you of his childhood and of 
how he became a priest; didn't it strike you at the 
time like rather a made-up, melodramatic history?" 

"No, no! How can you say such things, Henry? It 
was too simple not to be true." 

"Well, well Perhaps so. But he baffles me. He 
always did, for that matter." 

Then came another pause, while Ferris lay back 
upon the gondola cushions, getting the level of the 
Lido just under his hat-brim. 

"Do you think he was very much of a skeptic, after 
all, Florida?" 

Mrs. Ferris turned her eyes reproachfully upon her 
husband. "Why, Heniy, how strange you are! You 
said yourself, once, that you used to wonder if he were 
not a skeptic" 

"Yes; I know. But for a man who had lived in 
doubt so many years, he certainly slipped back into 



CONCLUSION.. 279 

the bosom of mother church prelty suddenly. Don't 
you think he was a person of rather hght feehngs?" 

"I can't talk with you, my dear, if you go on in 
that way." 

"I don't mean any harm. I can see how in many 
things he was the soul of truth and honor. But it 
seems to me that even the life he lived was lai^ely 
imagined. 1 mean that he was such a dreamer that 
once having fancied himself afflicted at being what he 
was, he could go on and suffer as keenly as if he 
really were troubled by it. Why mightn't it be that 
all his doubts came from anger and resentment to- 
wards those who made him a priest, rather than from 
any examination of his own mind? I don't say it 
was so. But I don't believe he knew quite what he 
wanted. He must have felt that his failure as an in- 
ventor went deeper than the failure of his particular 
attempts. I once thought that perhaps he had a 
genius in that way, but I question now whether he 
had. If he had, it seems to me he had opportunity 
to prove it — certainly, as a priest he had leisure to 
prove it. But when that sort of sub-consciousness of 
his own inadequacy came over him, it was perfectly 
natural for him to take refuge in the supposition that 
he had been baffled by circumstances." 

Mrs. Ferris remained silently troubled. "1 don't 
know bow to answer you, Henry; but I think that 
you're judging him narrowly and harshly." 



28o A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

"Not harshly. I feel very compassionate towards 
him. But now, even as to what one might consider 
the most real thing in his life, — his caring for you, — it 
seems to me there must have been a great share of 
imagined sentiment in it. It was not a passion; it was 
a gentle nature's dream of a passion." 

"He didn't die of a dream," said the wife. 

"No, he died of a fever." 

"He had got well of the fever." 

"Thafs very true, my dear. And whatever his 
head was, he had an affectionate and faithful heart. 
I wish I had been gender with him. I must often 
have bruised that sensitive soul, God knows I'm soiry 
for it. But he's a puzzle, he's a puzzle!" 

Thus lapsing more and more into a mere problem 
as the years have passed, Don Ippolito has at last 
ceased to be even the memory of a man with a pas- 
sionate love and a mortal sorrow. Perhaps this final 
effect in the mind of him who has realized the happi- 
ness of which the poor priest vainly dreamed is not 
the least tragic phase of the tragedy of Don Ippolito. 



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slableoftheToweriv, TheLord 
Mayor of 1-ondon 2 v. Caidinal 
Pole 2 V. John Law 2 v. The 
Spanish Match 2 v. The Con- 
stable de Bourbon 2 v. Old Court 

I Y. Myddlelon Pomfrel a v. The 

3 «. Tslbot HarlaAd i v. Tower 
HUl 1 V. Ikscobcl; or. Ac RoyaJ 
Oifc J V. 1-he Good Old Time. 3 v. 
Merry Eo^and IV, The Gold.milh'! 
Wife J V. Prejlon Fight a .. Chctwyud 
Cilveilcy »Y. TheLeaguei ofLaihoin 
»V.TheFaUofSoaMis«»Y. Beatrice 
Tyjdeiley > v. Beau Nuh a t. StaD- 

L. M. Alcott: litfle Women 
3v. little Men I v. 
"All forGreed," Aulhorof— 

All forGTMd I V. Love Ihe AveHKer a ». 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 
MarjorieDawandother Tales IV. 
The Stillwater Tragedy i v. 

L.AUdridge:ByLoveandIjiw 
2v. TheWoi'lddieAwokeiii2v. 



Miss Austen : Sense and Sen- 
sibiUty i y. Mansfield Park I v. 
Piide and Fjejudice i y. NoithaDEer 
Ah>>cr. audPezYUuion iy. E um a iy. 

Lady Barker : Station Life in 
New Zealand IV. Station Amuse- 
mCDU ia Ne* Zealand i y. A Vear'l 
Houiekeeping in South A&ica i y. 

Rev. R. H. Baynes: Lyta 
Anelicaua, Hynuu&SaaodSonciiY, 

Lord Beaconsfield : vide 
Disraeli. 

Averil Beatunont: Thoini- 

cioft's Model 2 V. 

CurrerBell{CharlotteBronte): 
Jane Eyre 2 V. Shirley 2 v. Vil- 
lette 2 V, The Professor I v. 

Ellis & Acton Bell: Wuther- 
ing Heights, and Agnes Grey 2 v. 

Frank Lee Benedict: St. Si- 

WiUiam Black; ADaoght. 



fHelh, 



In KIk Altire a y. Tbe 



Fealheiiiv, Lady Silvei 



t V. 'f-hiee 
-dale'iSweel- 
elaY. Gitea 
aY. Hadeod 



rise a V. The Beaulirul Wrf <ch i 

R, D. Blackmore: Alice 
LamiinF a v. Maiy Aaeile; % v 

"Bladtwooil," Taks&om— 
I V. Stcead Seria I v. 

Isa Blagden : The Woman I 
loved, and theWoman who loved 
me ; A Tuscan Wedding I v. 

Lady Blessington: Meredith 
I V. Stiathem 2 v. Memoirs of 
a Fenune de Chambre 1 v. W 
madukc Herbert 2 v. Country 
Quarters (w. portrait) z v. 



Tht^i %ftttrh valmiu is 1 Mark 6o PftmUg^^^ ^^ 



CaUtcHon of BrUiih Authert TaiKhnii* Editim. 



Miss Braddon : Ladjr Aud ley ' 
JecrelsT. AunnFloydiT. Eleuur'. 
Victoiyav. JohaUarchmont'tLcfEunF 
> I. Heniy Dunbar i v. The Doctor^ 
*. - ~ lav. SirjMper'. 

.adVl Mile I *. 

«ad-St»FniIt9v. 






.«aawtniv.in(j' ' - 

... ODcn Verdid i v. 

TlieCloi , . 

Mrs. Brassey; A VoysEc in 
tl:e "Sunbeam" 2 v. Sunshine 
and Storm in the East 3 v, 

Shirley Brooks. The Silver 
Cord 3 V. Sooner or Later 3 v. 

Miss Rhoda Broughton : 
Cometh up as a Flower I v. Not 
wisely, but too well 2 v. Red as a. 
RoseisShezv. Tales forChiist- 
masEveiv. Nancyav. Joana*. 
Second Thoughts a v. 

John Brown: Kab and his 
Friends, and other Tales I v. 

£liz. Barrett Browning: A 
Selection from her Poetry (w. por- 
trait) I V. Aurora Leigh I v. 

Robert Browning: Poetical 
Works (w. portrait) 1 v. 

Bulwer(Lord Lytton) : Pelham 
(w, portrait) i y. Eugene Arani 
IV. PaulCliffordlv, Zanonil 

DiAwned 1 °.'"Einesi^"rav«s 1 

ihe Rhine 1 v. Dneniui 1 v. Godol- 
phin, timl FalklsQd i v. Riciiti s 1 
Nighl ind Mc ■ ~ 



phm'i 1 T. The Cucloikt B V. My 
Novel 4 V. What »ia he do vilh HI 
4 V. The nniniuic WmIu * v. A 
SLni^e Sloiy a t. C^jitoniuut 9 v, 

ccUucoui PnaeWarlii 4 V. The Ode* 
and Epodu Df HDTuie s v. KiHlm 
ChiDicgly 4 T. The Comiiw Rue 1 1. 
The Pu^iam 4 1. Pauudu i t. 

Henry Lytton Bulwer (Lord 
Dalling); Historical Characters 
I y. The Uft of Henry John Temple. 

John Bunyan: The Pilgrim's 

Buried Alone 1 v. 
Miss Blimey: Evelina i v. 
Rober [Burns; Poetical Works 
(w. porltiit) IV. 
Richard F. Burton; Mecca 

and Medina 3 v. 

Mrs. B.H. Buxton: "Jennie 
of 'the Prince's'" 2 v. Won! 
2v. Great Grenfell Gardens a V. 
Nell— oD and off Ihe Stage a V. Frgm 

Lora Byron: Poetical Works 

(w. portrait) 5 v. 

Cameron: Across Alrica 3 v. 

Thomas Carlylc: TheFrench 
Revolution 3 v. Frederick the 
Great 13 v. Oliver Cromwell's 
Letters ajid Speeches 4 v. The Life 
of Friedrich Schiller I v. 

MariaLo uisa Ojailes worth : 

Oliver of the Mill 1 v. 

"Chronicles of the Sch8n- 
berg-Cotta Family," Author 

of— Chroniclea of the SchOnbetg- 
CalO. Family a v. Th: Dnytou and 
Ihe Daveiuuili a v. On Bath Sidei 
of the Sea 91. Winifred Benmn 1 1. 
Diary ol Mn. Kitty Ttevylyan i r. 
The Victory of Ihe Vanquished i t. 
The Catlage by the Calhednl i t. 
Against the Stream av. The Bertram 
FamUy " ■ " 









Thtprici of tack voltant is i Mark 60 Pftitnige, 



CottnlBMi e/Brititk Aiaken Tatuhmtt EJititn. 



Frances Power Cobbe; Re- 

Echoes t V. 

Coleridge: The Poema i v. 

Chas. A. Collins: A Craise 
upon Wheels 2 v. 

Mortimer Collins: Sweet ind 

Twinlyi*. A Fight with Portunca*. 

Wilfcie Collins: After D»rlt 
IV. HideandSeeI:zv. AFlotin 
Frirate jjfe i v. The Woman in 
White 2 T. Basil I t. No Name 
3 v. The Dead Secret a v. An- 
toaina 2 v. Armadale 3 t. The 
Moonstone 3 V. Manand Wife3T. 
PoorMissPinch 2 v. Miss orMrs, ? 
IV. TheNewMagdalenlv. The 
FrozenDeep I v. The Law and the 
Ladyav. TheTwoDestinieslv. 
My Lddj"! Money & Perc 
PimlMl 1 T "- " ■■ 

IT. TbaL 

"Cometh up as a Flower," 
Author of — vide Broughton. 

Fenimore Cooper; The Spy 
(w. portrait) I v. The two Ad- 
mirala l v . The Jack O "Lantera l v, 

George L. Craik; Manual of 
English Uteratiu'e& Language zr. 

Mrs. Craik (Misi Muloclt): 
JohnHali&Jt,Geotleman2v. The 
HeadoftheFamilfZv. ALifefor 
a Life 2 V. A Woman's Thoughts 
about Women I V. Agatha'sHus- 
hand I v. Romantic Tales l v. 
Domestic Stories I v, Mistressasd 
Maid I V, The Ogilvies i v. Lord 
Erlistouniv. Christian's Mistake 
I T. Bread upon the Waters i v. 
ANohleLlfeiv. Olheiv. Two 
Marriages i v. Studies from Ljfe 
t V. Poems I v. The Woman's 
Kingdom 3 V. The Unkind Word 



zv. ABrateLadjav. HannahZv. 
Fair France IT. Mjr Mother and 

I IV. The little Lame Prince IV. 
Sctthoiu out oT Church i -r. Thv 
Lmurtl Bwh IT. A Lc^cy ■ t. 

Mo'Sw . T.' 

Miss Georgiana. Cr^k : I^ost 



I T. LoUe Tyrrell i t. 
Wooing, and other Tski 
IV. Cither HiU'i Secret >T. 1 
Tierthrlll I T. Wilhcnt Kith or 
I T. OoJT ■ Butleifly 1 v. Syl 
Choca ; Thcnu > t. Anne War 
~ T.1M of Murried Life 



(VoLI, 



1. II. n 



Miss Cummins : The Lamp- 
lighter I T. Mabel Vaughan I v. 

ElFiireldtt I I. Haunted Heuti i v. 

"Daily News," War Corre- 
spondence 1877 by A.Forbes 
etc. 3 V. 

Dc-Foe : Robinson Crusoe I v. 

Charles Dickens : The Post- 
humous Papers of the Pickwick 
Club (w. portmt) z V. American 
Notes IV. Oliver Twist I V. The 
Life and Adventures of Nicholas 
Nick!eby2v. Sketches I v. The 
Life and Adventures of Martin 
Chuixlewit 3 V. A Christmas 
Carol; the Chimes ; the Cricket 
on the Heattb i v. Master Hum- 
phrey's Clock (Old Curiosity 
Shop, BaraabyRudge, and other 
Tales} 3 V. Pictures from Italy I v. 
The Battle of Life; the Haunted 
Man I V. Dombey and Son 3 v. 
David Copperfield 3 v. Bleak 
House 4 T. A Child's History 
of England {z v. S° M. 1,70.) 
Mud Times i 1. Littk Donit 4 t. 
A Tale of two Qtiei i t. Hunud 
Down ; The Uncomniercial TrtTsIer 



T^prUtef tath vtlatm* ii 1 Mark 60 P/mnige, 



Cttlatien of British Author] Tauchiult EdUiat 



mai Storiei i r. Our Uutukl Frie 
4T. Somebody'i LuggBCi: Mn. t 

Legacy i r. Doclor Munswld'i P 
loTplioni: MugbrjunetioB .V. ) 
Thoroughfsn iv. TheMyilenr ofl 
wInDroodiy. TbeUndfiwFiipcn I 
Vul4 HomohcMWord.,^D«li t. 
Takl, Md John Fouler. 

Charles Dickens : TheLetters 
of Chailes DiclteM edilsd by hi> Sb- 

B, Disraeli {Lord Beacons- 
field) ; Coningsby I v. Sybil l v. 
ConUrioi Fleming {w. port. ) I v. 
Alroy ly. Tancred 2 v. Veaeliaa v. 
Vivian Grey ay-HentiettaTemple 
IV. I^thairzv, Endvmionav. 

W. Hepworth Dixon : Per. 

■onal Hiitory ot Lord Bacdd i v. 
Tlic Hal^ Lind , s V. Nev Amctica 

J«iy-i ^. ._ , . . 
Hiitory of two Quet 



c Buulii' 



e Earl and the Doctoi 
South Sea Bubbles l v. 

Mrs. Edwardes : Archie Lo- 
vellsv. Steven Lawrence, Yeo- 
man z V. Ought we to Visit her! 

AT. A Va^sibond Hertsino I T, Leah; 

Stoddne I V, Jet; Hci F»« oi Her 
FertuneTTv. Viyun tho Beaucy i v. 

Miss Amelia B. Edwards; 
Barbara's History 2 v.MissCarew 

<T. Hand uid Glove I V. Haifa 
UQIion of Money i v. Debcaham'i 

UnDodden Fcslfi and uufrcqucnlcd 



Miss M. Be tliam-Ed wards ; 
The Sylveatres l v. Felicia 2 v. 
Brother Gabriel 2 v. Forestalled 



GeorgeEliot: Scenes ofCleri- 



and Brother Jacob i t. ImpreHiOni 
ofThcophiutuiSuohiT. 

Mrs-EUiot; Diary of an Idle 
Woman in Italy 1 t. Old Court Life 
in Fiance 1 v. The Italiani 3 v. 

Essays and Reviews 1 v. 

Estelle Russell 3 v. 

Expiated 3 v. 

G. M. Fenn: The Parson 
0' DumiimI i t. The Qcrii of Piat- 
nickiv. 

Fie Iding : The History of Tom 

Five Centuries of the English 
Language and literature I v, 

A.Forbes: MyExperiencesof 
the War bemreen Franco and Gcinuiny 
Scribbling 1 V. 



lenng and Scribblin 
"DaHy Nem," Wi 



See alio 

Mrs. Forrester: Viva 2 v. 
Rhona 2 v. Roy and Viola 2 v. 

JohnForster: Life of Charles 
■icbeufiT. Life andTimca of Olivu 
k.ld.miOi 1 T 

Jessie FothergiU: The First 

Maired and "One ofThcee" i v. Kith 

"FotindDead," Author of— 
vide James Fayn. 

Frank Fairlegh a v. 

E. A. Freeman: The Growth 
of the English Consiilnlion it. Select 
HisloricarEnaya . v. 

Lady G, Fullerton: Elien 
Utddleton I V. GnDtley Manor e v. 
Lady-Bird »v. Too Sliange not to l>e 
Troe a t. Conituce SbETWDcd n v. 
Astormylife av. Un.Genld'al^iece 
- The Notary'i Dau^tcr - - ■^- 



Ulie. of the Valley 



. The Counteu 



The finer of each vehant it I Mcark 60 PJmnigi. 



CtllKtiait cfBriHik Autkort TaucAnili Editim. 



Mrs. Gaskell: Mwy Barton 
IV. Ruth IV. North ond South 
IV. LUzieLeLgh I V. TIieLifeof 
Charlotte Bronte 3 v. Lois the 
Witch IV. Sylvia's Lovers 2v. ^ 
Dark Night's Work I v. Wive: 
and Daughters 3 V, Cranfoid iv 
Cousin PhUlia, and other Tales 

RightHon.W.E.GIadstone : 

Rome and the newest Fashions in 
Religion IT. Bulgarian Horrors; 
Russia inTnrkistan iv. The Hel- 
lenic Faciorm die SutErnPnihlcDiir. 

Goldsmith: Select Works; 
The Vicar of Wakefield; Poems; 
Dramas (w. portrait) i v. 

Mrs. Gore: Castles in the Air 

', ITw Dean'fl Daughl* " " 



Miss Grant : Victor Lescar 3 v. 

The Sim-Mad 1 V. My Htart". in 
the Highland! 1 t. Ajtiite a v. 

W. A. Baillie Grohman: 
Tyrol and the Tyrolese i v. 

"Guy Livingstone," Author 

of— Gu7 IJviasifone i t. Svord and 
Gown I T. Bdiren Honour 1 -w. Border 
and BudSe T T. Mauri» DencE 1 v. 
'Suu Mcrci ■ v. BrenSdns h Bulterflr 
.T. Anttro.iv. Hapirews.. 

J. Habberton: Helen's Ba- 
bies& Other People's Children I v. 

Mrs. S.C Hall: Can Wrong 
be Rightt i v. Marian 2 v. 

Thomas Hardy: The Hand 

ofElhslbenasT, Fnr Inm the Mad- 
ding Croird a v. Tlis Return of the 
Nafivsiv. The Tr^lmpe^M^^<l^ 3 V. 

A^es Hamson; Martin's 
Vineyard I v. 

Bret Harte: Prose and Poetry 
(Talu of the AipinauU: Spaniih 
uid American Lafcndt; Condensed 



(laMelConniyiT. Tm) Men of Sandy 



- .-ireKofRedDogi.. 

SirRHavclock, by the Rev. 
W, Brock, I V. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne; The 

Scvlec Letter i 



P««B=' fn"! 






"Heir ofRedclyffe," Author 
of— vide Yonge. 

Sir Arthur Helps: Friendsin 
Conncil 2 v. Ivan de Biron 3 v. 

Mrs. Hemans: The Select 
Poetical Works i v. 

Mrs. CashelHoey: AGoIden 
Sorrow 2 v. Out of Court 3 v. 

Household Words conducted 
by Ch. Dickens. 1851-56. 36 v. 
Novels and Tales reprinted 
from Households Words by Ch. 
Dickens. 1856-59. Ilv. 

Miss Howard : One Summer 1 v. 
Amit Serena i t. 

■ W. D.Howells: A Forgone 
Conclusion I v. The Lady of the 
Aroostook I V. 

Thos.Hughes: TomBtown'5 
School Days I v. 

Jeanlngelow: Off the Skd- 
Ue!3v. Poemia.. Fated to be Free it. 
Sirah de Berenger a y. 

Washington Irving: Skelcii 
Book (w. portrait) I v. Life of 
Mahomet l v. Successors of Ma. 
hornet I V. Oliver Goldsmith I v. 
Chronielet of Wcdferfl Rooit i v. 
Lite of Gcorg;e 'WubinfftoD 5 *. 

G.P.R. James: MorleyEm- 
■lein (w.ponnuOir. ForutDayitv. 
ThoFilieHeiriv. ArabeIl»Stu»rti». 
RoH d'AUnt I T. Anah NeD i t. 



Thiprici of taek veUatu is I JIfari 60 I^tJt/i^ ' 



Ci^UctioH ofBritiih Authors TanehniH Edition. 



Afincoun i v. Ths Smuggler . 
Tho Stcp-Moihor a y. Beiuchs 



5°A^'i 



!ir The» 






leConvi 






Henry James, Jr.: The 

American 2 v. The Europeans 
I V. Daisy Miller 1 v. Roderick 
HndMQ 3 >. The MadDnna of the 
Fnture, <lc. t t. Eugene Piclcering, 
etc. I V. Confidence 1 v. Wiuhiiiglon 

J.CordyJcaffreson: ABook 
about Doctors a v. A Woman in 
Spite of herself a v. 

Mrs.Jenkin: "Who Breaks— 
Pays"lT. Skirmishing IV. Once 
and Afiain Z v. Two French 
Marriageslv. WilhinanAceir. 
Jnpiter'a Daughters i v. 

Edward Jenkins; Ginx's Ba- 
by ; Lord Bantam 3 t. 

"Jennie of 'the Prince's,'" 
Author of— Tiide Mrs. Buxton. 

Douglas Jerrold; The His- 
tory ofSt. Giles and St.Jimesav. 
Men of Character a v. 

"John Halifax," Author of^ 
vidt Mr^. Ciaik. 

"Johnny Ludlow," Author 
ai—iiidt Mrs. Wood. 

Johnson: The Lives of the 
English Poets i v. 

Emily Jolly ; Colonel Dacie 2v. 

"Joshua Davidson, "Author 
of— vide E. Lynn Linton. 

MissKavanagh; Nathalie it. 
Daiiv Buma 9 V. Gf«cfi Lee 9 v. 
(1(13 3*. ASum- 



Richel nray 1 *. 
mer ufl Wintei ia 






Sybil's Second Love > v. Don 
Silvia >v. Beureev, John Da 
}T. TvotiliaeaT. FcTget-me-nDj 



Annie Keary; Oldbury a v. 
Castle Daly a t. 

Kempis: vide Thomas a 
Kempis. 

R.B. Kimball: Sunt Leger 

1 V. Romance of Student Life 
abroad l v. Undercurrents I v. 
WasheSuccessfult IV. To-Day 
in New- York i v. 

A.W.Kinglakc: Eolheniv. 
Invasion of the Crimea v. I-IO. 

Charles Kingsley: Ycastir. 
Westward ho I a v. Two Years 

aeo^T. Kypatia ■ V. AttoD Locke 1 V. 

Ifeieinird the Wake 1*. AtLutav. 

Charles Kingsley: H is Letters 

ud Memotiei ofhii life edited by 

Henry Kingsley: Ravenshoe 
2v. Aiistin Elliot IV, The Re- 

coUecdDOA of GcdJ1t7 Handyn 9 v. 
The HJlyail and the Rurtoni 9 v 
Leighton Court i v. V^enlin i i 
Oakihou Cutis IT. RegioildKelhi 
rem e v. Thf Grange GaTden a v. 

MayLaffan: Flitters, Tatters, 
and the Cotnuellor, etc. i v. 

CharlesLarab: TheEssaysof 
Elia and Eliau i t. 

MaryLaii^on: IdaMay iv. 

"Last of the Cavaliers," 
Author of— Last of the Cavaliers 

2 V. The Gain of a Loss 2 v. 
Holme Lee: vide Miss Parr. 
S.LeFanu: Unde Silas 2 v. 

Wait for the 



Lyie, 






. Golden 



Charles Lever: The O'Do- 
noghueiv. The Knight of Gwynno 
3 V. Arthur O'Lesry 2 v. The 
Confessions of Harry Lorreqner 
2t. Charles O'Malley 3 V. Tom 
Burkeof "Ours"3v. JackHin- 



7%t prite a/ auhvolitme it i AfarkUtJ^mmigt. 



CoBecthH o/Britiih Authors TtmektaH S 



ton 3 V. The Daltoos 4 v. The 
Dodd Family abroad 3 y. The 
HbtIIds of Cro' Martin 3 v. The 
PoitoQci of Gleocorc 2 v, Ro- 
land Caihel 3 T. DKvenport 
DuiLD 3 T. Con Ci^an 2 v. 
One of Them 3 T. Maurice Ticr- 
naj 2 T. Sir Jasper Caiew z t. 
Barrington a v. A Day's Ride : 
a life's Romance 2 v. Lattiell 
of Airan 3 v. Tony Butler 3 v. 
Sir Brook Fossbrooke z t. The 
Bramleigbs of Bishop's Folly zv- 
A Reait in a Cloud i v. That Boy 
of Norcolt's I V. St. Patrick's 
Eve ; Paul Gosslett's Confessions 
I V. Lord Kilgobbin 3 v. 

G.H.Lewes: Rantborpeiv. 
Physiology of Common Life 3 v. 
On Actors and the Art of Acting I v. 

£. Lynn Linton: Joshoa Da- 
vidson iv. FatridaKemballXv. 
AtonemcDtof LeamDoudas zv. 
TheWorldwellLostav. Under 
which Lord? 3 V, With a Silken 
Thieadeu. IT. TodhnnLen'alLouiiii' 
Head etc. 1 v. " My Lov« J " a v. 

Laurence W. M. Lockhart; 
Mine is Thine 3 v. 
Longfellow: Poetical Works 

(w. poitrail) 3 T. The Divuia ComEdy 
of Dula AbEhicri 3 t. Thg New- 
EogUnd Toi^i " — " 

1- J.. ,, J 

M.Lonsdale; Sister Dora iv. 

A Lost Battle 2 v. 

LutfuUah: Antobii^rapbyof 
Lutfiillah, bj Eastwick l r. 

Lord Lytton: vidi Bulwer. 

Robert Lord Lytton (Owen 
Meredith): Poems 3 v. Fables 

Lorn Macaulay: Hittmy of 



England (w.portrut) lov. Criti- 
cal and Historical Emays 5 v. Lays 
of Ancient Rome I V. Speeches 
3 T. Biographical Essays t v. 
WilliiunPitt,Atlerbnry ir. (See 
also Trevelyan). 

Justin McCarthy: Waterdale 



Forbb ofKowBlea 9 V. Anaala of a 
Qiucr TieifhbourTiood a r- David 
EJginhrad a v. ThB Vicaz't Duigb. 
uciv. Malcolm IT. St. Geunre ud 
SLUichuliT. ThcMuqirisofLoude 
■ r. Sir GibbiB IV. Uary Muitoa a v. 

Mrs.Mackamess: Sunbeam 
Stories IV. A Peerless Wife zv. 
A Mingled Yam z v. 

CharlesMcKnight: OldFoit 
Dnquesne 3 v. 

Nonnan Macleod: llMold 
Lieutenant and bis Son I v. 

Mis. Macquoid: Patty 2 v. 
Miriam's Hom^^ 3 t. Pictnies 
across the Channd 2 v. Too 
Soon I V. My Story 3 V. Diane 3 v. 
Beside the River 3 v. 

"Mademoiselle Mori," Au- 
thorof — Mademoiselle Mori z V. 
Denise i v. Madame Fontenoy 
IV, OntheEdgeoftheStormiv, 
The Atelier du Ly« z v. 

Lord Mahon : vide Stanhope. 
E. S. Maine: Scaiscliff Rocks 

R.BlachfordMansfiBld: The 

CapLMarryat: Jacob Faith- 
fiil (w. portrait) i v. Percival 
Keene I v. Pelcr Simple I v. 
Japhet I v. Honsieur Violet i v. 
The Settleit i t. The Missitm 



Thtfrict of taei volume it I Mark 60 lyimmiff. 



CtUictwa of British Aulhort TautknitK EdiHm. 



I V. The Piivateet's-Maii 

The Children of the Nev -Forest 

I V. Valerie l v. Mr. Midshipman 

Easy t V. The Kii^s Own i v, 

Florence Marryat ; Love's 

ConJlicI s T. For Ever and Eie 
I V. The COnlcuioiu of GEiald 
Eucoutl 9 T. Nelljr BiwVi 9 r. 
V^onique 3 t, Petrontl 9 v. Hot 
LordandMasKr av. TTie Pity of Ihe 



Godiii 



F^ghdng [he Air 3 V. A Star and 
Ucut I V. The Pouon ofAspi I V. 
Lacl:y DiB»ppoinLiceDt i -9. My 01 
Child 9 >. HeiFather'iNamtiv. 
.« of Wild OttiE I V. A Lit 
Slepmn i t. Wrillen in Fir* a 

The Roul of alt 



Mrs.Marsh: RavenscMe2 
Emilia Wyndham 2 v. Castle 
Avoniv. Anbreyzv, TheHeiress 
of Haughton 2 V. Evelyn Marston 
z V, The Rose of Ashurst a v. 

Emma Marshall: Mrs.Maic- 
waring's Journal 1 v. 

Helen Mothers: "Cheny 

Kipel" 9 v. "laiido' Ihe Leal" 1 t. 
Mj- Lady Green Slmve. 9 v. 

Mehalab i v. 

Whyte Melville: Kate Cov- 
entry I V. Holmby Hoose 2 v. 
Digby Gr»nd i -1. Good fbi No- 
dung 9 v. The Queen's Maries 9 v. 
The Glsidiatofi 9 v. The Ibiwkes 
of BiidlcDiao 9 V. Ceme 9 v. The 
Interpieter > v. The While ~ 



M. o 



gHaz. 



.^almhand; t 






9 1. Black ba[ Comely 9 •. Ridii^f 
Kecolltctiou I V. 

George Meredith: Tho Or- 
deal of Fevere] 9 *. Bcauchamp's 
Cuecrgv. The Tragic Comediajdif. 



Owen Meredith ; cii/f Robert 
Lord Lytton. 

Milton: Poetical Works i v. 
Miss FlorenceMontgomery : 

Uisundenbwil i t. Thrown Togelher 
9 V. Thnrtsd r v. wild Mike i r. 

"MoUy Bawn," Anthor of — 
Molly Bawn2v. Mrs. Geoffrey 2v. 

Moore: Poetical Works (w. 
portrait) 5 v. 

Lady Morgan's Memoirs 3 V. 

Henry Morley: Of English 
Literature in the Reifpi of 
Victoria. With Facsimiles of the 
Sigoatnres of Authors in the 
Tsnchnitz Edition [v. zooo]. 

E. C. GrenviOe :Murray : The 



of Today _ .. 
FreDcb Fictung in EngMih Chalk 
(and Seric) i y. Strange Tslei j 
That Altfid Vicar 9 v. 

" My little Lady," Author of— 
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