A foregone conclusion

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A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.
THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK.
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.
THE MINISTER'S CHARGE.
INDIAN SUMMER.
THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM.
A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY.
A MODERN INSTANCE.
A WOMAN'S REASON.
DR. BREEN'S PRACTICE.

A SEA CHANGE; OR, LOVE'S STOWAWAY. A Lyricated Farce.
THE SLEEPING CAR, AND OTHER FARCES.
THREE VILLAGES.
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A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT. A Comedy.
OUT OF THE QUESTION. A Comedy.
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Biographical Essays, by Mr. HOWELLS. 8 vols.
THE ELEVATOR : THE SLEEPING CAR : THE PARLOR CAR :

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SMOKING CAR, a Farce: BRIDE ROSES, a Scene: ROOM 45,

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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

BY

W. D. HOWELLS

AUTHOR OP "VENETIAN LIFE," "THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY"

MA CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE," ETC.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
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COPYRIGHT, 1874, 1902, AND 1916, BY W. D HOWELLS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A FOEEQONE CONCLUSION.

I.

As Don Ippolito passed down the long narrow
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 there 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 glan-
cing 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 sun-
shine 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 heard the gondoliers as they hoarsely jested to-
gether and gossiped, with the canal between them,
at the next gondola station.

The first tenderness of spring was in the air

ihough down in that calle there was yet enough of

1

2 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 polislied for
ornament with a handkerchief of white linen. He
restored each to a different pocket in the Bides of
the ecclesiastical talare, 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 with-
in. He paused abruptly, and, looking at the doors
he had passed, went back a few paces and stood be-
fore one over which hung, slightly tilted forward,
an oval sign painted with the effigy of an eagle, a
bundle of arrows, and certain thunderbolts, and
bearing the legend, CONSULATE or 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
ihrust 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
fche old woman.

Don Ippolito paused, apparently searching foi
his voice, before he inquired, " Is it here that th«
f /cnsul of America lives ? "

" Precisely."

" Is he perhaps at home ? "

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 8

M I don't know. I will go ask him."
" Do me that pleasure, dear," said Don Ippolito,
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 climbed
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.
"Signor Console," said the old woman, "behold
the gentleman who desired to see you ; " and at the
same time Don Ippolito, having removed his broad,
stiff, three-cornered hat, came forward and made a
beautiful bow. He had lost for the moment the
trepidation which had marked his approach 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 silken gon-
dola flags above the consular bookcase, where with
their gilt lance-headed staves, and their vivid stara
%nd stripes, they made a very pretty effect. He
filliped 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 othei

4 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

men under the folds of the national banner. Mr.
Ferris had the prejudice of all Italian sympathizer!
against the priests ; but for this he could hardly
have found anything in Don Ippolito to alarm dis
like. His face was a little thin, and the chin was
delicate ; the nose had a fine, Dantesque curve, but
its final droop gave a melancholy cast to a counte-
nance 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
transparent 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 little 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
turned 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 little canals."

" Oh, without doubt."

"Here there must be constant amusement in
watching the boats : great stir, great variety, great
life. And now the fine season commences, and the
Signor Console's countrymen will be coming to
Venice. Perhaps," added Don Ippolito with a
polite dismay, and an air of sudden anxiety to

A FOKEGONE CONCLUSION. 5

escape from his own purpose, " I may be disturb-
ing or detaining the Signor Console ? "

" No," said Mr. Ferris ; " 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 hia
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 pass-
ports ? " he asked.

"Sometimes," replied Mr. Ferris, with a cloud-
ing face.

Don Ippolito seemed to note the gathering dis-
*rust and to be helpless against it. He continued
hastily : " Could the Signor Console give a pass-
port for America ... to me ? "

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

" American 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," hf

5 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

explained t " that no government can give passport*
to foreign subjects. That would be an unheard-of
thing."

" But I thought that to go to America an Amer-
ican 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 pass-
port 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 you over the frontier at Peschiera.
You must have a passport from the Austrian Lieu-
tenancy of Venice,"

Don Ippolito nodded his head softly several times
and said, " Precisely," and then added with an in-
describable weariness, " Patience ! Signor Console,
I 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
feeling himself on the safe side of his visitor Le
meant to know why he had come on such an errand,
,*r whether he had some kindlier motive, he could
hardly have told himself, but he said, " I 'm very
K>rry. Perhaps there is something else in which I
ixrald be of use to you,"

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

A FOBEGONE CONCLUSION. 7

" I am not an excellency," interrupted Mr. Ferria,
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, pla •
cing his hand over that pocket in which he kept his
linen handkerchief. " I had something that it had
come into my head to offer your honored govern-
ment 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 for-
eigners. 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 consul a brigadier-generalship in
the Federal armies, 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 ar-
rived. They were beautiful men, with the com-
plexion of blonde girls; tneir uniforms fitted like
kid gloves ; the pale blue, or pure white, or huzzar
black of their coats was ravishingly set off by their
••ed or gold trimmings; and they were hard to
make understand that brigadiers of American birth

8 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

swarmed at Washington, and that if they went
thither, they must go as soldiers of fortune at theil
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, abhorrent of their uniforms and doubtful of
the consul's political sympathies. Only yesterday
she had called him up at an unwonted hour to re-
ceive 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 Parma.
Shabby, hungry, incapable exiles of all nations, re-
ligions, and politics beset him for places of honor
and emolument in the service of the Union ; revolu-
tionists out of business, and the minions of banished
despots, were alike willing to be 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
North could employ successfully in cases where ita
batteries were in danger of captnre by the Span-
iards."

44 Spaniards ? Spaniards ? We have no war witk
Spain I " cried the consul.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 9

44 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 un-
derstand," said Don Ippolito meekly ; whereupon
Mr. Ferris enlightened him in a formula (of which
he was beginning to be weary) against European
misconception of the American situation. Don Ip-
polito 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 against the Southerners as the
South Americans. Let me see it, please ; " and
then Don Ippolito, with a gratified smile, drew from
his pocket the neatly finished 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
improvement for restoring the breech to its place,
which is original. The grand feature of my inven-
tion, however, is this secret chamber in the breech,
which is intended to hold an explosive of high po-
tency, 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

10 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

seizes the gun the contents of the secret chamber
explode, demolishing the piece and destroying its
captors."

The dreamy warmth in Don Ippolito's deep eyea
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 fumes of battle, or titillating his nostrils
with grains of gunpowder. He was at least in full
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
Console I " he said.

" It 's certainly very curious," said Mr. Ferris,
turning the fearful toy over in his hand, and ad-
miring the neat workmanship of it. " Did you
make this model yourself ? "

44 Surely," answered the priest, with a joyous
pride ; " I have no money to spend upon artisans ;
and besides, as you might infer, signore, I am not
very well seen by my superiors and associates on
account of these little amusements of mine ; so I
keep them as much as I can to myself. " Don Ippo-
lito laughed nervously, and then fell silent with his
eyes intent upon the consul's face. " What do you
think, signore ? " he presently resumed. " If thig
invention were brought to the notice of your gen-
erous government, would it not patronize my labors *
I have read that America is the land of enterprise*

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 11

Who knows but your government might invite mo
co take service under it in some capacity in which
I could employ those little gifts that Heaven"—-
He paused again, apparently puzzled by the com-
passionate smile on the consul's lips. " But tell rae»
•ignore, 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 fre-
quent discharges of the piece as to go off prema-
turely sometimes, and kill our own artillerymen in-
stead of waiting for the secessionists ? "

Don Ippolito's countenance fell, and a dull
shame displaced the exultation that had glowed in
it. His head sunk on 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 any-
thing more of the matter than you do, and I don't
undertake to say whether your invention is disabled
by the possibility I suggest or not. Have n't you
any acquaintances among the military, to whom
you could show your model ? "

" No," answered Don Ippolito, coldly, u I don't
eonsort with the military. Besides, what would be
thought of a priest" he asked with a bitter stress
jo. the word, " who exhibited such an invention M
that "jO an officer of our paternal government ? "

12 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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

44 I have attempted a great many," replied Don
Ippolito in a tone of dejection.

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

44 No," said Don Ippolito, blushing a little,
44 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 at-
tempts had 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 op-
eration, they would 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, sibi-
lant breath between his shut teeth, nodded to him-
•elf thrice, and turning to Mr. Ferris with a melan-
choly bow, said, u Signer Console, I thank you
infinitely for your kindness, I beg your pardon for
the disturbance, and I take my leave."

"I am sorry," said Mr. Fen-is. "Let us sec

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 18

each other again. In regard to the inventions, —
well, you must have patience." He dropped into
gome 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 replied 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 slen-
der stock of English to him, for the sake of practice,
as they told him ; but there were peculiarities in
Don Ippolito's accent for which he could not ac-
count. " What," he exclaimed, " do you know
English?"

** I have studied it a little, by my myself,"
answered Don Ippolito, pleased to have his Eng-
lish recognized, 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."

" Oh ! " said Mr. Ferris, with relief, "I see ; "
and he perceived that what had puzzled him in Don
Ippolito'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."

14 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

" Um ! " said Mr. Ferris, " that was practical, xl
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
R 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 corner ; on the walls scraps of
stamped leather, rags of tapestry, desultory sketches
on paper.

Mr. Fen-is came out again, brushing his hat.

44 The Signor Console amuses himself with paint-
ing, I see," said Don Ippolito courteously.

44 Not at all," replied Mr. Ferris, putting on hia
gloves ; 44 1 am a painter by profession, and I amuse
myself with consuling; "l 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

1 Since these words of Mr. Ferris were first printed, I have been told
that a more eminent painter, namely Rubens, made very much the sa-ne
reply to very much the same remark, when Spanish Ambassador in
England. "The Ambassador of His Catholic Majesty, I see, amusw
nimself by painting sometimes," said a visitor who found him at hit
easel. "I amuse myself by playing the ambassador sometimes," aa-
*wered Ruoens. In spite of the similarity of the speeches, I let that of
Mr. Ferris stand, for I am satisfied that he did not know how unbaa*
imely Rabeng had taken the words out of his mouth.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. o

day painting in New York, it occurred to him to
make use of a Congressional friend, and ask for
Borne Italian consulate, he did not care which. That
of Venice happened to be vacant : the income was
a few hundred dollars ; as no one else wanted it,
no question was made of Mr. Ferris's fitness for
the post, and he presently found himself possessed
of a commission requesting the Emperor of Austria
to permit him to enjoy and exercise the office of
consul of the ports of the Lombardo- Venetian king-
dom, to which the President of the United States
appointed him from a special trust in his abilities
and integrity. He proceeded 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 neigh-
borhood, lounging away their leisure, as the Vene-
tian fashion is, at the local pharmacy.

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

" The Consul of America with a priest ? " d»-
vanded a grave old man, a physician with a beauti-

16 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

ful silvery beard, and a most reverend anl senatorial
presence, but one of the worst tongues in Venice,
" Oh I " he added, with a laugh, after scrutiny of
the two through his glasses, " it 's that crack-brain
Don Ippolito Rondinelli. He is n'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 JHst now. Or
maybe he 's been posing to him for a picture. He
would make a very pretty Joseph, give him Poti-
phar's wife in the background," said the doctor, who
if not maligned would have needed much more to
make a Joseph of him.

n.

MB. FERRIS took his way through the devioui
footways 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 speck-
less 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 presently began to think of him
with a little disgust, as people commonly think of
one whom they pity and yet cannot help, and he
made haste to cast off the hopeless burden. Ho
shrugged his shoulders, struck his stick on the
imooth 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 casements.
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 narrowness
of the streets, of the good-humored jostling and
pushing; he crouched into an arched doorway to
let a water-carrier pass with her copper buckets
a

18 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 hero and a shov*
there forgave themselves, laughing, with " We are
in Venice, signori ; " 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 cana-
ries and the songs of the golden-billed blackbirds
wnose cages hung at lattices far overhead. 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, together 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 he had sent his card. He turned at
the sound of drifting drapery, and could not forbear
placing the hyacinths in the hand of Miss Florida
Vervain, who had come into the room to receiyt

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 19

She was a, girl of about seventeen years, who
looked older ; she was tall rather than short, and
rather full, — 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 awkwardness 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
army, whose complexion his daughter had inher-
ited, 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 to-
gether with the tropical name he had bestowed in
honor of the State where he had fought the Semi-
noles in his youth, and where he chanced still to be
stationed when she was born ; 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, which would have struck
the close observe! in Miss Vervain.

44 Delicious ! " she saidv in a deep voice, which

20 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

conveyed something of this anxiety in its guai-ded
tones, and yet was not wanting in a kind of frank-
ness. " Did you mean them for me, Mr. Ferris ? '

c* I did n'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 hyacinths, with their smooth textures and their
pure colors, harmonized well with Miss Vervain, aa
she bent her face over them and inhaled their full,
rich perfume.

" I will put them in water," she said, " if you '11
excuse me a moment. Mother will be down di-
rectly."

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

Mrs. Vervain was gracefully, fragilely unlike hei
daughter. She entered with a gentle and gliding
step, peering near-sightedly about through her
glasses, and laughing triumphantly when she had
determined Mr. Ferris's exact position, where he
Btood 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 widow-
hood, and she had an unaffected naturalness of
manner which even at her age of forty-eight could
not be called less than charming. She 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

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 21

Mr. Ferris," she said, giving him a friendly hand,
u and I suppose you are letting us encroach upon
very valuable time. I 'm quite ashamed to take it.
But is n't it a heavenly day ? What / call a per-
fect day, just right every way ; none of those dis-
agreeable extremes. It 's so unpleasant to have it
too hot, for instance. I *m the greatest person foi
moderation, Mr. Ferris, and I carry the principle
into everything ; but I do think the breakfasts 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
ought n't to think of such a thing as eating, in a
place like Venice, all poetry ; but a sound mind in
a sound body, I 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 every-
where. But I 'm always afraid the gondoliers
cheat us ; and in the stores I never feel safe a mo-
ment — not a moment. I do think the Venetians
are lacking in truthfulness, a little. I don't be-
lieve they understand our American fairdealing
and sincerity. I should n't want to do them injus-
tice, but I really think they take advantages in
oargaining. Now such a thing even as corals.
Florida is extremely fond of them, and we bought
ft set yesterday in the Piazza, and I know we paid
too much for them. Florida," said Mrs. Vervain,

22 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

for her daughter had reentered the room, and stood
with some shawls and wraps upon her arm, pa-
tiently waiting for the conclusion of the elder lady's
speech, *' I wish you would bring down that set oi
corals. I 'd like Mr. Ferris to give an unbiased
opinion. I 'm sure we were cheated."

" I don't know anything about corals, Mrs. Ver-
vain," 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 gratify your artistic taste."

Miss Vervain hesitated with a look of desire to
obey, and of doubt whether 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 us be off
at once, then," she said ; and when they stood on
the landing-stairs of the hotel : " What gloomy
things these gondolas are I " 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 hand on in stepping aboard ;
* I wondei they don't paint them some cheerful
tolor."

" Blue, or pink, Mrs. Vervain ? " asked Mr.
Ferris. " I knew you were coming to that ques-
tion ; they all do. But we need n't have the top
on at all, if it depresses your spirits. We shall be
nwt warm enough in the open sunlight."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 23

" Well, have it off, then. It sends the cold chills
Drer 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. Ver-
vain. Bat I knew he had to come. He called it
a coffin 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 I 've certainly had enough of funerals
never to want to have anything to do with another,
as long as I live."

She settled herself luxuriously upon the feather*
stuffed leathern cushions when the cabin was re-
moved. 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 husband had been dead
six years. All these bereavements 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 married in my mourning for my last sister.
It did seem a little too much when she went, Mr.
Ferris. I was too young to feel it so much about
the others but we were nearly of the same age, and

24 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

fchat m.'ikes a difference, 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 go(t married; though, to be sure,
there was no brother left after Marian."

Miss Vervain heard her f mother's mortuary
prattle with a face from which no impatience of it
could be inferred, and Mr. Ferris made no com-
ment on what was oddly various in character and
manner, for Mrs. Vervain touched upon the gloom-
iest facts ot her history with a certain impersonal
statistical interest. They were rowing across the
lagoon to the Island of San Lazzaro, where for rea-
sons of her own she intended to venerate the con-
vent in which Byron studied the Armenian lan-
guage preparatory to writing his gruat 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, disheveled
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 apostles in Titian's Assumption. Here
and there was a boat, with a boy or an old man
asleep in the bottom of it. The gulls sailed high,
white flakes against the illimitable blue of the heav-
ens ; the air, though it was of early spring, and in
the shade had a salty pungency, was here almost

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 26

languorously warm ; in the motionless splendors
and rich colors of the scene there was a melancholy
before which Mrs. Vervain fell fitfully silent. No*
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, &
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 left the Public Gardens showed a mass of
hovering green ; far beyond and above, the ghost-
like 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 mur-
mured among the crocuses and hyacinths under the
noonday sun. 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 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 eye-
glasses abandoned her nose with a vigorous leap*

26 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

she gave an amiable laugh, and groping for them
over her dress, bowed at random as Mr. Ferris pre-
sented Padre Girolamo.

" I 've been admiring this painting so much, Pa-
dre Girolamo," she said, with instant good- will, and
taking the monk into the easy familiarity of her
friendship by the tone with which she spoke hifl
name. " Some of the brothers did it, I suppose."

" Oh no,?r said the monk, " it 's a Chinese paint-
ing. We hung it up there because it was given to
us, and was curious."

" Well, now, do you know," returned Mrs. Ver-
vain, " I thought it was Chinese ! Their things are
BO odd. But really, in an Armenian convent it 's
very misleading. I don't think you ought to leave
it there ; it certainly does throw people off the
track," she added, subduing the expression to some-
thing very lady-like, by the winning appeal with
which she used it.

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

" You 're joking ! " cried Mrs. Vervain, looking
at him with a graciously amused air. " There are
no Chinese convents. To be sure those rebels are
a kind of Christians," she added thoughtfully, " but
there can't be many of them left, poor things, hun-
dreds of them executed 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 nerv

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 27

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 carne after with her
daughter, 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, and 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 diges-
tion, 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 ! You must 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 could n't have seen his cell, if
he'd had one, Mrs. Vervain. They don't admit
ladies to the cloister."

" What nonsense I " answered Mrs. Vervain, ap-
parently regarding this as another of Mr. Ferris's
pleasantries ; but Padre Girolamo silently confirmed
bis statement, and she briskly assailed the rule an a

28 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

disrespect to the sex, which reflected 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 speak-
ing with Ferris, of whom he seemed an old friend,
he led them through the garden environing the con-
vent, to a little pavilion perched on the wall that
defends the island from the tides of the lagoon. A
lay-brother presently followed them, bearing a tray
with coffee, toasted rusk, and a jar of that conserve
of rose-leaves which is the convent's delicate hospi-
tality to favored guests. Mrs. Vervain cried out
over the poetic confection when Padre Girolamo
told her what it was, and her daughter suffered her-
self to express a guarded pleasure. The amiable
matron brushed the crumbs of the baicolo from hei
lap when the lunch was ended, and fitting on hex
glasses leaned forward for a better look at tho
monk's black-bearded face. "I'm perfectly de-
lighted," 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
Lazzaro. I came here when I was very young, and
She greater part of my life has been passed on thia
little island. It is my home — my country."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 29

w Do you never go away ?"

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

" And you've never been to America yet ? Well
now, I '11 tell you ; you ought to go. You would
like it, I know, and our people would give you a
very cordial reception."

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

Ferris broke into a laugh. " I don't believe Pa-
dre Girolamo would come in quality of distinguished
foreigner, Mrs. Vervain, and I don't think he'd
know what to do with one of our cordial recep-
tions."

" Well, he ought to go to America, any way.
He can't really know anything about us till he 'a
been there. Just think how ignorant the English
are of our country 1 You will come, won't you ?
I should be delighted 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. She rose
as she spoke, and led the way back to the gondola.
She told Padre Girolamo that they were to be some
weeks in Venice, and made him promise to break-
fast with them at their hotel. She smiled and
aodded to him after the boat had pushed off, and
fcept him bowing on the landing-stairs.

•4 What a lovely place, and what a perfectly heav-

80 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

enly morning you have given us, Mr. Ferris I We
never can thank you enough for it. And now, do
you know what I 'm thinking of? 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 fond of the place, and we 'd quite con-
cluded, this morning, to stop here till the mosqui-
toes 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 have n't a
chick or a child that's related to us anywhere. But
wherever we stop, even for 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 suppose
I should do the same thing over again if it was to
be done over ; but don't you see, my mind was n't
properly formed ; and then following my husband
about from pillar to post, and my first baby born
when I was nineteen — well, it was n't education,
»t any rate, whatever else it was ; and I 've deter-
mined that Florida, though we are such a pair ol
wanderers, shall not have my regrets. I got teaob

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 81

ere for her in England, — the English are nst any-
thing like so disagreeable 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 lan-
guage 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 referred
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
BO much common-sense. " It 's certainly very good
in the abstract," he added, with a glance at the
daughtei, as if the sense must be hers. She did
not meet his glance at once, but with an impatient
recognition 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 white-
ness, and letting her fingers trail through the cool
water ; she dried them on ber handkerchief, and
then bent her eyes full upon him as if challenging
him to think this unlady-like.

82 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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

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

" Mother ! " began Miss Vervain ; and then she
checked herself.

Ferris gave a vengeful laugh. " Really, Mrs.
Vervain, 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 sorry for those
poor fellows, too."

" To be sure, they are to be pitied, of course, and
J feel for them ; I did when I was a girl ; for the
same thing used to happen then. I don't know why
Florida should be subjected to such embarrassments,
too. It does seem sometimes as if it were some-
thing in the blood. They all get the idea that you
lave money, you know."

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

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 33

" 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
itay 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 try-
ing. Now, when I was talking with that nice monk
of yours at the convent, there, I couldn't help
thinking how perfectly delightful it would be if
Florida could have him for a teacher. Why could n't
ahe ? He told me that he would come to take break-
fast or lunch with us, but not dinner, for he always
had to be at the convent before nightfall. Well,
he might come to give the lessons sometime in the
middle of the day."

44 You could n't manage it, Mrs. Vervain, I know
you could n't," answered Ferris earnestly. 44 I 'm
sure the Armenians never do anything of the kind.
They 're all very busy men, engaged in ecclesias-
tical or literary work, and they could n't give the
time."

4 Why not? There was Byron."

" But Byron went to them, and he studied Ar-
menian, not Italian, with them. Padre Girolamo
ipeaks perfect Italian, for all that I can see ; but I
doubt if he 'd undertake to impart the native ac-
oent, which is what you want. In fact, the scheme
.8 altogether impracticable."

44 Well," said Mrs. Vervain ; c I 'm exceedingly
lorry. I had quite set my heart on it. I never
3

54 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

took 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. " Padre Girolamo does n't
shower those syruped rose-leaves indiscriminately
upon visitors."

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

She had been by marriage so long in the seivic*
of the United States that she still regarded iti
agents as part of her own domestic economy. Con-
suls she everywhere employed as functionaries spe-
cially appointed to look after the interests of Amer-
ican ladies traveling without protection. In the
week which had passed since her arrival in Venice,
there had been no day on which she did not appeal
to Ferris for help or sympathy or advice. She took
amiable possession of him at once, and she had es-
tablished an amusing sort of intimacy with him, to
which the haughty trepidations of her daughter set
certain bounds, but in which the demand that he
should find her a suitable Italian teacher seemed
trivially matter of course.

"Yes, I know several teachers," he said, after
thinking awhile ; " but they 're all open to the ol>
{ection of being human ; and besides, they all do
tilings in a set kind of way, and I 'in afraid thej

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 85

wouldn't enter into the spirit of any scheme of
Instruction that departed very widely from Ol-
lendorff." He paused, and Mrs. Vervain gave a
sketch of the different professional masters whom
she had employed in the various countries of her
iojourn, and a disquisition upon their several lives
and characters, fortifying her statements by refer-
ence of doubtful points to her daughter. This oc-
cupied some time, and Ferris 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 Eng-
lish priest straight from Dublin ; perhaps he might
do, Mrs. Vervain? 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 have n't the
least idea he would do. He belongs to the church
militant. He came to me with the model of a
breech-loading cannon he 's invented, and he want-
ed a passport to go to America, so that he might
offer his cannon to our government."

"How curious!" said Mrs. Vervain, and her
daughter looked frankly into Ferris's face. " But
I know ; it 's one of your jokes."

44 You overpraise me, Mrs. Vervain. If I could
make such jokes as that priest was, 1 should set

86 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 him-
self to Miss Vervain, who did not repulse him.
" He made me melancholy ; and his face haunts
me. I should like to paint him. Priests are gen-
erally such a snuffy, common lot. And I dare
Bay," he concluded, " he 's sufficiently commonplace,
too, though he did n'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 ab-
sent laugh, " that would make it very lively for the
Southerners — if they had it. Poor fellow ! I sup-
pose he came with high hopes of me, and expected
me to receive his invention with eloquent praises.
I 've no doubt he figured himself furnished not only
with a passport, but with a letter from me to Pres-
ident Lincoln, and foresaw his own triumphal entry
into Washington, and his honorable interviews with
the admiring generals of the Union forces, to whom
he should display his wonderful cannon. Too bad ,
is n't it?"

" And why did n't you give him the passport and
the letter ? " asked Mrs. Vervain.

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

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

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 87

'« I don't indeed."

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

" I don't know anything more about him. Be-
sides, there isn't time."

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

" Oh yes, there is," pleaded Mrs. Vervain, lay-
ing her hand on 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 Fer-
ris 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 waist-
coat and gravely presenting them. Miss Vervain
burst into a helpless laugh ; then she turned tow-
ard her mother with a kind of indignant tenderness,
and gently arranged her shawl so that it should not
drop off when she rose to leave the gondola. She
did not look again at Ferris, who resisted Mrs.
Vervain's entreaties to remain, and took leave as
*;»on as the gondola landed.

The ladies went to their room, where Florida
lifted from the table a vase of divers-colored hya-
cinths, and stepping out upon the balcony flung the

38 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

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 flow-
ers that were at all old."

" Oh, mother, don't speak to me ! " cried Miss
Vervain, 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 : Pestachiavi and Schulze,
both ; and that horrid old Fleuron."

" Did you think I liked any better on that ac-
count to have you talk it over with a stranger ? "
asked Florida, still angrily.

" That 's true, my dear," said Mrs. Vervain, pen-
itently. " But if it worried you, why did n't you
lo something to stop me ? Give me a hint, or just
a little knock, somewhere ? "

" No, mother ; I 'd rather not. Then you 'd
lave 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 '•

A IOREGONE CONCLUSION. 39

rtrange that you can't remembei how such things
torment me."

" I suppose it 's my weak health, dear," answered
the mother. " I did n't use to be so. But now I
don't really seem to have the strength to be sensi-
ble. I know it 's silly as well as you. The tali
just seems to keep going on of itself, — slipping out,
slipping out. But you need n't mind. Mr. 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 encouraged anybody. I think you 're
too haughty with him, Florida. And now, his
flowers."

" He 's detestable. He 's conceited and presum-
ing beyond all endurance. I don't care what he
thinks of me. But it's his manner towards you
that I can't tolerate."

" I suppose it 's rather free," said Mrs. Vervain*
" But then you know, my dear, I shall be soon get-
ting to be an old lady ; and besides, I always feel as
if consuls were a kind of one of the family. He 's
been very obliging since we came ; I don't know
what we should have done without him. And I
ion't object to a little ease of manner in the gen-
tlemen ; 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

IB if he He 'a insulting, and I hate

1"

40 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

"Do you mean that he thought your mothei
ridiculous, Florida?" asked Mrs. Vervain gravely.
" You must have misunderstood his looks ; indeed
you must. I can't imagine why he should. I re-
member that I talked particularly well during out
whole visit ; my mind was active, for I felt unusu-
ally strong, and I was interested in everything,
It 's nothing but a fancy of yours ; or your preju-
dice, Florida. But it 's odd, now I Ve sat down
for a moment, how worn out I feel. And thirsty."

Mrs. Vervain fitted 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 I 'm so drowsy of late. I suppose
it 's getting into the sea air here at Venice ; though
it's mountain air that makes you drowsy. But
you 're quite mistaken about Mr. Ferris. He is n't
capable of anything really rude. Besides, there
would n'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 I Ve said, mother ; let '
talk of something else."

The mother drew some loose threads of cht

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION 41

daughter'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, looking into the sleeping
face with an expression of strenuous, compassionate
devotion, mixed with a vague alarm and self-pity
and a certain wondering anxiety.

DON IPPOLITO had 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 work-
bench 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 hia
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
from the patrimony 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 purgatory, would at best have
barely sufficed to support him ; but he denied him-
telf everything save the necessary decorums of dress
%nd lodging ; he fasted like a saint, and slept hard
as a hermit, that he might spend upon these un-
grateful creatures oi his brain. They were the

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 43

work of his own hands, and so he saved the ex-
pense of their construction ; but there were many
little outlays for materials and for tools, which he
could not avoid, and with him a little was all.
They not only famished him ; they isolated him.
His superiors in the church, and his brother priests,
looked with doubt or 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
tc detect disaffection or indifference in him. But
bearing these things willingly, and living as fru-
gally as he might, he had still 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 slen-
der 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 him coffee when he came, and
that was a saving ; at the proper seasons little pres-
ents 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 it was
that the young girl was growing into a young

44 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

woman, and that he could not go on teaching hei
forever. 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 pa-
tience; 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
handsomely acknowledged.

He managed a whole year upon the proceeds,
and kept a cheerful spirit till the last soldo waa
spent, inventing 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 had no logical excuse for its delin-
quency. 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 pos-
sibilities to the names of Franklin, Fulton, and
Morse ; he was so ignorant of our politics and geog-
raphy as to suppose us at war with the South Amer-
ican Spaniards, but he knew that English was the
language of the North, and he applied himself ta
the itudy of it. Heaven only knows what kind of

A FOEEGONE CONCLUSION. 46

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
companionship 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 embarrassment 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 yel-
low 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, after 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 morn-
ing he could not rekindle them.

He had had his coffee served to him on the
bench, as his frequent custom was, but it stood un-
tasted in the little copper pot beside the dismounted
cannon, though it was now ten o'clock, and it was
foil time he ha<? breakiasted, for he had risen early

46 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

to perform the matin service for three peasant
women, two beggars, a cat, and a paralytic noble-
man, 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 inventions,
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 drink 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 I You have not even the
advantage of fasting to the glory of God in this
house, though you keep Lent the year round. It 'i
the Devil's Lent, / say. Eh, Diana I There goes
the bell. Who now ? Adieu, Lusetta. To meet
again, dear. Farewell I "

She ran to another window, and admitted the
visitor. It was Ferris, and she went to announce
Lim to her master by the title he had given, while
he amused his leisure in the darkness below by fall-
ing over a cistern-top, with a loud clattering of his
cane on the copper lid, after which he heard the
voice of the priest begging him to remain at hii

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 47

convenience a moment till he could descend and
ihow him the way up-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 re-
corded 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 trel-
lised walls, with many a wanton tendril and flaunt-
ing 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 vacant moments, to
find that it was like certain grape-arbors he had
leen in remote corners of Venice before the doort

48 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

mi

t>t degenerate palaces, or forming the entrances of
apen-air restaurants, and did not seem at all to have
been studied from grape-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
moment. Hard they were in line, fixed in expres-
sion, and opaque in color, these copies of famous
masterpieces, — saints, of either sex, ascensions, as-
sumptions, martyrdoms, and what not, — and the^
were not quite comprehensible till Don Ippolito ex-
plained 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
name air with a hand upon each instrument.

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

"Bagatelles, bagatelles," said the priest pen-
lively ; but he rose with greater spirit than he had
yet shown, and preceded the consul into the littl«
room that served him for a smithy. It seemed

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 49

from some peculiarities of shape to have once been
an oratory, but it was now begrimed with smoke and
dust from 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
Borne 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, Ferris was an uncompromising enemy
of the theatricalization of Italy, or indeed of any-
thing ; 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 inno-
cence which seemed to characterize Don Ippolito's
expression. He longed intensely to sketch the
picture then and there, but he had strength to re-
buke the fancy as something that could not make
itself intelligible without the help of such accesso-
ries as he despised, and he victoriously followed the
priest into his larger workshop, where his inven-
tions, 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 shavings
and whittlings strewed the floor ; mechanical im-
plements and contrivances were everywhere, and
Don Ippolito's listlessness seemed to return upon
him again at the sight of the familiar disorder.
4

50 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

Conspicuous among other objects lay the illogi-
eally unsuccessful model of the new principle (A
iteam propulsion, untouched since the day when he
had lifted it out of the canal and carried it indoors
through the ranks of grinning spectators. From a
shelf above it he took down models of a flying-
machine and a perpetual motion. " Fantastic
researches in the impossible. I never expected
results from these experiments, with which I
nevertheless once pleased myself," he said, and
turned impatiently to various pieces of portable
furniture, chairs, tables, bedsteads, which by fold-
ing 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 Provincial 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 photographic camera, so contrived with
straps and springs that you could snatch by its help
whatever joy there might be in taking your own
photograph ; and he did not know what to say of a
submarine boat, a four-wheeled water-velocipede, a
movable bridge, or the very many other principles
and ideas to which Don Ippolito's cunning hand
bad given shape, more or less imperfect. It seemed
to him that they all, however perfect or imperfect,

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 51

had some fatal defect : they were aspirations to-
ward 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
questioning 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 Ippolito had been taken young, he might
perhaps have amounted to something, though this
was questionable ; but at thirty — as he looked now,
— with his undisciplined 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 '11 pardon the ungrateful return, if I can-
not offer any definite opinion of them now. They
are rather out of my way, I confess. I wish with
ill my heart I could order an experimental, life-size
copy of your breech-loading 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 in-
mentions of yours that brought me here to-day."

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

i>2 A FOKEGONE CONCLUSION.

"Not at all, not at all," Ferris made haste to
answer, with a frown at his own awkwardness.
" But your speaking English yesterday ; . . . . per-
haps what I was thinking of is quite foreign to
your tastes and possibilities." .... He hesitated
with a look of perplexity, while Don Ippolito stood
before him in an attitude of expectation, pressing
the points of his fingers together, and looking curi-
ously 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. J ask it quite at a venture. I suppose
no harm 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
consider it a great favor that you do me in offering
me this employment. I accept it with the greatest
pleasure. Oh 1 " he cried, breaking by a sudden
impulse from the composure with which he had
begun to speak, " you don't know what you do for
ine ; you lift me out of despair. Before you came,
I had reached one of those passes that seem the last
bound of endeavor. But you give me new life.
Now I can go on with my experiment. I can at

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION* 58

test 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 difficulty you suggested," he said eagerly.
*' Yes, something can be done. God bless you, my
dear little son — I mean — perdoni ! — my dear
Bir." ....

" Wait — not so fast," said Ferris with a laugh,
yet a little annoyed that a question so purely tenta-
tive 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 assumed the hospitable and caressing
host. He conducted Ferris back to his parlor, and
.naking 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 explained that he had

64 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

approached him without first informing the ladiea,
and that he must regard nothing as final. It was
at this point that Don Ippolito, who had under-
stood so clearly what Mrs. Vervain wanted, ap-
peared a little slow to understand ; and Ferris had
a doubt wnether 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 coffee 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
engagement for the ladies, whom you must see be-
fore anything is settled," said Ferris.

" Surely, — surely I " answered the priest, and
he remained smiling at the door till the American
turned the next corner. Then he went back to hia
work-room, and took up the broken model from the
bench. But he could not work at it now, he could
not work at anything ; he began to walk up and
down the floor.

" Could he really have been so stupid because
his mind was on his ridiculous cannon ? " wondered
Ferris as he sauntered frowning away ; and he
tried to prepare his own mind for his meeting with
tho 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

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 66

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. Ver-
vain. " Well, to make a long story short," he
said, " I could n't discourage Don Ippolito. He re-
fused to be dismayed — as I should have been at
the notion of teaching Miss Vervain. I did n't ar-
range with him not to fall in love with her as hia
secular predecessors have done — it seemed super-
fluous. But you can mention it to him if you like.
In fact," said Ferris, suddenly addressing the
daughter, " you might make the stipulation your-
self, 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 Ippolito upon you in this way, when I told
you only yesterday that he would n't do at all ; in
fact I think myself that I 've behaved rather fickle-
mindedly — for a representative of the country.
But I '11 tell you ; and you won't be surprised to
learn that I acted from mixed motives. I 'm not
at all sure that he '11 do ; I 've had awful misgiv-
ings at out it since I left him, and I 'in glad of the
chance to make a clean breast of it. When I came
to think the matter over last night, the fact that ha

56 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

had taught himself English — with the help of an
Irishman for the pronunciation — seemed to prom-
ise that he 'd have the right sort of sympathy with
your scheme, and it showed that he must have
something practical about him, too. And here 'a
where the selfish admixture comes in. I didn't
have your interests solely in mind when I went to
Bee Don Ippolito. I had n'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 did n't see how Art could. I can bring him round
any time ; and that 's the whole inconsequent busi-
ness. My consolation is that I 've left you perfectly
free. There 's nothing decided."

"Thanks," said Mrs. Vervain; "then it's all
settled. You can bring him as soon as you like, to
our new place. We 've taken that apartment 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 suppose you can see justice done.
I didn't want to trouble you before."

" You 're a woman of business, Mrs. Vervain,"
said Ferris. "The man's a perfect Jew — or a
perfect Christian, one ought to say in Venice ; we
true believers do gouge so much more infamously

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 67

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 1 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
imposed 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 agreement
of the closest tenure, — if you want to go to law
about it."

" I will go to law about it."

u Oh no, you won't — unless you mean to spend
your remaining days and all your substance in Ven-
ice. Come, you have n't done so badly, Mrs. Ver-
vain. I don't call four rooms, completely furnished
for housekeeping, 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
Buch an outrageous scoundrel. He '11 cheat you, of
course, in whatever he can ; you must look out for
that ; but he '11 do you any sort of little neighborly
kindness. Good-by," said Ferris, getting to the
door before Mrs. Vervain could intercept him.
u I '11 come to your now place this evening to aea
Uow you are pleased."

68 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

" Florida," said Mrs. Vervain, " this is outra*
geous."

"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 could n't be helped
now."

" 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.
Vervain. " It was thoroughly thoughtful and con-
siderate — what I call an instance of true delicacy.
I 'm really quite curious to see him. Don Ippolito !
How very odd to call a priest Don ! I should have
aaid Padre. Don always makes you think of a
Spanish cavalier. Don Rodrigo : something like
that."

They went on to talk, desultorily, of Don Ippo-
lito, and what he might be like In speaking of
him the day before, Ferris had hinted at some mys-
terious sadness in him ; and to hint of sadness in a
man always interests women in him, whether they
ire old or young : the old have suffered, the young

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 59

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 laughing ac-
count, 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 inconsistency, and wondering whether he bad
not acted rashly.

IV.

THE palace in which Mrs. Vervain had taken an
apartment fronted on a broad campo, and hung ita
empty marble balconies from gothic windows above
a silence scarcely to be matched elsewhere in Ven-
ice. The local pharmacy, the caffS, 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 garrul-
ity was interrupted by no other sound. In the
early morning, when the lid of the public cistern in
the centre of the campo was unlocked, there was
a clamor of voices and a clangor of copper vessels,
as the housewives of the neighborhood and the lo-
cal force of strong-backed Friulan water-girls drew
their day's supply of water ; and on that sort of
special parochial holiday, called a sagra, the campo
hummed and clattered and shrieked with a multi-
tude 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 up-
roariously offered to the crowd by the cook, who
did not suffer himself to be embarrassed by the

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 61

rival drama of adjoining puppet-shows, but contin-
ued to bellow forth his bargains all day long and
far into the night, when the flames under his ket-
tles painted his visage a fine crimson. The sagra
once over, however, the campo relapsed into its
aabitual 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 hia
tenants ; his principal notice of lodgings to let was
affixed 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 gon-
dola. A length of stone-capped brick wall, to
which patches of stucco still clung, stretched from
the gate on either hand under cover of an ivy that
flung its mesh of shining green from within, where
there lurked a lovely garden, stately, spacious for
Venice, and full of a delicious, half-sad surprise for
tfh so opened upon it. In the midst it had a
broken fountain, with a marble naiad standing on
» shell, and looking sauoier thai) the sculptor

62 A FOREGONE CONGLUBION.

meant, from having lost the point of her none
nymphs and fauns, and shepherds and shepherdesses,
her kinsfolk, coquetted in and out among the green-
ery in flirtation not to be embarrassed by the frac-
ture 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 garden there were some mulberry and pome-
granate 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, drop-
ping to the garden path by a flight of balustraded
steps, and upon this terrace opened the long win-
dows of Mrs. Vervain's parlor and dining-room.
Her landlord owned only the first story and the
basement of the palace, in some corner of which he
cowered with his servants, his taste for pictures and
bric-d-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 un-
obtrusive ; 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 freely explained to the pa-
drone hovering about with offers of service, aha
knew herself too well ever to unpack anything that

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 68

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 be-
ing Venetian, and in domestic service, her name
was of course Nina. Mrs. Vervain now said to
Florida that everything was perfect, and content-
edly 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
<hem 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, beiore
leaving home, over the sad choice between a shabby
cylinder hat of obsolete fashion and his well-worn
three-cornered priestly beaver, and had at last put
»n the latter with a sigh. He had made his ser-
rant polish the buckles of his shoes, and instead of

64 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

a band of linen round his throat, he wore a strip ol
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. Ver-
vain 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 browe
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 won-
der, as she turned and exchanged a few words with
Ferris, who was assailing her seriousness and hau-
teur with unabashed 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 broke abruptly, not coquettishly,
iway from him, and moved towards her mother,
«rhile Ferris walked off to the other end of the ter-
race, with a laugh. Mrs. Vervain and the prieai

A FOBEGONE CONCLUSION. 66

were trying each other in French, and not making
greaf advance ; he explained to Florida in Italian,
and she answered him hesitatingly ; whereupon he
praised her Italian in set phrase.

" Thank you," said the girl sincerely, " I haye
tried to learn. I hope," she added as before, " you
can make me see how little I know." The depre-
cating 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,
" breakfast is ready, and I want you to take me
in."

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

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

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

" You see it 's an American breakfast," said Mrs.
Vervain with a critical glance at the table before
•he sat down. " All but hot bread ; that you can't
Have," and Don Ippolito was for the first time in
his life confronted by a breakfast of hot beef-steak

i

66 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 com-
mon maccheronic. May I trouble you for a poco
piti di sugar dans mon cafe*, Mrs. Vervain ? What
do you think of the bellazza de ce weather magni-
fique, 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 Mrs. Vervain
in that tongue with a little French ; Florida, con-
scious of Ferris's ironical observance, used an em-
barrassed but defiant Italian with the priest.

" I 'm so pleased ! " said Mrs. Vervain, rising
when Ferris said that he must go, and Florida
ihook hands with both guests.

" Thank you, Mrs. Vervain ; I could have gon«
before, if I 'd thought you would have liked it,*' ai>
iwered the painter.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 67

" Oh nonsense, now," returned the lady. " You
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 need n't
Bay 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 affection-
ate disrespect, and said good-by. Don Ippolito lin-
gered for a while to talk over the proposed lessons,
and then went, after more elaborate adieux. Mrs.
Vervain remained 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 cus-
tom. At any rate, my dear, he 's a gentleman in
virtue of his profession, and I could n't do less than
ask him to breakfast. He has beautiful manners;
and if he must take snuff, I suppose it 's neater to
carry two handkerchiefs, though it does look odd.
I wish he would n't take snuff."

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

** That 's true, my dear. And his nails. No*

68 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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. I dare say we should n't
care for it in him, if he did n't seem so very nioe
otherwise. How handsome he is I "

V.

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 let-
ter 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 transaction, 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 daughter, " 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 should n'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 it ; and this is a kind of
flattery not easy to resist. Besides, there was very
little ladies' society in Venice in those times, and
Ferris, after trying the little he could get at, had
gladly denied himself its pleasures, and consorted
with the young men he met at the caff&s, or in tbt

TO A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

Piazza. But when the Vervains came, they re-
called to him the younger days in which he had de-
lighted 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 ex-
pected him to ask her in marriage because 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
e lining and going, and Mrs. Vervain perfectly un-
derstood the art of letting him make himself at
home. He perceived with amusement that thia
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 campaigning married life, or the
rovings of her widowhood, or by natural disposi-
tion; and that Miss Vervain was inclined to be
conventionally strict, but with her irregular training
was at a loss for rules by which to check her moth-
er's little waywardnesses. Her anxious perplexity,
at times, together with her heroic obedience and
unswerving 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. Vervain was apparently one of those
ladies whom the intolerable surprise of having any-
thing come into their heads causes instantly to say
00 do it, — and he observed that she never tried to

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. Tl

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 person wholly aban-
doned 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 man-
ner with unmeasured reprisal ; others, for which he
might have blamed himself, 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 happened, 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 has-
tened 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
understand the curious filial self-sacrifice which it
Involved.

Another thing in her that puzzled him was hei
ievoutness. Mrs. Vervain could with difficulty be

72 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 often 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 golden 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 pe-
rused the morning lesson. He knew that the Ver-
vains 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 excused 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
inch franklv familiar treatment of so dubious 9

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 73

character as priest, — still as a priest they stood
somewhat in awe of him ; they had the spontane-
ous 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 fam-
ily ; 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 sup-
posable sensibilities 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 representative of even
an alien religion slight his office ; as if her respect
were for his priesthood and her compassion for him
personally. That was rather hard for Don Ippolito.
Ferris thought, and waited to see him snubbed out-
right some day, when he should behave without suf-
ficient gravity.

The blossoms came and went upon the pome-
granate and almond trees in the garden, and some
ti the earliest roses were in their prime; every-

74 4 FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

where was so full leaf that the wantonest of the
strutting nymphs was forced into a sort of decent
geclusion, 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, wait-
ing for Don Ippolito to join them at breakfast.

By this time the painter was well on with the
picture 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 romantio
scene," she added, gravely looking into his eyes as
he sat with his head thrown back against the balus-
trade.

" No, I doubt if you think," answered Ferris,
" or you 'd see that a Venetian priest does n'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, perspective of one of the naves, and
BC forth — with his eye on a pretty devotee coming
up to unburden her conscience ? I Ve no patience
with the follies people think and say about Ven«
Ice!"

Florida stared in haughty question at the painter

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 75

" 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 Ven-
ice 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 Venetian priest so that
you '11 know him without a bit of conventional Ven-
ice near him."

" It was Shakespeare who wrote those plays,"
said Florida. Ferris bowed in mock suffering from
her sarcasm. " 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
Bee the difference between Don Ippolito and Father
O'Brien. At any rate, what I *m going to paint at
is the lingering pagan in the man, the renunciation
first of the inherited nature, and then of a person-
ality that would have en]oyed the world. I want
to show that baffled aspiration, apathetic despair,
and rebellious longing which you eaten in his face
when he 's off his guard, and that suppressed look
which is the characteristic expression of all Austria*

76 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 1 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 tu see
whether he was quite in earnest, " if you put all
that into him. He has the simplest and openest
look in the world," she added warmly, " and there 'a
neither pagan, nor martyr, nor rebel in it."

Ferris laughed again. " Excuse me ; 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 inno-
cent 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 nicchio, but a new silk cylinder
with a very worldly, curling brim. Don Ippolito's
coat, also, was of a more mundane cut than the
talare ; he wore a waistcoat and small-clothes, meet-
ing the stockings at the knee with a sprightly
buckle. His person showed no traces of the snuff
with which it used to be so plentifully dusted ; in
Cact, he no longer took snuff in the presence of th<*
iadies. The first week he had notad an inexplica-
ble uneasiness in them when he drew forth that
blue cotton handkerchief after the solace of a pinch
shortly afterwards, being alone with Florida, hi

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 77

aaw her give a nervous start at its appearance-
He blushed violently, and put it back into the
pocket from which he had half drawn it, and whence
it never emerged 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 fin-
ger-nails by the tints of rose and ivory with which
Miss Vervain'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 so-
ciety, and it happened sometimes that the only Ital-
ian in the day's lesson was what he read with Flor-
ida, 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 transform him, and
he listened to her with trustful 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 the terrace steps
in his modified costume, he looked intently at her.
She swept him from head to foot with a glance, and
fchen gravely welcomed him with unchanged coun-
tenance.

At the same moment Mrs. Vervain came out
through one of the long windows, and adjusting
Ver glasses, said with a start, " Why, my dear
Ippolito, I should n't have known you I "

T8 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. .

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

" Why, of course it 's very becoming and all that ;
but it does look so out of character," Mrs. Vervain
said, leading the way to the breakfast-room. u It *s
like seeing a military man in a civil coat."

" It must be a great relief to lay aside the uni-
form now and then, mother," said Florida, as they
eat 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 person. Soldiers and —
clergymen — are so much more stylish in their own
dress — not stylish, exactly, but taking ; don't you
know ? "

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

The painter spoke in Italian, but Don Ippolito
answered — with certain blunders which it would
be tedious to reproduce — in his patient, conscien-
tious English, half sadly, half playfully, and glan-
cing at Florida, before 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 masquerade. As madamigella
jays, it is a relief to lay aside the uniform, now and
then, for us who fight the spiritual enemies as wel

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 79

is 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 clothes, 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, meeting the
students, as they strolled singing through the moon-
light ; we went to the theatre and to the caffd, — we
smoked cigars, all the time laughing and trembling
to think of the tonsure under our hats. But in the
morning we ha 1 to put on the stockings and the
talare and the nicchio again."

Don Ippolito gave a melancholy laugh. He had
thrust the corner of his napkin into his collar ; see-
ing 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
shocking had been said ; Florida looked with grave
rebuke at Don Ippolito, whose story affected Fer-
iis like that of some girl's adventure in men's
clothes. He was hi 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 drew,
And he did not again try to escape from it.

VL

ONE afternoon, as Don Ippolito was posing te
Karris 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 cannon since that day you saw it at my
house ; and as for other things, I have not been able
to put my 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 Ippolito had presented to Florida, and
the footstool, contrived with springs and hinges so
that it would fold up into the compass of an ordi-
nary portfolio, 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 occu-
pation, and of the new acquaintances — so very
strange to me in every way — that I have made in
your amiable country-women, which hinders mr
from going about anything in earnest, now that
their munifioince has enabled me to pursue my aimi

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 81

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 madaina ia
a true original." *

" Mrs. Vervain is rather peculiar," said the
painter, retiring 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 combination of perfect fool and per-
fect lady I ever saw."

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

" No ; and I 'm afraid I could n'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 marry
madamigella ? "

He seemed not to feel that there was anything
out of the way in the question, and Ferris was too
veil used to the childlike directness of the most
maneuvering of races to be surprised. Yet he was
displeased, as he would not have been if Don Ippo •
lito were not a priest. He was not of the type of
priests whom the American knew from the preju-
dice and distrust of the Italians ; he was alienated
from his clerical fellows by all the objects of his
ife, and by a reciprocal dislike. About other priest!

82 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

there were various scandals ; but Don Ippolito wai
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 caffS-gossip that
in Venice turns its searching light upon whomever
you mention ; and from his own association with
the man Ferris perceived in him an apparent single-
heartedness 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 to seem it with an art far beyond any
common deceit. It was the half expectation of com-
ing sometime upon the lurking duplicity in Don
Ippolito, that continually enfeebled the painter in
his attempts to portray his Venetian priest, and
that gave its undecided, unsatisfactory character to
the picture before him — its weak hardness, its pro-
voking 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 sub-
tle shadow of selfish design.

He stared hard at Don Ippolito while this per-
plexity filled his mind, for the hundredth timfe ;
then he said stiffly, " I don't know. I don't want
to marry anybody. Besides," he added, relaxing
into a smile of helpless amusement, " it 's possi-
ble that Miss Vervain might not want to marry

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 88

" As to that," replied Don Ippolito, " you neve*
can teL. 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. Our blondes are dark ; they
have auburn hair and blue eyes, but their com-
plexions are thick. Miss Vervain is blonde as the
morning 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 fire ! Ah, that is her greatest charm I Those
strange eyes of hers, they seem full of tragedies.
She looks made to be the heroine of some stormy
romance ; and yet how simply patient and jood
she is!"

" Yes," said Ferris, who often responded in Eng-
lish to the priest's Italian ; and he added half mus-
ingly 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. Sha has wonderful self-control,
however ; and I don't exactly understand why.
Perhaps people of strong impulses have strong
mils to overrule them; it seems no more thau
Wr."

84 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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

" No ; that seems to be a peculiarity of Miss
Vervain'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
BO far in comment on the Vervains. He added
recklessly, " Don't you see that Mrs. Vervain some-
times 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 sub-
missive 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 live as they do."

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

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

" I should not marry Miss Vervain for hat
money," answered the painter, sharply.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 85

j but if you loved her, the money "would en-
able 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 speak-
ing 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 painter, with u
laugh, " and I don't wonder you thought I ought to
be in love with Miss Vervain. She is beautiful, and
I believe she's good. But if men had to marry
because women were beautiful and good, there is n't
one of us could live single a day. Besides, I 'm the
victim of another passion, — I 'm laboring under an
unrequited affection for Art."

" Then you do not love her ? " asked Don Ippo-
ato, eagerly.

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

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

He quitted the painter's and walked swiftly
homeward with a triumphant buoyancy of step
A. subtle content diffused itself over his face, and
a joyful light burnt in his deep eyes. He sat dowr
before the piano and organ as he had arranged
them, and began to strike their keys in unison \ this

86 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

seemed to him for the first time childish. Theii he
played some lively bars on the piano alone ; they
sounded too light and trivial, and he turned 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 hia hands.

vn.

FBRBIS 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 tem-
per

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 house.
There he stopped, and after an absent contemplation
of the boats, from which the gondoliers were clam-
oring for his custom, he stepped into one and or-
dered 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
.ountain. 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.

64 What doee this mean?" asked Ferris, caie-

88 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

lessly taking the young girl's hand. "I though!
fchis lady's occupation was gone."

" Don Ippolito repaired the fountain for the land-
lord, and he agreed to pay for filling 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 did n't believe it could be done. It
t8 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
Borry 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 some real inventive talent ? "

" Yes, I think he has ; but I know as little about
the matter as you do." He sat down beside her,
und 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, "I'm the dog that fetches a bone
%nd carries a bone ; I talked Don Ippolito over witr
you, the other day, and now I 've been talking you
over with him. But I 've tho grace to say that I 'm
ashamed of myself."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 89

"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
characteiize my friends, I fail to do them perfect
justice, of course ; and yet the imperfect result re-
mains representative of them in my mind ; it limits
them and fixes 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 afterwards."

" 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 charm even in unfairness. Well, I did
Bay that I thought you had a quick temper," —

Florida colored violently.

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

" May I ask what else you said ? " demanded fch€
foung girl haughtily.

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

BO A FOREGONE CONCLUSION,

" 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 Ferris'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 begin with. You know I feel somewhat re-
sponsible for him."

" Yes."

" Of course, I never should have thought of him,
if it had n't been for your mother's talk that morn-
ing 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 de-
sire to serve your mother, that prompted me to
bring him to you."

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

" I acted in the teeth of a bitter Venetian preju-
dice against priests. All my friends here — they 're
mostly young men with the modern Italian ideas,
or old liberals — hate and despise the priests
They believe that priests are full of guile and de-
ceit, that they are spies for the Austrians, and al-
together evil."

u Don Ippolito is welcome to report our most se

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 91

eret 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 mo-
ment. 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," said
Florida ; " but I can't believe 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 desire to have you possessed of the
whole case as it had come up in my mind. I 've
made a mess of it," said Ferris rising, with a rueful
air. " Besides, I ought to have spoken to Mra.
Vervain."

" Oh no," cried Florida, eagerly, springing to her
feet beside him. " Don't ! Little things wear upon
my mother, so. I 'm glad you did n't speak to her.
I don't misunderstand you, I think; I expressed
myself badly," she added with an anxious face. " I
thank you. very much. What do you want me tc
"

92 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 dra-
peries that floated after Miss Vervain as she walked
with a splendid grace beside him, no 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 willingness
to be bidden by him gave him a delicious thrill.
He looked at the superb creature, so proud, so help-
less ; 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 upon his with a bold innocence. " Good
heavens ! Miss Vervain," he cried, with a sudden
blush, "it isn't a serious matter. I'm a fool to
have spoken to you. Don't do anything. Let
things go on as before. It is n't for me to instruct
you."

" I should have been very glad of your advice,"
she said with a disappointed, almost wounded man-
toer, keeping her eyes upon him. " It seems to ma
ire are always going wrong " —

She stopped short, with a flush and then a pallor

Ferris returned her look with one of comical di»

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 93

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
could n'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
touching 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
life. And it is n'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, perhaps, but 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,
abruptly, " I 'm going."

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

94 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

" No, thanks," said Ferris, gloomily. " I have n't
time. I just dropped in for a moment, to blast an
innocent man's reputation, and destroy a young
lady's peace of mind."

" Then you need n't go, yet," answered Florida,
coldly, " for you haven't succeeded."

" Well, I 've done my worst," returned Ferris,
drawing 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 acquaint-
ance, if it was an embarrassment, and then try to
sneak out of his responsibility by these tardy cau-
tions ; and if it was not going to be an embarrass-
ment, it was folly to have approached the matter at
all.

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
ipeak to her mother.

vo.

IT was late before Ferris iorgot 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 thrusting 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 Mrs. Vervain, and it entreated him
to come to lunch at twelve, and then join them on
an excursion, of which they had all often talked, up
the Canal of the Brenta. " Don Ippolito has got
his permission — 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
arrangement. You must come — it all depends
upon you."

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

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

Florida cast at the painter a swift glance of latent
appeal and intelligence, which he refused end in

96 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

the same instant she met him with another look, 11
if she now saw him for the first 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 back, the rose
of the palm and finger-tips.

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

" Oh, yes," said the painter, " they used to have
merry times in the villas then, and it was worth
while being a priest, or at least an ablate di casa.
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, companion, and spiritual adviser of Illus-
trissima at the theatres, card-parties, and masquer-
ades, all winter ; and at this season, instead of go-
ing up the Brenta for a day's pleasure with us
barbarous Yankees, you might be setting out with
Illustrissima and all the 4 Strissimi and 'Strissime,
big and little, for a spring villeggiatura there. You
would be going in a gilded barge, with songs and
fiddles and dancing, instead of a common gondola,
and you would stay a month, walking, going to
parties and caffds, drinking chocolate and lemonade
gaming, sonneteering, and butterflying about gen
wmlly."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 97

*' 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
preoccupied with other ideas than those of social
pleasures, though perhaps they were no wiser."

Florida had watched Don Ippolito's face while
Ferris was speaking, and she now asked gravely,
44 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 could n'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, whatever you may say of them, are
somehow elegant and refined, or at least refer to
elegance and refinement. I don't say they 're en-
nobling, but they 're fascinating. I don't respect
them, but I love them. When I think about the
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 wigs and masks,
Hoops and small-clothes, fans and rapiers, bows and
courtesies, whispers ard glances. I dare say I
ih< uld have found Don Ippolito there in some be*
doming disguise.'
7

98 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 hur-
ried 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," Mrs. Ver-
vain 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 ship-
shape than it is when you 're younger. I tell Flor-
ida that anybody would take her for the old lady,
she does seem to give so little care to getting up an
appearance."

" And yet she has the effect of a stylish 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
ielay 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 tha\
we can start in a real picnicky spirit. I knew
you 'd think it a womanish lunch, Mr. Ferris — Don
Ippolilo likes what we do — and so I've provided

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 99

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 en-
gaged that day. They rowed through the narrow
canal skirting the garden out into the expanse be-
fore the Giudecca, and then struck across the la-
goon towards Fusina, past the island-church of San
Giorgio in Alga, whose beautiful tower has flushed
and darkened in so many pictures of Venetian sun-
sets, and past the Austrian lagoon forts with their
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
barges to declare to the swarthy, amiable officers
the innocence of their freight, and at the 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.

The spring, which in Venice comes in the soften-
ing air and the perpetual azure of the heavens, was
renewed to their senses in all its miraculous loveli-
The garden of the Vervains ha d indeed con-

100 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

fessed it in opulence of leaf and bloom, but there H
Beemed somehow only like a novel effect of the arti-
fice which had been able to create a garden in that
city of stone and sea. Here a vernal world sud-
denly 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 neighbor-
ing 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
marched in stately procession on either side of the
straight, white road to Padua, till they vanished
in the long perspective. The blossoms had fallen
from the trees many weeks before, but the air was
full of the vague sweetness of the perfect spring,
which here and there gathered and defined itself as
the spicy odor of the grass cut on the shore of the
lanal, and drying in the mellow heat of the sun.

The voyagers spoke from time to time of some
peculiarity of the villas that succeeded each other
nlong the canal. Don Ippolito knew a few of them,
the gondoliers knew others ; but after all, their
names were nothing. These haunts of old-time
splendor and idleness weary of themselves, and un
*ble to escape, are sadder than anything in Venice
Bud they belonged, as far as the Americans wore

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 101

concerned, to a world as strange as any to which
they should go in another l:fe, — 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 de-
crepit 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 in its dusty vines."

The pleasure-party 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 Pisani at Stra.

" These houses are very well," said Don Ippolita;
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 Stra that you see something really worthy of the
royal splendor of the patricians of Venice. Royal ?
The villa is now one of the palaces of the ex-
Emperor of Austria, who does not find it less im-
perial than his other palaces." Don Ippolito had
telebrated the villa at Stra in this strain ever since
they had spoken of going up the Brenta : now it
ra» the magnificent conservatories and orangerief

102 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

that lie sang, now the vast garden with its statued
walks between rows of clipt cedars and firs, now
the stables with their stalls for numberless horses,
now the palace itself with its frescoed halls and
treasures of art and vertu. His enthusiasm for the
villa at Stra had become an amiable jest with the
Americans. Ferris laughed at his fresh outburst
he declared 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 are
going to find something much grander than the
Villa Pisani," he boasted, with a look at Don Ippo-
lito.

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 foli-
age of their gardens. When a peasant's cottage
broke their line, it gave, with its barns and straw-
stacks and its beds of pot-herbs, a homely relief
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
idvorsity be lavished upon the neighborhood of a

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 108

rity that is so rich as Venice in picturesque dilapi-
dation? It's pretty hard on us Americans, and
forces people of sensibility into exile. What
wouldn't cultivated persons give for a stretch of
this street in the suburbs of Boston, or of your own
Providence ? I suppose the New Yorkers will be
getting up something of the kind one of these days,
and giving it a French name — they '11 call it Aux
bords du Brenta. 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 was 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 laughed : " Oh yes,
a poor little fragmentary, faded-out reproduction of
their sentiment — which is ' as moonlight unto sun-
\ight and as water unto wine,' when compared with
the real thing. Suppose I made a picture of this
rery bit, ourselves in the foreground, looking at tbs
garden over there where that amusing Vandal of an
pwner has just had his statues painted white : would
tor friends at home understand it ? A whole his

104 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

fcory must be left unexpressed. 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 para-
sol," — Florida seemed disdainfully to keep her
attitude, and the painter smiled, — " but they
would n't know what it all meant, and could n't
imagine that we were inspired by this rascally little
villa to sigh longingly over the wicked past." ....

" Excuse me," interrupted Florida, with a touch
of trouble in her proud manner, " I 'm 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 Ippolito can
speak so tolerantly of what no one can respect,"
the added, in almost an aggrieved tone.

If Miss Vervain wanted to turn the talk upon
Oon Ippolito, Ferris by no means did ; he had hao

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 105

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 could n't even paint myself in the
act of sentimentalizing 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, Mrs. Vervain; you're always flatter-
ing me."

44 No, but seriously. I wish that I had paid more
attention to my drawing when I was a girl. And
now, Florida — she won't touch a pencil. I wish
you 'd talk to her, Mr. Ferris."

" Oh, people who are pictures need n'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.
44 But you 've made her too proud, Mr. Ferns. She
does n't look like that."

44 Yes she does — to those unworthy of her kind-
ness. I have taken Miss Vervain in the act of
•coming the rococo, and its humble admirer, me,
With it."

106 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

" I 'm sure I 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 could n'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 pe-
rused the sketch as if trying to read some secret
there. After a minute he handed it back with a
light sigh, apparently of relief, but said nothing

" Well?" asked Mrs. Vervain.

" Oh ! I ask pardon. No, it is n't my idea of
tnadamigella. 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
Car, they are more than true."

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

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

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 107

The painter fancied that Florida quelled in her-
self a movement of impatience; he looked at hef
with an amused smile.

" Not always, no," answered Don Ippolito.
" Sometimes her face expresses the greatest meek-
ness in the world."

" But not at the present moment," thought Fer-
ris, fascinated by the stare of angry pride which the
girl 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 is n't an important one."

" Oh yes it is, my dear," said Mrs. Vervain.
" At least it 's important to me, if it is n't to you ;
for I 'm your mother, and really, if I thought you
looked like this, as a general thing, to a casual ob-
server, I should consider it a reflection upon my-
self." Ferris gave a provoking laugh, as she con-
tinued sweetly, " I must insist, Don Ippolito : now
did you ever see Florida look so ? "

The girl leaned back, and began to wave her fan
lowly to and fro before her face.

" I never saw her look so with you, dear mada-
Ha," said the priest with an anxious glance at Flor-
ida, who let her fan fall folded into her lap, and sat
still. He went on with priestly smoothness, and a
touch of something like invoked authority, such aa
R man might show who could dispense indulgences

108 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

and inflict penances. "No one could help seeing
her 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 me " —

Florida started forward. " You are not asked tc
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 from the astonishing rudeness as from a blow
in the face. " What is it to you how I treat my
mother ? "

She sank back again upon the cushions, and
opening the fan with a clash swept it swiftly be-
fore 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 Ippolito's speech was not fortunate at the best,
but it might have come from a foreigner's misap-
prehension, and at the worst it was good-natured
and well-meant. " The girl is a perfect brute, as
I thought in the beginning," the painter said to
himself. " How could I have ever thought differ-
ently ? I shall have to tell Don Ippolito that I 'm
ashamed of her, and disclaim all responsibility.
Pah ! I wish I was out of this."

The pleasure of the day was dead. It could not
rall^ from that stroke. They went on to Strm, ai

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 109

they had planned, but the glory of the Villa Plsani
was eclipsed for Don Ippolito. He plainly did not
know what to do. He did not address Florida
again, 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 ; Ferris kept near him, and with affection-
ate 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
rouse him from the listless daze in which he moved,
though Ferris found them all as wonderful as he
had said. Amidst this heavy embarrassment no one
seemed at ease but the author of it. She did not,
to be sure, speak to Don Ippolito, 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 laj;e in the afternoon when they got back
to their boat and began to descend the canal to-
wards 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
ko break. The twilight came, and then through
the overcast heavens the moon shone dim ; a light
olossomed here and there in the villas, distant voices
called musically ; a cow lowed, a dog barked ; the

110 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

rich, sweet breath of the vernal land mingled iti
odors with the sultry air of the neighboring lagoon.
The wayfarers spoke little; the time hnng 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.
Afc last the boat stopped in front of the police-sta-
tion in Fusina ; a soldier with a sword at his side
and a lantern in his hand came out and briefly par-
leyed with the gondoliers ; they stepped ashore,
and he marched them into the station before him.

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

" What does it all mean ? " asked Mrs. Vervain.

" 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. " Are n't you going too, Don Ippolito ? "
&sked 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 fig-
ares of two fishermen, who bewailed themselves un-
intelligibly in the vibrant accents of Chiozza, and
from time to time advanced upon the gondoliers, and
ihook their heads and beat their breasts at them,
A few police-guards reclined upon benches about

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. Ill

fche room, and surveyed the spectacle with mild im-
passibility.

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

"Why, you see, signore," answered the guard
amiably, " these honest men accuse your gondolier!
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,
44 it was my own heart," he cried, letting the last
vowel die away and rise again in mournful refrain,
while he stared tragically into Ferris's face.

" What is the matter ? " asked Mrs. Vervain,
putting up her glasses, and trying with graceful fu-
tility 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
did n't mind me. But I '11 see what I can do
further in quality of courteous foreigner. Can you
perhaps tell me how long you will be obliged to de-
tain us here ? " he asked of the guard again,

44 1 am very sorry to detain you at all, signore

112 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

But what can I do ? The commissary if> 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 At-
fully. Presently they went out of doors and poured
forth their wrongs to the moon.

The room was close, and with some trouble Fer-
ris persuaded Mrs. Vervain to return to the gondola,
Florida seconding his arguments with gentle good
sense.

It seemed a long time till the commissary came,
but his coming instantly simplified the situation.
Perhaps because he had never been able to befriend
a consul in trouble before, he befriended Ferris 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 their 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 smiling, while they refreshed
themselves.

" They need never tell me again that the Aus-
trians are tyrants," said Mrs. Vervain in undertone
to the consul.

It was not easy for Ferris to remind his host ot

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 113

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 effective-
ness by the Chiozzotti ; the gondoliers maintaining
the calm of conscious innocence.

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

" Listen, 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 to-
gether ; then one of them shrugged his shoulders
and went out. He came back in a moment and
laid a rope before the commissary.

"Is that the rope?" he asked. "We found 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 Chiozzoti.
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 ami-
able smile. " I am sorry that those rogues should
tBcape," said the American.

ft

114 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

" 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
effusion, following them with a lantern to the gon-
dola.

Mrs. Vervain, to whom Ferris gave an account
of this trial as they set out again on their long-hind-
ered return, had no mind save for the magical effect
of his consular quality upon the commissary, 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."

Mrs. 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,
" Indrio, indrio ! " (Back, back I) and a gleam of
the moon through the pale, watery clouds revealed
the figure of a gendarme on the nearest point of
land. The gondoliers 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
fonsular seal in my pocket. To him we are poaai-

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 115

ble smugglers : l and I must say," he continued, tak-
ing out his watch, and staring hard at it, " that if I
were a disinterested person, and heard his suspi-
cion met with the explanation that we were a little
party out here for pleasure at half past twelve P. M.,
I should say he was right. At any rate we won't
engage him in controversy. Quick, quick ! " he
added to the gondoliers, glancing at the receding
shore, and then at the first of the lagoon forts which
they were approaching. A dim shape moved along
the top of the wall, and seemed to linger and scru-
tinize them. As they drew nearer, the challenge,
" Wer da ? " rang out.

The gondoliers eagerly answered with the one
word of German known to their craft, " Freunde"
and struggled to urge the boat forward ; the oar of
the gondolier in front slipped from the high row-
lock, and fell out of his hand into the water. The
gondola lurched, and then suddenly ran aground on
the shallow. The sentry halted, dropped his gun
from his shoulder, and ordered them to go on, while
the gondoliers clamored back in the high key of
fear, and one of them screamed out to his passen-
gers 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 ? " demanded
Mr«. Vervain. " If we don't get on, it will be that

* Under the Austrians, Venice was a free port^ but everything carried
to the mainland was liable to duty.

116 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

man's duty to fire on us ; he has no choice," she
Baid, 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
warning, Don Ippolito, who had sat silent since
they left Fusina, stepped over the side of the gon-
dola, and thrusting an oar under its bottom lifted it
free of the shallow.

" Oh, how very unnecessary ! " cried Mrs. Ver-
vain, as the priest and the gondoliers clambered
back into the boat. "He will take his death of
cold."

" It 's ridiculous," said Ferris. " You ought to
have told these worthless rascals what to do, Don
Ippolito. You've got yourself wet for nothing.
It 's too bad ! "

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

" Oh, here ! " cried Mrs. Vervain, gathering
some shawls together, " make him wrap those about
him. He '11 die, I know he will — with that reek-
ing skirt of his. If you must go into the water, I
wish you had worn your abbate's dress. How could
you, Don Ippolito ? "

The gondoliers set their oars, but before they
had given a stroke, they were arrested by a sharp
M Halt I " from the fort. Another figure had
oined the sentry, and stood looking at them.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 117

"Well," said Ferris, "now what, I wonder?
That 's an officer. If I had a little 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 Fer-
ris.

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

" Brava ! " said Ferris, while Mrs. Vervain bab-
bled her satisfaction, " I will buy a German Ollen-
dorff to-morrow. The language is indispensable to
a pleasure excursion in the lagoon."

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 whenever 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

118 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

slipped into a narrow way, and presently stopped
at Mrs. Vervain's gate ; this time she had not ex-
pected it. Don Ippolito gave her his hand, and
entered the garden with hei^ while Ferris lingered
behind with Florida, helping her put together the
wraps strewn about the gondola.

" Wait ! " she commanded, as they moved up the
garden walk. " I want to speak with you about
Don Ippolito. What shall 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 are — older than I am ! "

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

•* Decency. Say it, say it ! " cried the girl
passionately ; "it was indecent, indecent — that

was it I" '

— "would tell you what to do," concluded the
painter dryly. ,

She flung away the arm to which she had been
clinging, and ran to where the priest stood with her
mother at the foot of the terrace stairs. " Don
Ippolito," she cried, " I want to tell you that I am
lorry ; I want to ask your pardon — how can you
tver forgive me ? — for what I said."

She instinctively stretched her hand towards him.

44 Oh ! " said the priest, with an indescribable
long, trembling sigh. He caught her hand in hi§

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 119

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 resent-
ment. If he 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 Ip-
polito ; it '11 keep you from taking cold. You
really must."

u Thanks, madama ; I cannot lose more 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
water in that way," she said, looking mechanically
in 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, sticking
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
»ay that, under Providence, we probably owe our
lives to Don Ippolito's self-sacrifice and Miss Ver-
rain's knowledge of German. At any rate, it '•
rhat 7 shall always maintain,,"

120 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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

" There, Mrs. Vervain, it '11 be no use offering
me a 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. Ver-
vain, giving her hand. " Thank you so much."

Florida did not look towards him. She gath-
ered her mother's shawl about her shoulders for the
twentieth time that day, and softly urged her in
doors, while Ferris let himself out into the campo.

IX.

FLORIDA began to prepare the bed for hei

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
headstrong. 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
as!"

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

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

" It did n't mortify me ; I did n'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
Jiat Mr. Ferris caught your true character in that
sketch. But your pride will be broken some day,
Florida."

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

''Yes, I am all unstrung. Why couldn't yof

122 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 dea'' ; I 'd rather undress my-
aelf. You pretend to be very careful of me. 1
wonder if you really care for me."

" Oh, mother, you are all I have in the world I '
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."
Mrs. Vervain tenderly kissed the young girl.
"You are good to your mother. Don Ippolito
was right ; no one ever saw you offer me disrespect
cr unkindness. There, there ! Don't cry, my dar-
ling. I think I had better lie down, and I '11 let
you undress me."

She suffered herself to be helped into bed, and
Florida 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
eo to sleep.

Florida looked hesitatingly at her for a moment,
and then set her candle on the floor and sank
wearily into an arm-chair 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 upos
the ceiling.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 128

By and by a bird piped in the garden ; the shriek
of a swallow made itself heard from a distance;
the vernal day was beginning to stir from the light,
brief drowse of the vernal night. A crown of angry
red formed upon 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 looking at her as if she had just called to her.

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

Mrs. Vervain turned her face away ; she sighed
deeply, stretched her thin hands on 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 brought water and
cologne, and bathed her mother's face, and then
chafed her hands. Mrs. Vervain slowly revived ;
she opened her eyes, then closed them ; she did not
speak, but after a while she began to fetch her
breath with the long and even respirations of sleep.

Florida 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 time is it, Nina ? I
forgot to wind my watch."

" It 's nine o'clock, signorina ; and I thought
you would be tired this morning, and would like

124 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

your coffee in bed. Oh, misericordia ! " cried the
girl, still in whisper, with a glance through the
doorway, " you have n't been in bed at all ! "

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

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

44 Yes, yes," said Florida, 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 out, at once, and I want
you to go with me. Tell Checa to come here and
stay with my mother till I come 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 back for another look,
and the next moment she was walking down to
the water-gate, where she found Nina waiting her
in the gondola.

A rapid course brought them to Ferris's landing.
44 Ring," she said to the gondolier, 44 and say that
one of the American ladies wishes to see the con-
sul."

Ferns was standing on the balcony over her,
where he had been watching her approach in mute
wonder. 44 Why, Miss Vervain," he called down,
« what in the world is the matter ? "

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 125

** I don't know. I want to see you," »aid Flor-
ida, looking up with a wistful face.

44 1 '11 come down."

"Yea, 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 his stu-
dio. Though her 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 something 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.

44 1 hope," he said, " you don't mind the smell,"
which was a mingled one of oil-colors and tobacco-
gmoke. 44 The woman 's putting my office to rights,
and it 's all in a cloud of dust. So I have to bring
you in here."

Florida sat down on a chair fronting the easel,
and found herself looking into the sad eyes of Don
Ippolito. Ferris brusquely turned the back of the
canvas toward her. 44 1 did n't mean you to see
that. It isn't ready to show, yet," he said, and
then he stood expectantly before her. He waited
por her to speak, for he never knew how to take

126 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

Miss Vervain ; he was willing enough to make light
of her grand moods, but now she was too evidently
unhappy 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 noth-
ing 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 turn-
ing the whole 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 expedi-
tion 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
the talked a great deal about her ill-health, ho had
noticed it rather less than usual, she had so great

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 127

ipirit. He recalled now that he had thought her
at times rather a shadowy presence, and that occa-
sionally it had amused him that so slight a structure
should hang together as it did — not only success-
fully, but triumphantly.

He said yes, he knew that Mrs. Vervain wag
not strong, and Florida continued : " It 's only ad-
vice 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 must n't let anything pass
unnoticed " . . . . She lorked at him entreat-
ingly, but a shadow, as of somt, Bounding memory,
passed over her face, and she said i. * more.

" I '11 go with 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. I 'm used to doing it."

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

44 Yes," answered Florida with awkward hesita-
tion, and a half -defiant, half-imploring look at him*
"You must have all sorts of people applying to

128 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

you, as a consul ; and you look after their affairs —
and try to forget them " —

"Well?" said Ferris.

" I wish you would n't remember that I Ve asked
this favor of you ; that you 'd consider it a " —

" Consular service ? With all my heart," an-
§wered 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
mean, 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 would n't."

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

In another moment, " Good-morning," she said
briskly, with a sort of airy sob, " I don't want 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
thoughtfully. It was really the same girl who had
given poor Don Ippolito that cruel slap in the face,
yesterday. But that seemed no more out of reason
than her sudden, generous, exaggerated remorse
both were of a piece with her coming to him fo»

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 129

help now, holding him at a distance, flinging her-
»elf upon his sympathy, and 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 him smile, as he
stood on his balcony bathed by the morning air and
sunlight, in fresh, strong ignorance of the whole
mystery of women's nerves. These caprices even
charmed him. He reflected that he had gone on
doing the Vervains one favor after another in spite
of Florida's childish petulancies ; and he resolved
that he would not stop now ; her whims should bo
nothing to him, as they had been nothing, hitherto.
It is flattering to a man to be indispensable to a
woman so long as he is not obliged to it ; Miss Ver-
vain's dependent 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 stop, turn
round, and come back to the canal that bordered
the Vervain garden.

" Another change of mind," thought Ferris, com-
placently ; and rising superior to the whole fitful
Bex, he released himself from uneasiness on Mrs.
Vervain's account. But in the evening he went to
iisk after her. He first sent his card to Florida,
having written on it, " I hope Mrs. Vervain is bet-
ter. Don't let me come in if it's any disturb
9

180 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION!

Mice." He looked for a moment at what he had
written, dimly conscious that it was patronizing
and when he entered he saw that Miss Vervain
stood on the defensive and from some willfulness
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
interview to the age of fable.

Mrs. Vervain came in smiling and cordial, appar-
ently better and not worse for yesterday's misad-
ventures.

" Oh, I pick up quickly," she explained. " I 'm
an old campaigner, you know. Perhaps a little too
old, now. Years do make a difference ; and you '11
find it out as you get on, Mr. Ferris."

44 1 suppose so," said Ferris, not caring 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 have n't felt the need of sleep," replied Flor-
ida, indifferently, and he felt shelved, as an old fel-
low.

He had an empty, frivolous visit, to his thinking.
Mrs. Vervain asked if he had seen Don Ippolito,
»nd wondered that the priest had not come about
nil day. She told a long story, and at the end
tapped herself on the mouth with her fan to pun-
»h a yawn.

Ferris rose to go. Mrs. Vervain wondered agai*

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 1S1

ji the same words why Don Ippolito had not beeij
Rear them all day.

" Because he 's a wise man," said Ferris with bit-
terness, " and knows wher to time his visits." Mrs.
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 'a a
moon," he said moodily. " Good-night."

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

A soreness that had been lifted from 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
morning 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
L^d 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 girl as he con-
stantly beheld it in his homeward walk. It did not
defy him or repulse him ; it looked up at him wist-
fully as from the gondola that morning. Neverthe-
less he hardened his heart. The Vervains should
pee him next when they had sent for hin?. Aftei
•11, one is not so very old at twenty-six.

* DON IPPOLITO has come, signorina," said Nina,
the next morning, approaching Florida, where she
Bat in an attitude of listless patience, in the garden.

" Don Ippolito ! " echoed the young girl in a
weary tone. She rose and went into the house, and
they met with the constraint which was but too nat-
ural 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 making 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 Mrs. 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 hap-
pened the other day ; and you had better forget it.
There is no use brooding over these matters. Dear
me I if I had stopped to brood over every little
Unpleasant thing that happened, I wonder where I

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 133

should be now ? By the way, where were you 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 yen
are so ingenious ! But you must n'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
attitude 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 procession of Corpus Domini in the Pi-
azza, 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 it's a great
event with you."

The priest shrugged his shoulders, and opened
both his hands, so that his hat slid to the floor,
bumping and tumbling some distance away. He
recovered it and sat down again. " It 's an observ-
unce," he said coldly.

" And shall you be in the procession ? "

" I shall be there witn the other priests of my
parish."

" Delightful I " cried Mrs. Vervain. " We

134 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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
apparent interest in the subject. She turned to her
daughter, and said with a querulous accent, " I
wish you would throw the afghan over my 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,
" I 'm 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 style ; has n'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 little, to get me quieted down. I feel
BO very flighty. I suppose it 's this sirocco. Aud
I believe I '11 lie down in the next room."

Florida followed her to repeat the arrangements
for her comfort. Then she returned, and sitting
4own at the piano struck with a sort of soft firmness
» few low, soothing chords, out of which a lulling
feeiody grew. With her fingers still resting on tha

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 185

keys slie turned her stately head, and glanced
throagh the open door at her 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 instrument, and let her
fingers wander over the keys, with a drooping head.
Presently she lifted her face, and smoothed back
from her temples some straggling tendrils of hair.
Without looking at the priest she asked with the
child-like bluntness that characterized her, " Why
don't you like to walk in the procession of Corpus
Domini ? "

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 he*
%nd said meekly, " Madamigella, I did not mean to
repel any interest you feel in me. But it wan a

136 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

itrange question to ask a priest, as I remembered I
was when you asked it."

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

" No ; sometimes I am suffered 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 hands 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 me
if I abused the delicate unreserve 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 wrong. 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
"Ah, I see you do not understand! How

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 187

could you know what it is to be a priest in tibia
most unhappy 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 from 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 igno-
rant of these things," 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 frank
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.

" Ah, you need n't be afraid of listening to me ! "
cried the priest bitterly.

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

" 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 life-long habit
af 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 unknown ? It is to be a priest ! n

188 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

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 false-
hood that has clothed 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, impersonal surprise at the difference between
his own and the happier fortune with which he con-
trasted it, was more touching than any tragic dem-
onstration.

As if she felt the fascination of the pathos which
she could not fully analyze, the young girl sat silent.
After a tune, in which she seemed to be trying to
think 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
i ot 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 understand 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 younaU
In being what you are ? "

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 139

" Madamigella," said the priest, " I never daied
believe 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 why do you care whether a priest
of my church loves his calling or not, — you, a Prot-
estant ? It is that you are sorry for me as an un-
happy man, is it not ? "

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

Don Ippolito gave the faintest movement of his
shoulders.

— " and I cannot endure 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
wippose that my poor uncle is a saint, too, in his
way."

" Your uncle ? A pr.iest ? You have never
mentioned him to us."

tt No," said Don Ippolito. After a certain pause

140 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

he began abruptly, " We are of the people, my
family, and in each generation we have sought tc
honor our blood by devoting one of the race to the
church. When I was a child, I used to divert my-
self by making little figures out of wood and paste-
board, 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 born, and my mother let me play
in the small chamber where I now have my forge ;
it was anciently the oratory of the noble family
that occupied the whole palace. I contrived an
altar at one end of it ; I stuck my pictures about
the -vails, and I ranged the puppets in the order of
woi shippers on the floor ; then 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 like,
and to paint pictures, and carve an altar like 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

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 141

•aid, ' Oh yes,' as children do. I kept on contriv-
ing 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, 4 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 whatever I like.' I
only considered the office then as a means to gratify
the passion that has always filled my soul for inven-
tions and works of mechanical skill and ingenuity.
My inclination was purely secular, but I was as
inevitably becoming a priest as if I had been born
to be one."

" But you were not forced ? There was no pres-
sure upon you ? "

" No, there was merely an absence, so far as they
were concerned, of any other idea. I think they
meant justly, and assuredly they meant kindly by
me. I grew in years, and the time came when I
was to begin my studies. It was my uncle's influ-
ence that placed me in the Seminary of the Salute,
and there I repaid his care by the utmost dili-
gence. But it was not the theological studies that
I loved, it was the mathematics and their practical
application, and among the classics I loved best the
poets and the historians. Yes, I can see that I was
always a mundane spirit, and some of those in

142 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION,

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 invention which the model of
one of the antique galleys had suggested to me.
They found it, — nothing can be concealed outside
of your own breast in such a school, — and they
carried me with my contrivance before the superior,
He looked kindly but gravely at me : ' My son,'
said he, ' do you wish to be a priest ? ' 4 Surely,
reverend father,' I answered in alarm, ' why not?'
1 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 conscientious and affectionate man ; but
every word fell like burning fire in my heart. At
the end, he took my poor plaything, and thrust it
down among the coals of his scaldino. It made the
icaldino smoke, and he baie me carry it out witt
and BO turned again to his book.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 148

" 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 over-
come for the good of my soul and the glory of God.
He warned me against the scandal of attempting
to withdraw now from 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 be-
came a priest.

"It was not without sufficient warning that I
took one order after another, but my uncle's words,
4 What will you do ? ' made me deaf to these ad-
monitions. All that is now past. I no longer re-
sent nor hate ; I seem to have lost the power ; but
those were days when my soul was filled with bit-
terness. Something of this must have showed it-
self to those who had me in their charge. I have
heard that at one time my superiors had grave
doubts whether I ought co be allowed to take orders.
My examination, in which the difficulties of the
lacerdotal life were brougnt before me with the
greatest clearness, was severe ; I do not know how

144 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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, friendless wretch ! Madamigella, even yet
I 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
carried away 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.
Perhaps 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
Buffered for it. If it was not mine, still I have suf-
fered for it. Some ban seems to have rested upon
whatever I have attempted. My work, — oh, I
know it well enough I — has all been cursed with
futility ; my labors are miserable failures or con-
temptible successes. I have had my unselfish
dreams of blessing mankind by some great dis-
covery 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 griev-

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 145

kng pity, fetched a long sigh. " Oh, I am sorry foi
you ! " she said, " more sorry than I know how to
tell. But you must not lose courage, you must not
give up I "

Don Ippolito resumed with a melancholy smile.
u There are doubtless temptations enough to be
false under the best of conditions in this world.
But something — I do not know what or whom ;
perhaps no more my uncle or my mother than I,
for they were 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 ambition 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 modern world has come from the devices of
science ; my indifference to the things of religion
b a terror and a sorrow to him which he combats
with prayers and penances. He starves himself and
^oes cold and faint that God may have mercy and
turn my heart to the things on which his own is
fixed. He loves my soul, bu\, not me, and we are
icarcely friends."

Florida continued to look at him with steadfaat*
10

146 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

compassionate eyes. u It seems very strange, al-
most 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 any-
thing."

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

44 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 helpless and I know so very little that I
don't understand how to comfort or encourage you.
But surely you can somehow help yourself. Are
men, that seem so strong and able, just as power-
less 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.

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

Don Ippolito shrugged his shoulders.

" No, no I " cried the girl. t4 Your own schemes
nave all failed, you say ; then why do you not
think of becoming a priest in reality, and getting
ihe good there must be in such a calling ? It ii
ongulai that I should venture to say such a thing

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 147

to you, and it must seem presumptuous and ridicu-
lous for me, a Protestant — but our ways are so
different." .... She paused, coloring deeply,
then controlled herself, and added with grave com-
posure, " If you were to pray " —

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

44 To what ! " she echoed, opening her eyes full
upon him. " To God ! "

Don Ippolito made no answer. He let his head
fall so low upon his breast that she could see the
sacerdotal tonsure.

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

Don Ippolito looked up with pensive irony.

44 Oh, the poor saints 1 "

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

44 1 mean that I believe in the saints as little as
you do."

44 But you believe in your Church ? "

44 1 have no Church."

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

The priest lifted his eyes and looked at her be*
•eechingly. 44 1 do not know," he whispered.

148 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

She met his gaze with one of dumb bewilder*
ment. At last she said : " Sometimes you bap-
tize little children and receive them into the church
in the name of God ? "

"Yes."

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

"Yes."

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

" It is true."

" Oh ! " moaned the girl, and fixed on Don Ippo-
lito 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 I 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 worse ! "

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

44 Condemn ? Oh, I am sorry for you with my
whole heart. Only, why must you tell me all toil .

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 149

No, no ; you are not to blame. 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 th:
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 " —

" I don't despise you , that is n't for me ; but oh*
I wish that I could help you I "

Don Ippolito shook his head. " You cannot help
me ; but I thank you for your compassion ; I shall
never forget it." He lingered irresolutely with hia
hat in his hand. " Shall we go on with the reading,
madamigella ? "

" 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
uome little gestures and movements of a desire to
keep him from going, yet let him go, and so turned
back and sat down with her hands resting noise-
less on the keys of the piano

XI.

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,
begging her indulgence until after the day of Cor-
pus Christi, up to which time, he said, he should be
too occupied for his visits of ordinary.

This letter reminded Mrs. 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 rebellion. Mrs.
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 frown on the smiling face of Mrs. Ver-
vain for a moment without speaking. Then, " I 'U
fome," he said gloomily.

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

" I shall have to keep you waiting."

" I don't mind that. You '11 be ready in five
minutes."

Florida met the painter with such gentleness that
be felt his resentment to have been a stupid caprice

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 151

for which there was no grou-nd in the world. He
tried to recall his fading sense of outrage, but ha
found nothing in his mind but penitence. The sort
of distraught humility with which she behaved gave
her a novel fascination.

The dinner was good, as Mrs. 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 need n't pretend that you 're treat-
ing me so well for nothing. You want something."

" We want nothing but that you should not neg-
lect 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 hia
portable dining-table, or his automatic camera ? "

" For shame ! " cried Mrs. Vervain, beaming re-
proach. Florida's face clouded, and Ferris made
haste to say that he did not know these inven-
tions were sacred, and that he had no wish to blas-
pheme them.

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

" Oh, that 's what you want, is it ? I thought
you merely wanted me not to neglect my friends."

•* Well, do you call that neglecting them ? "

162 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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

" We don't insist. You can take us to the win-
dow and leave us, if you like."

" This clemency is indeed unexpected," replied
Ferris. " I 'm really quite unworthy of it."

He was going on with the badinage customary
between Mrs. Vervain and himself, when Florida
protested, —

" Mother, I think we abuse Mr. Ferris's kind-
ness."

" I know it, my dear — I know it," cheerfully
assented Mrs. Vervain. " It 's perfectly shocking.
But what are we to do ? We must abuse somebody '9
kindness."

" We had better 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 I 'd like very much to look on with you."

He could not tell whether she was grateful for
his words, or annoyed. She resolutely 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 home if she did not want to go.
To be sure, she went everywhere with her mother

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 153

but it was strange, with her habitual violent sub-
missiveness, that she should have said anything in
opposition to her 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 see most of the priests of
Venice, and what they are like, in the procession
to-morrow," she said. " Do you remember speak-
ing to me about priests, the other day, Mr. Fer-
ris?"

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

" I never thought that," answered Florida, seri-
ously. " What you said was true, was n't it ? "

" Yes, it was and it was n't, and I don't know
that it differed from 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
io. Most educated men in middle life are mate-
rialists, and of course unfriendly to the priests,
?here are even women who are skeptical about i*

154 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

ligion. But I suspect that the largest number of aL
those who talk loudest against the priests are really
subject to them. You must consider how very in-
timately they are bound up with every family in the
most solemn relations of life."

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

"I don't, indeed. I don't see how 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 is n't often now that the sons of noble fam-
ilies 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 an-
other way."

" I wonder," said Florida, with her head on one
side, considering her seam, "why there is always
something 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
fco all doomed people, have n't we ? A nd a priest
is a man under sentence of death to the natural ties
between himself and the human race. He is dead
to us. That makes him dreadful. The spectre of
our dearest friend, father or mother, would be ter-
rible. And yet," added Ferris, musingly, "a
* n't terrible."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 156

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

She was silent for a time, in which she sewed
swiftly ; 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 did n't see how it could be managed." Fer-
ris did not note the change that passed over Flor-
ida's face, and he continued. " 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 on the street ; maybe they
have n't any indoors."

" Yes, it must sometimes happen, as you say,"
replied Florida, with a quick sigh, reverting to the
beginning of Ferris's answer. " But is it any
worse for a false priest than for a hypocritical min-
ister ? "

" It 's bad enough for either, but it 's worse for
the priest. You see,, Miss Vervain, a minister
does n't set up for so much. He doesn't pretend
to forgive us our sins, and he does n't ask us to con
IBBB them; he doesn't offer us the veritable body

156 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

and blood in the sacrament, and he does n't beat
allegiance to the visible and tangible vicegerent of
Christ upon earth. A hypocritical parson may be
absurd ; but a skeptical priest is tragical."

44 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 child-
hood. Should you think such a priest as that was
to blame for being a skeptic ? " she asked very
earnestly.

44 No," said Ferris, with a smile at her serious-
ness, 44 1 should think such a skeptic as that was to
blame for being a priest."

44 Should n't you be very sorry for him ? " pur-
sued Florida still more solemnly.

44 1 should, indeed, if I liked him. If I did n't,
I 'm afraid I should n't," said Ferris ; but he saw
that his levity jarred upon her. 4t Come, Miss Ver-
vain, 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 ? You '11 spoil
my pleasure if you do. I dare say they '11 be all of
them devout believers, accepting everything, down
5o the animalcula in the holy water."

* If you were that kind of a priest," persisted
the girl, without heeding his jests, 44 what should

rondo?"

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 15T

" Upon my word, I don't know. I can't imagine
it. Why," he continued, "think what a helpless
creature 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
is n't of it, fcnd 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 Protes-
tant 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 drifting into doubt, he 'd try to avoid
the disagreeable subject, and, if he could n't, he 'd
philosophize it some way, and wouldn't let his
skepticism worry him."

" Then you mean that they have n'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."

" No, no ; you don't believe that, you know you
don't," said Florida, anxiously. " And you have n't
answered my question."

158 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

" Oh yes, I have. I Ve told you it was n't a rap*
posable case."

** But suppose it was."

" Well, if I must," answered Ferris with a laugh.
" With my unfortunate bringing up, I could n't say
less than that such a man ought to get out of his
priesthood 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 He, 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 ours, some-
thing 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 Hve in a
Latin country. He learns to suspect his own top-
ping virtues, and to be lenient to the novel combi-
nations of right and wrong that he sees. But aa
for our insupposable priest — yes, I should say de-
cidedly he ought to get out of it by all means."

Florida fell back in her chair with an aspect of
Buch relief as comes to one from confirmation on an
important point. She passed her hand over the
sewing in her lap, but did not speak.

Ferris went on, with a doubting look at her, for
he had been shy of introducing Don IppoHto'i
oame since the day on the Brenta, and he did not
know what effect a recurrence to him in this talk

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 159

might have. " I Ve often wondered if our own
glerical 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 he 's ever put the question
whether he is what he professes 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 should n'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 recognized as perfect truth-
fulness, and could n'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 humanitarian, yes, Miss
Vervain. He 'd be much happier as he was."

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

" We ought to be in the Piazza by nine o'clock,"
Baid Ferris, carelessly accepting the change of sub-
ject ; and he told her of his plan for seeing the pro-
cession from a window of the Old Procuratie.

When he rose to go, he said lightly, " Perhaps,
After all, we may see the type of tragical pried

160 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

we Ve been talking about. Who can tell ? I say
his nose will be red.*'

" Perhaps," answered Florida, with unheeding
gravity.

xn.

THE day was one 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 un-
seen. 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 salon, to a temple. The shops
under the colonnades that inclose it upon three
sides were shut ; the caff es, before which the circles
of idle coffee-drinkers and sherbet-eaters ordinarily
spread out into the Piazza, were repressed to the
limits of their own doors ; the stands of the water-
venders, the baskets of those that sold oranges of
Palermo and black cherries 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 finial rose like the
high-altar, ineffably rich and beautiful, of the vaster
temple whose inclosure it completed. Before it
Btood the three great red flag-staffs, like painted
tapers before an altar, and from them hung the
Austrian fags of red and white, and yellow and
kfak.

In the middle of the square stood the Austrian
11

162 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

military band, motionless, encircling their leader
with his gold-headed staff uplifted. During the
night a light colonnade of wood, roofed with blue
cloth, had been put up around the inside of the
Piazza, and under this now paused the long pomp
of the ecclesiastical procession — the priests of all
fche Venetian churches in their richest vestments,
followed in their order byfacchini, 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 several churches, and supported
the canopies under which the host of each was ele-
vated. Before the clergy went a company of Aus-
trian soldiers, and behind the facchini came a long
array of religious societies, charity-school boys in
uniforms, old paupers in holiday dress, little naked
urchins with shepherds' crooks and bits of fleece
about their loins like John the Baptist in the Wil-
derness, little girls with angels' wings and crowns,
the monks of the various orders, and civilian peni-
tents of all sorts in cloaks or dress-coats, hooded or
bareheaded, and carrying each a lighted taper.
The corridors under the Imperial Palace and the
New and Old Procuratie were packed with specta-
tors ; from every window up and down the fronts
of the palaces, gay stuffs were flung ; the startled
doves of St. Mark perched upon the cornices, or
fluttered uneasily to and fro above the crowd.
The baton of the band leader descended with *

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 163

crash of martial music, the priests chanted, the
eharity-boys sang shrill, a vast noise of shuffling
feet arose, mixed with the foliage-like rustling of
the sheets of tinsel attached to the banners and
candles in the procession: the whole strange, gor-
geous picture came to life.

After all her plans and preparations, Mrs. Ver-
vain had not felt well enough that morning to come
to the spectacle which she had counted so much
upon seeing, 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 Procu-
ratie.

" 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 possibility of gayety in her ? "

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

"Neither did I," returned Ferris, "but I've
often thought it, and I 'm not sure now but I 'm
right. There's something extremely melancholy
to me in all this. I don't care so much for what
one may call the deplorable superstition expressed
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 pro-
session of lantern-lit gondolas and barges on the
Gtrand Canal. It 's phantasmal. It 's the spectra)

164 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

resurrection of the old dead forms into the present
It 's not even the ghost, it 's the corpse, of othel
ages that 's haunting Venice. The city ought to
have been destroyed by Napoleon when he de
stroyed the Republic, and thrown overboard — St
Mark, Winged Lion, Bucentaur, and all. There ia
no land like America for true cheerfulness and
light-heartedness. Think of our Fourth of Julys
and our State Fairs. Selah I "

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

" I 'm curious to know how our friend will look,"
he began again, as he arranged the cushion on the
window-sill for Florida's greater comfort in watch-
ing the spectacle, " but it won't be an easy matter
to pick him out in this masquerade, I fancy. Can-
dle-carrying, as well as the other acts of devotion,
Beems rather out of character with Don Ippolito,
and I can't imagine his putting much soul into it.
However, very few of the clergy appear to do that.
Look at those holy men with their eyes to the
wind ! They are wondering who is the bella bionda
at the window here."

Florida listened to his persiflage with an air of
§ad distraction. She was intent upon the proces*
lion as it approached from the other side of the
Piazza, and she replied at random to his comments
•n the different bodies that formed it.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 165

*' It 's very hard to decide which are my favor
lies," he continued, surveying the long column
through an opera-glass. " My religious disadvan-
tages have been such that I don't care much for
priests or monks, or young John the Baptists, 01
small female cherubim, but I do like little charity-
boys with voices of pins and needles and hair cut d
la dead-rabbit. I should like, if it were consistent
with the consular dignity, to go down and rub their
heads. I 'm fond, also, of old charity-boys, I find.
Those paupers make one in love with destitute and
dependent age, by their aspect of irresponsible en-
joyment. See how briskly each of them topples
along on the leg that he has n't got in the grave !
How attractive likewise are the civilian devotees in
those imperishable dress-coats of theirs! Observe
their high collars of the era of the Holy Alliance :
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 dress-coats of civil employees render themselves
immortal. Those penitents in the cloaks and cowls
are not bad, either, Miss Vervain. Come, they add
a very pretty touch of mystery to this spectacle.
They 're the sort of thing that painters are expected
to paint in Venice — that people sigh over as so
peculiarly Venetian. If you 've a single sentiment
%bout you, Miss Verrain, now is tho time to pro-
iuoeit."

166 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

44 But I have n't. I'm afraid I have no sentiment
At all," answered the girl ruefully. " But thia
makes me dreadfully sad."

" Why that 's just what I was saying a while
ago. Excuse me, Miss Vervain, but 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 ; perhaps there might not
be 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. Perhaps there is n't even any God I Do
you think there is ? "

" I don't think 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 I
Look there, at those troops who go before the fol
lowers 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 those sol-
diers to fire into the helpless crowd. Look at the
silken and gilded pomp of the servants of the car-
penter's son ! Look at those miserable monks, vol-
untary prisoners, beggars, aliens to their kind I
Look at those penitents who think that they can
get forgiveness for their sins by carrying a candle
round the square I An i it is nearly two thousand
fears since the world turned Christian I It tl

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 167

pretty slow. But I suppose God lets men learn
Him from their own experience of evil. I imagine
the kingdom of heaven is a sort of republic, and
that God draws men to Him only through theii
perfect freedom."

"Yes, yes, it must be so," answered Florida,
gtaring 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 yes-
terday. 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 — all of them ! "

" No, no, Miss Vervain," said Ferris, smiling at
her despair, " you push matters a little beyond —
as a woman has a right to do, of course. 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 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
ainocent 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-
lancing toward the space immediately under theil

168 A FOBEGONE CONCLUSION.

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 hia
slender figure intimated a sort of despairing weari-
ness. While most of his 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-patri-
arch 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 hastily, 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 ex-
pressed.

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

Florida raised her hand 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 suffused his pallid visage, which seemed
to grow the more haggard and desperate. His
Head fell again, and he dropped the candle fron:

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 169

his hand. One of those beggars who went by the
side of the procession, to gather the drippings of th*
tapers, restored it to hi ni.

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

XIII.

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 severa.
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 is n't at all the same thing, you
know. Florida has no faculty for describing ; and
now I shall probably go away from 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 punctilio took his
^eave.

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

The priest passed, with the sliding step which his
Impeding drapery imposed, down the garden walk
*nd was half-way to the gate, when Florida, who
•ad stood watching him, said to her mother, " I

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 171

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 painful shadow overcast the f aco
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, madamigella," said the priest at last,
" what do you command me ? " He gave a faint,
patient sigh.

The tears came into her eyes. " Oh," she be-
gan 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 I
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 have n't you thought of any hope for your-
self ? Must you still go on as before ? How can
you go back now to those things, and pretend to
think them holy, and all the time have no heart or
foith in them ? It 's terrible ! "

u What would you, madamigella ? ' demanded

172 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

Don Ippolito, with a moody shrug. " It is my pro
fession, my trade, you know. You might say to
the prisoner," he added bitterly, " « It is terrible to
Bee you chained here.' Yes, it is terrible. Oh, I
don't reject your compassion ! But what can I
do?"

"Sit down with me here," said Florida in her
blunt, child-like way, and sank upon the stone seat
beside the walk. She clasped her hands together
in her lap with some strong, bashful 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 don't know how to begin what I want to say.
I am not fit to advise any one. I am BO young, and
BO very ignorant of the world."

" I too know little of the world," 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
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
bis feet with a kind of moan, and a shudder, " God
forbid I " He swiftly touched her hand with the

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

tips of his fingers, and then kissed them : an action
of inexpressible humility. " Madamigella, I sweat
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.

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

They looked steadfastly at each other for a mo-
ment, and then Don Ippolito spoke.

44 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
whatever heart he had begun to speak with.
44 That 's nothing," she said, 44 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. Come," she implored
him fervently, 44 you must promise."

He bent his dreamy eyes upon her.

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

174 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

"I should be your friend if the who.e world
turned against you.'*

" Would you be my friend," ht asked eagerly 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-born ignorance in women
of the insuperable difficulties of doing right that
men take fire and accomplish the sublime impossi-
bilities. Our sense of details, our fatal habits of
reasoning paralyze us ; we need the impulse of the
pure ideal which we can get only from 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
eeem terrible to you ? "

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

" 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 Ippolito : it is
ihe very thing that I hoped you would do, but I
wanted you to speak of it first. You must have
ftll the honor of it, and I am glad you thought of it
Wore. You will never regret it ! "

She smiled radiantly upon him, and le kindled

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 175

nt her enthusiasm. In another moment his face
darkened again. " But it will cost much," he
murmured.

" 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, every-
thing ! " She blushed with irrelevant conscious-
ness. " Why need you be downhearted ? With
your genius once free, you can make country and
fame and friends everywhere. Leave Venice I
There are other places. Think how inventors suc-
ceed 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
fco us there, and make our house your home till you
have formed some plans of your own. Everything
will be easy. God is good," she said in a breaking
voice, " and you may be sure he will befriend you."

" Some one," answered Don Ippolito, with tears
m his eyes, " has already been very good to me. I
thought it was you, but I wiZl call it God ! "

" Hush ! You must n'^ say such things. But
jro*i must go, now. Take time to think, but not
loo much time. Only, — be true to yourself."

176 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

They rose, and she laid her hand on his an*
with an instinctive gesture of appeal. He stood be-
wildered. Then, " Thanks, madamigella, thanks I "
he said, and caught her fragrant hand to his lips.
He loosed it and lifted both his arms by a blind
mpulse in which he arrested himself with a burn-
ing blush, and turned away. He did not take leave
of her with his wonted formalities, but hurried ab-
ruptly toward the gate.

A panic seemed to seize her as she saw him open
it. She ran after him. " Don Ippolito, Don Ippo-
lito," she said, coming up to him ; and stammered
and faltered. "I don't know; I am frightened.
You must do nothing from me ; I cannot let you •
I'm not fit to advise you. It must be wholly
from your own conscience. 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 terrible than I can under-
stand. If it is the only way, it 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 Ippolito, with a
lim trouble in his face.

" Oh, I am so glad of that I Remember, I don't
take anything back. No matter what happens, 1
will be your friend. But he will tell you just what
iodo."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 171

Don Ippolito bowed and opened the gate.

Florida 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 ? *'

u I have been wanting to tell you, mother," said
Florida. She drew her chair in front of the eldei
lady, and sat down.
If

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 pop
alous district of Canaregio to the Campo di Marte.
A squad of cavalry which had been going through
some exercises there was moving off the parade
ground ; a few infantry soldiers were strolling about
under the trees. Don Ippolito 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 in the sun, whose heat he did not seem
to feel, though a perspiration bathed his pale face
and stood in drops on his forehead under the
lhadow of his nicchio. Some little dirty children of
the poor, with which this region swarms, looked at
him from the sloping shore of the Campo di Gius-
tizia, 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
Bhook him and gesticulated warningly.

At this point the long railroad bridge which con-
nects Venice with the mainland is in full sight, and
now from the reverie in which he continued, whether
le walked or stood still, Don Ippolito was roused by

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 179

the whistle of an outward train. He followed it with
his eye as it streamed along over the far-stretching
arches, and struck out into the flat, salt marshes be-
yond , When the distance hid it, he put on his hat,
which he had unknowingly removed, and turned
hw rapid steps toward the railroad station. Ar-
rived there, he lingered in the vestibule for half an
hour, watching the people as they bought their
tickets for departure, and had their baggage ex-
amined by the customs officers, and weighed and
registered by the railroad porters, who passed it
through the wicket shutting out the train, while the
passengers gathered up their smaller parcels and
took their way to the waiting-rooms. He followed
a group of English people some paces in this direc-
tion, 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
the waiting-rooms were thrown open with harsh
proclamation by the guards, and the passengers
flocked into the carriages. Whistles and bells
were sounded, and the train crept out of the sta-
tion.

A man in the company's uniform approached the
unconscious priest, and striking his hands softly to-
gether, said with a pleasant smile, " Your servant,
Don Ippolito. Are you expecting some one ? "

" Ah, good day ! " answered the priest, with a
Sttle start. " No," he added, " I was not looking
tor any one."

180 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

" I see," said the other. " Amusing yourself ai
usual with the machinery. Excuse the freedom,
Don Ippolito ; but you ought to have been of oui
profession, — ha, ha ! When you have the leisure,
I should like to show you the drawing of an Amer-
ican locomotive which a friend of mine has sent me
from Nuova York. It is very different from ours,
very 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," contin-
ued the man with animation, " if you are on the
way to England, for example, another train carries
you to Susa, and there you get the diligence over
the mountain to St. Michel, where you take rail-
road again, and so on up through Paris to Boulogne-
Bur-Mer, and then by steamer to Folkestone, and
then by railroad to London and to Liverpool. It ia
jit Liverpool that you go on board the steamer foi
America, and piff ! in ten days you are in Nuov»
fork* My friend has written me all about it."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

" All yes, your friend. Does he like it there in
America? "

"Passably, passably. The Americans have no
manners ; but they are good devils. They are
governed by the Irish. And the wine is dear. But
he likes America ; yes, he likes it. Nuova York ia
a fine city. But immense, you know ! Eight times
as large as Venice ! "

" Is your friend prosperous there ? "

44 Ah heigh ! That is the prettiest part of the
Btory. 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 ! "

" Oh per Bacco ! " cried Don Ippolito.

44 Honestly. But you spend a great deal there.
Still, it is magnificent, 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 actually mad for inventions. Your
servant. Excuse the freedom, you know," said the
man, bowing 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, whers he sought the room
in which his inventions were stored. He had not
touched them for weeks. They were all dusty and
many were cobwebbed. He blew the dust from
tome, and bringing them to the light, examined
them critically, finding them mostly disabled in

182 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

way or other, except the models of the portable fur-
niture 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 can-
non and then suddenly put it down again with a
little shiver, and went to the threshold of the per-
verted oratory and glanced in at his forge. Vener-
anda 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. The place seemed
chilly even on that summer's day. He stood in the
doorway with clenched hands. Then he called
Veneranda, chid her for leaving the window open,
and bade her close it, and so quitted the house and
left her muttering.

Ferris seemed surprised to see him when he ap-
peared at the consulate near the middle of the af-
ternoon, 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
manage much better when it 's good. I don't get
on with you, Don Ippolito. There are too many
df you. I should n't have known you in the pro-
eession yesterday."

Don Ippolito did not respond. He rose and went
toward hk portrait on the easel, and examined it

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 183

long, with a curious minuteness. Then he returned
to his chair, and continued to look at it. "I sup-
pose that it resembles me a great deal," he said,
14 and yet I do not feel like that. I hardly know
what is the fault. It is as I should be if I were
like other priests, perhaps ? "

44 1 know it 's not good," said the painter. 44 It
is conventional, in spite of everything. But here 'a
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.

44 Ah ! " said Don Ippolito, with a sigh and smile
of relief, 44 that is immeasurably better. I wish I
could speak to you, dear friend, in a mood of yours
as sympathetic as this picture records, of some mat-
ters that concern me very nearly. I have just come
from the railroad station."

44 Seeing some friends off ? " asked the painter,
indifferently, 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 Ippolito sighed again. " I hardly know. I
was seeing off my hopes, my desires, my prayers,
that followed the train to America ! "

The painter put down his charcoal, dusted hia
fingers, and looked at the priest without saying
anything.

44 Do you remember when I first came to you 7
tsked Don Ippolito.

184 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

** Certainly," said Ferris. " Is it of that mattel
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.
" Nothing 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 dryly.

" I have thought of that," rejoined Don Ippolito
more patiently. " I can get a passport for France
from 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
true," he said. " Why had n't you thought of that
when you first came to me ? "

" I cannot tell. I did n't know that I could 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
afraid you 're dooming yourself to many bitter dis-
appointments in going to America. What do you
expect to do there ? "

" Why, with my inventions " —

a I suppose," interrupted the other, putting a
lighted match to his pipe, " that a painter must be
ft very poor sort of American : his first thought if

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 185

oi coming to Italy. So I know very little directly
about the fortunes of my inventive fellow-country-
men, or whether an inventor has any prospect of
making a living. But once when I was at Wash-
ington I went into the Patent Office, where the
models of the inventions are deposited ; the build-
ing is about as large as the Ducal Palace, and it is
full of them. The people there told me nothing
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 inventions for a trifle 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 Ippolito ; " and
besides, until some of my inventions became known,
I could give lessons in Italian."

" Oh, bravo 1 " said Ferris, " you prefer instant
death, then ? "

"But madamigelta seemed to believe that my
luccess as an inventor would be assured, there."

Ferris gave a very ironical laugh. " Miss Ver-
vain must have been about twelve years old when
ihe left America. Even a lady's knowledge of busi-
ness, at that age, is limited. When did you talk

186 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

with her about it? You had not spoken of it td
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."

" And what has brought it so forcibly to your
mind again ? "

" That is what I so greatly desire to tell you,'*
roplied 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 he seemed a man fevered by some strong
emotion and at that moment not quite wholesome.
Ferris did not speak, and Don 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^
khat you are going to renounce your priesthood ? "

Don Ippolito opened his hands and let his priest
iood drop, as it were, to the ground.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 187

44 You never spoke of this before, when you talked
»f going to America. Though to be sure " —

44 Yes, yes ! " replied Don Ippolito with vehe-
mence, " 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.

44 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 distor-
tion — to whom, if it destroys me, I cannot devote
less than a truthfulness like hers ! "

" Hers — 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-
gella ! "

" Miss Vervain ? Do you mean to say that Misa
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-
tical priest. He grew very pale. " May I ask/'
ae demanded in a hard, dry voice, " how she came
to advise such a step ? "

44 1 can hardly tell. Something had already

188 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

moved her to barn from me the story of my life —
to know that I was a man with neither faith noi
hope. Her pure heart was torn by the thought of
my wrong and of my error. I had never seen my-
self in such deformity as she saw me even when she
used me with that divine compassion. I was al-
most glad to be what I was because of her angelic
pity for me ! "

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 the other ,
" she was too greatly overwhelmed with my calam-
ity to think of any cure for it. To-day it was that
she uttered those words — words which I shall never
forget, which will support and comfort me, what-
ever happens ! "

The painter was biting hard upon the stem of hia
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 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 doet

A FOREGONE COLLUSION. 189

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 very bitter smile. " You are telling me newa-
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 first jestingly proposed Don
Ippolito as Miss Vervain's teacher. Grotesque,
tragic, impossible — it had still been the under-cur-
rent of all his reveries ; or so now it seemed to nave
been.

Don Ippolito anxiously drew nearer to him and
laid an imploring touch upon his arm, — "I love
her ! "

"What I" gasped the painter. "You? You!
A priest ? "

" Priest I priest ! " cried D:m Ippolito, violently.
*From this day I am no longer a priest I From

190 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

this hour I am a man, and I can ofter her the hon
orable 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 Ferris's arm, and he now moved
gome steps from him. " What is it, dear friend ? "
he besought him. " Is there something that offends
you ? I came to you for counsel, and you meet me
with a repulse little short of enmity. I do not un-
derstand. Do I intend anything wrong without
knowing it ? Oh, I conjure you to speak plainly ! "

"Wait I Wait a minute," said Ferris, waving
his hand like a man tormented by a passing pain.
" I am trying to think. What you say is ...
I cannot imagine it ! "

" Not imagine it ? Not imagine it ? And why ?
Is she not beautiful ? "

« Yes."

« And good ? "

" Without doubt."

" And young, and yet wise beyond her yean ?
And true, and yet angelically kind ? "

" It is all as you say, God knows. But ....
a priest " —

" Oh I Always that accursed word ! And at
heart, what is a priest, then, but a man? — a
wretched, masked, imprisoned, banished man ! Eai

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 191

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 kno\v
her grace, not inhale the fragrance of her soul, not
adore her beauty ? Oh, great God ! And if at
last he would tear off his stifling mask, escape from
his prison, return from his exile, would you gainsay
him ? "

" No I " said the painter with a kind of groan.
He sat down in a tall, carven gothic chair, — the
furniture of one of his pictures, — and rested his
head against 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 truly what I thought
of your scheme 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 him. " Or
did she wish me to advise you about the renuncia-
tion of your priesthood ? You must have thought
that carefully over for yourself."

" Yes, I do not think you could make me see that
a* 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 the step ; tae burden of the doubfa
part I play is unendurable, is it not ? "

* You know better than 1."

/92 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

44 But if you were such a man as I, with neithel
love for your vocation nor faith in it, should you
not cease to be a priest ? "

44 If you ask me in that way, — yes," answered
the painter. " But I advise you nothing. I could
not counsel another in such a case."

44 But you think and feel as I do," said the priest,
" and I am right, then."

44 1 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 girl. Neither could put an
end to this interview, so full of intangible, inconclu-
sive misery. Ferris drew a long breath, and then
said steadily, " Don Ippolito, I suppose you did not
speak idly to me of your — your feeling for Miss
Vervain, and that I may speak plainly to you in
return."

44 Surely," answered the priest, pausing in his
walk and fixing his eyes upon the painter. "It
was to you as the friend of both that I spoke of my
love, and my hope — which is oftener my despair."

44 Then you have not much reason to believe that
she returns your — feeling ? "

44 Ah, how could she consciously return it ? I
have been hitherto a priest to her, and the thought
of me would have been impurity. But hereafter, if
I can prove myself a man, if I can win my place in
the wcrld .... No, even now, why should she
care so much for my escape from these bonds, if sbt
did not care for me more than she knew ? "

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 198

"Have you ever thought of that extravagant
generosity of Miss Vervain's character ? "

" It is divine ! "

" 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 reparation ? "

Don Ippolito looked at Ferris, 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 what 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.
k Can there be any higher thing in heaven or on
earth than love for such a woman ? "

" Yes ; 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 f sll into a dull reverie
u which he seemed to forget Don Ippolito &nd the

13

194 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

whole affair. At last the priest spoke again
" Have you nothing to say to me, signore ? "

" I ? What is there to say ? " returned the othei
blankly.

" Do you know any reason why I should not love
her, save that I am — have been — a priest ? "

" No, I know none," said the painter, wearily.

" Ah," exclaimed Don Ippolito, " there is some-
thing on your mind that you will not speak. I
beseech you not to let me go wrong. I love 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 without a man's experience, or a man's
knowledge of what is just and right in these rela-
tions. 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-
Btained palace opposite had not changed in the last
half-hour. As on many another summer day, he saw
the 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 roof, moved
sluggishly down the middle current. A party of
Americans in a gondola, with their opera-glassea
and guide-books in their 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.

Ftrris came back and looked dizzily at tho pritwt

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 195

trying to believe that this unhuman, sacerdotai
phantasm had been telling him that it loved a
beautiful young girl of his own race, faith, and
language.

" 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
consult with you about it. There are reasons why
I should not. The mother of Miss Vervain is here
with her, and 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 answered
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
ftvdl remorse filled the painter, as he heard the outer
loor close after him. But he could do nothing.
If he had given a wound to the heart that trusted

196 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

him, it was in an anguish which he had not been
able to master, and whose causes he could not yet
define. It was all a shapeless torment ; it held him
like the memory of some hideous nightmare pro-
longing its horror beyond sleep. It seemed impos-
sible that what had happened should have hap*
pened.

It was long, as he sat in the chair from which he
had talked with Don Ippolito, before he could rea-
son about what had been said ; and then the worst
phase presented itself first. He could not help see-
ing that the priest might have found cause for hope
in the girl's behavior toward him. Her violent re-
sentments, and her equally violent repentances ; her
fervent interest in his unhappy fortunes, and her
anxiety that he should at once forsake the priest-
hood ; 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 from Don Ippolito's lips,
her letting another man go with her to look upon
the procession in which her priestly lover was to
tppear in his sacerdotal panoply ; these things could
*ot be accounted for except by that strain of inso

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 191

lent, passionate defiance which he had noted in hei
from the beginning. 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 shoulders, and tried to cast off all 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 alien to the character he had just constructed
for her. They were child-like, trusting, uncon-
scious, far beyond anything he had yet known in
women, and they appealed to him now with a mad-
dening pathos. She was standing there before Don
Ippolito's picture as on that morning when she
came to Ferris, looking anxiously at him, her inno-
cent beauty, troubled with some hidden care, hal-
lowing the place. Ferris 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 newspaper.

Why did Miss Vervain send Don Ippolito to him?
Was it some scheme of her secret love for the
priest; or mere coarse resentment of the cautions
Ferris had once hinted, a piece of vulgar bravado ?
But if she had acted throughout in pure simplicity,
n unwise goodness of heart? If Don Ippolito

198 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

were altogether self-deceived, and nothing but hei
unknowing pity had given him grounds of hope ?
He himself had suggested this to the priest, and
now with a different motive he looked at it in hia
own behalf. A great load began slowly to lift it-
Belf 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
gave them if possible from the painful consequences
of the priest's hallucination. But how to do this
was by no means clear. He blamed himself for
not having been franker with Don Ippolito and
tried to make him see that the Vervains might re-
gard 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 his action might be easily
misconstrued. If he shrank from the thought of
speaking to him of the matter again, it appeared
yet more impossible to bring it before the Vervains.
Like a man of the imaginative temperament as he
was, he exaggerated the probible effect, and pic-
tured their dismay in colors that made his interfer-
ence seem a ludicrous enoirnity ; in fact, it would

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 199

have been an awkward business enough for one not
hampered by his 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 ol
perplexity that made the sweat stand in drops upon
his forehead, he smiled to think it just possible that
Mrs. Vervain might take the matter seriously, and
wish to consider the propriety of Florida's accept-
ing Don Ippolito. But if he spoke to the daughter,
how should he approach the subject ? " Don Ippo-
lito 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 marry 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
absurdity, 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 himself that Ferris was not in love with
Florida. Could he be less manly and generous than
fchis poor priest, and violate the sanctity of his con-
Ideiice? Ferris groaned aloud. No, contrive it
IB he would, call it by what fair name he chose, h«

200 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

eould not commit this treachery. It was the mort
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 Ferris felt that the whole affair had
been fatally carried beyond his reach ; he 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 drank a cup of coffee at
Florian's. Then he walked to the Public Gardens,
where he watched the crowd till 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 public landing nearest the Vervains',
and so walked up the calle, and entered the palace
from the campo, through the court that on one side
opened into the garden.

Mrs. Vervain was alone in the room where he
had always been accustomed to find her daughter
vith her, and a chill as of the impending change
lell upon him. He felt how pleasant it had been
to find them together ; with a vain, piercing regret

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 201

be felt how much like home the place had been tc
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 go-
ing 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 ? Is n't it
rather sad ? Is n't it sudden ? Come, Mr. Ferris,
do be a little complimentary, for once ! "

" 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-
hremely grateful, and thinks we 've quite imposed
ipon you."

" Thanks."

** I suppose we have, but as I always say, you 'M

202 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

the representative of the country here. However,
that 's neither here nor there. We have no rela-
tivea on the face of the earth, you know ; but I
have a good manr 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 beautiful 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."

" I 'm very sorry 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 prolonging the agony."

Mrs. Vervain adjusted her glasses with the
thumb and finger of her right hand, and peered in-
to Ferris's face with a gay smile. " But the great-
est 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.
Vervain. " 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 en his account, poor fellow. He 's to
join us in France, and then he can easily get intr
England with us. You know he 's to give up being

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 20&

* priest, and is going to devote himself to invention
when ho gets to America. Now, what do you
think of it, Mr. Ferris ? Quite strikes you dumb,
does n't it ? " triumphed Mrs. Vervain. " I sup-
pose it 's what you would call a wild goose chase,
~~-I used to pick up all those phrases, — but we
bhall carry 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 dinner with us, and
we 've been talking it over and over. He 's so en-
thusiastic about it, and yet he breaks down every
little while, and seems quite to despair of the un-
dertaking. But Florida won't let him do that ; and
really it 's funny, the way he defers to her judg-
ment — you know / always regard Florida as such
a mere child — and seems to take every word she
says for gospel. But, shedding tears, now : it 's
dreadful in a man, is n't it ? I wish Don Ippolito
wouldn't do that. It makes one creep. I can't
feel that it 's manly ; can you ? "

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 Americans 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 he-
loic about it ; that is, outwardly : for I can see —

204 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

women can, in each other, Mr. Ferris — just where
she 's on the point of breaking down, all the while.
Has she evei spoken to you about Don Ippolito ?
She does think so highly of your opinion, Mr. Fer-
ris."

" She does me too much honor," said Ferris, with
ghastly irony.

" Oh, I don't think so," returned Mrs. Vervain.
*' She told me this morning that she 'd made Don
Ippolito 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 beforehand that I must n't. She said
he must be left entirely to himself in that matter,
and " — Mrs. Vervain looked suggestively at Fer-
ris.

" 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
b better than man's reason."

The painter silently bowed his head.

" Yes, I 'm quite woman's rights in that respect,"
•aid Mrs. Vervain.

" 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
IVe told him he must get married to some good
A.morican girl. You ought to have seen how th«

.1 FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 205

poor fellow blushed ! But really, you know, there
are lots of nice girls that would jump at him — so
handsome and sad-looking, and a genius."

Ferris could only stare helplessly at Mrs. Ver-
vain, who continued : —

" Yes, I think he 's a genius, and I 'm determined
that he shall have a chance. I suppose we 've got
a job on our hands ; but I 'm not sorry. I '11 in-
troduce him into society, and if he needs money he
shall have it. What does God give us money for,
Mr. Ferris, but to help our fellow-creatures ? "

So miserable, as he was, from head to foot, that
it seemed impossible he could endure more, Ferris
could not forbear laughing at this burst of piety.

" What are you laughing at ? " asked Mrs. Ver-
vain, who had cheerfully joined him. " Something
I've been saying. Well, you won't have me to
laugh at much longer. I do wonder whom you '11
have next."

Ferris's merriment died away in something like a
groan, and when Mrs. Vervain again spoke, it was
in a tone of sudden querulousness. " I wish 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 did n't
meet them, coming in. She must be in the garden
iomewhere ; I suppose she 's sorry to be leaving it.
But I need her. Would you be so very kind, Mr,
fTerris, as to go and ask her to come to me ? "

Ferris rose heavily from the chair in which he

206 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

ieemed to have grown ten years older. He had
hardly heard anything that he did not know al-
ready, but the clear vision of the affair with which
he had come to the Vervains was hopelessly con-
fused and darkened. He could make nothing of
any phase of it. He did not know whether he
cared now to see Florida or not. He mechanically
obeyed Mrs. Vervain, and stepping out upon the
terrace, slowly descended the stairway.
The moon was shining brightly into the garden*

XV.

FLORIDA and Don Ippolito had paused in the
pathway which parted at the fountain and led in
one direction to the water-gate, and in the other out
through the palace-court 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
yours."

" You shall never want for hope and courage
then. We believe in you, and we honor your pur-
pose, and we will be your steadfast friends. But
now you must think only of "the present — of how
you are to get away from Venice. Oh, I can un-
derstand how you must hate to leave it ! "What a
beautiful night ! You must n't expect such moon-
light as this in America, Don Ippolito."

" It is beautiful, is it not ? " said the priest,
kindling from her. " But I think we Venetians are
never so conscious of the beauty of Venice as you
itrangers are."

" I don't know I only know that now, since we
fcave made up our minds to go, and fixed the day and

208 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

hour, it is more like leaving my own country than
anything else I 've ever felt. This garden, I seem
to have spent my whole life in it; and when we
are settled in Providence^ I 'm going to have mother
Bend 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 belongs to the fountain.
You shall be the first to set the fountain playing
over there, Don Ippolito, and then we '11 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
must n't do it," she said simply. " The padrone
does n't like to waste the water."

" Oh, we '11 pray the saints to rain it back on him
some day," cried Don Ippolito with willful levity,
and the stream leaped into the moonlight and
seemed to hang there like a tangled skein of silver.

" But how shall I shut it off when you are
gone ? " asked the young girl, looking ruefully at
the floating threads of splendor.

44 Oh, I will shut it off before I go," answered
Don Ippolito. " Let it play a moment," he con-
tinued, gazing rapturously upon it, while the moor

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION 209

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 life-
long defeat into a single instant of release and tri-
umph.

Florida sank upon the bench before the fountain,
indulging his caprice with that sacred, motherly
tolerance, some touch of which is in all womanly
yielding to men's will, and which was perhaps
present in greater degree in her feeling towards a
man more than ordinarily orphaned and unfriended.

" Is Providence your native city ? " asked Don
Ippolito, abruptly, after a little silence.

" Oh no ; I was born at St. Augustine in Flor-
ida."

" Ah yes, I forgot ; madama has told me about
it ; Providence is Tier city. But the two are near
together ? "

" No," said Florida, compassionately, " they are
ft thousand miles apart."

" A thousand miles ? What a vast country I "

" Yes, it 's a whole world."

" Ah, a world, indeed ! " cried the priest, softly.
* I shall never comprehend it."
14

210 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

" You never will," answered the young gir'
gravely, " if you do not think about it more practi-
cally."

" Practically, practically ! " lightly retorted the
priest. " What a word with you Americans .
That is the consul's word : practical."

" Then you have been to see him to-day ? "
asked Florida, with eagerness. " 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 Signor 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, ruin ! 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 have been a priest, where I
ihall at least battle even-handed with the world
Come, let us forget him ; the thought of him pal

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 211

lies all my hope. He could not see me save in this
tobe, in this figure that I 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 1 "

" 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 towards him, in anxious emotion, as she
spoke.

The priest rose, and stretched out his arms, 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
demanded. "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, no ! " she answered fervently. " Your
jtory would gain friends and honor for you every-
where in America. Did he " —

44 A moment, a moment ! " cried Don Ippolito,
Hitching his breath. " Will it ever be possible lot

212 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

me to will something more than honor and friend
ship 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 life's devotion, ask her to be 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 you
that I loved ?". . . .

" What ! " shuddered the girl, recoiling, with al-
most a shriek. " You ? A priest ! "

Don Ippolito gave a low cry, half sob : —

" His words, his words ! 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
i long time, or moved.

Then Florida said absently, in the husky mur-
mur 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, oh I " and wrung her hands.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 218

The foolish fountain kept capering and babbling
Dn. 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

" 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.

" 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 J
lever thought, I never dreamt " —

" I know it well. It was your fatal truth that
lid it ; truth too high and fine for me to have dis-
terned save through such agony as .... You too

. A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

loved my soul, like the rest, and you would hav€
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 I "

"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 be-
fore we met. I was trying to blame you a lit-
tle"—

" Blame me, blame me ; do ! "

— "but there is no blame. Think that it was
another way of asking your forgiveness. . . . O my
God, my God, my God ! "

Ho 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 : " Madamigella, if my share of this misery
gives me the right to ask of you " —

" Oh ask anything of me ! I will give every-
thing, do everything ! "

He faltered, and then, " You do not love me," he
•aid abruptly ; " is there some one else that you
We?"

She did not answer.

"I&it . . . he?"

She hid her face.

" I knew it," groaned the priest, " I knew thai
too ! " and he turned away.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 215

"Don Ippolito, Don Ippolito — oh, poor, poor
Don Ippolito ! " cried the girl, springing towards
him. " Is Ms the way you leave me ? Where
we you going ? What will you do now ? "

" Did I not say ? I am going to die a priest."

" 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 implor-
ingly extended towards him, and clasped them to-
gether and kissed them both. " Adieu ! " he whis-
pered ; then he opened them, and passionately
kissed either palm ; " adieu, adieu I "

A great wave of sorrow and compassion and de-
spair for him swept through her. She flung her
arms about his neck, and pulled his head down upon
her heart, and held it tight there, weeping and
moaning over him as over some hapless, harmless
thing that she had unpurposely bruised or killed.
Then she suddenly put her hands against his breast,
and thrust him away, and turned and ran.

Ferris stepped back again into the shadow of the
tree from which he had just emerged, and clung to
ite trunk 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 moonlight fell, this alien, miserable man
law the figure of a priest gliding on before him.

XVI.

FLORIDA swiftly mounted the terrace steps, but
ihe stopped with her hand on the door, panting, and
turned and walked slowly away to the end of the
terrace, drying her eyes with dashes of her hand-
kerchief, and ordering her hair, some coils of which
had been loosened by her flight. Then she went
back to the door, waited, and softly 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 Ippo-
lito to see them. She smoothed its folds and looked
down at it without making any motion to pack it
away, and so she lingered while her mother ad-
vanced with one question after another ; ;t What are
you doing, Florida ? Where are you ? Why did n't
you come to me ? " and finally stood in the door

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION 217

If ay , " Oh, you 're packing. Do you know, Flor
.da, I 'm getting very impatient about going. 1
wish we could be off at once."

A tremor passed over the young girl and she
itarted from 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. I 'm afraid we Ve
undertaken a great deal, my dear. It 's quite a
weight upon my mind, already ; and I don't know
what it will be. If we were free, now, I should
say, go to-morrow, by all means. But we could n't
arrange it with Don Ippolito on our hands."

Florida waited a moment before she replied.
Then she said coldly, " Don 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
beside the door. " Not going to America ; not
leave Venice ; remain a priest ? Florida, you as-
tonish me ! But I am not the least surprised, not
the least in the world. I thought Don Ippolito
would give out, all along. He is not what I should
call fickle, exactly, but he is weak, or timid, rather.
He is a good man, but he lacks courage, resolution,
J always doubted if he would succeed in America ;
he is too much of a dreamer. But this, really, goe*

218 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

a little beyond anything. I never expected thia,
What did he say, Florida? How did he excuse
kimself?"

** 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
BO, 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. I 'm sure
it was ordered so. But all tkat does n't relieve
Don Ippolito from the charge of black ingratitude,
and want of consideration for us. He 's quite made
fools of us."

" He was not to blame. It was a very great step
for him. And if " ....

" 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-mor-
row."

Florida drew a long breath, and rose to go on
with the work of packing.

" Have you been crying, Florida ? Well, oi
rourse, you can't help feeling sorry for such a man.
There 's a great deal of good in Don Ippolito, a

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 219

great deal. But when you come to my age yea
won't cry so easily, my dear. It 's very trying,"
laid Mrs. Vervain. She sat awhile in silence be-
fore she asked: "Will he come here to-morrow
morning ? "

Her daughter looked at her with a glance of ter-
rified inquiry.

" Do have your 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."

44 Paying him ? "

"Yes, paying him — paying him for your les-
sons. It 's always been very awkward. He has n'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, I 've 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 ques-
tion. He may not come to-morrow, as usual, and
I could n'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 '11 tell you,"
ahe resumed. "If he does n't happen to come here
to-morrow morning, we can stop on our way to the
itation and give him the money."

Florida did not answer.

** Don't you think that would be a good plan ? *'

220 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

** 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 Mr. 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 would n't be quite good taste,"
said Mrs, Vervain perturbedly, "but you needn't
express 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'a
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 did n't he come back with
you?"

44 Come back with me ? "

" Why yes, child. I sent him out to call you,
just before you came in. This Don Ippolito busi-
ness put him quite out of my head. Did n't yon
lee him ? . Oh ! What 's that ? "

A FOREGONE CONCLLSION. 221

44 Nothing : I dropped my candle."

44 You 're sure you did n't set anything on fire ? "

44 No ! It went dead out."

44 Light it again, and do look. Now is everything
right?"

44 Yes."

44 It 's queer he did n't come back to say he
could n't find you. What do you suppose became
of him ? "

44 1 don't know, mother.'

44 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 flung herself upon her bed and hid her
face in the pillow.

The next morning was spent in bestowing those
Cnterminable last touches which the packing of la-
dies' baggage demands, and in taking leave with
largess (in which Mrs. Varvain shone) of all the
people in the house and out of it, who had so much

222 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

BS touched a hat to the Vervains during their 90
journ. 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
unmurmuringly 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 sta-
tion 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't go without saying good-by to Mr. Fer-
ris, Florida," she said at last, " and it 's no use ask-
ing me. He may have been wanting a little in
politeness, but he 's been so 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
summon Ferris to them with passive coldness,
Lurned a look of agony upon her. But in a moment
ihe bade the gondolier stop at the consulate, and
dropping her veil over her face, fell back in th«
thadow of the tenda-curtains.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

Mrs. Vervain sentimentalized their departure a
little, but her daughter made no comment on the
icene they were leaving.

The gondolier rang at Ferris's door and returned
with the answer that he was not at home.

Mrs. Vervain gave way to despair. " Oh dear,
oh dear ! This is too bad ! What shall we do ? "

" We '11 lose the train, mother, if we loiter in this
way," said Florida.

" Well, wait. I must leave a message at least."
" How could you be away" she wrote on her card,
" when we called to 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 Brenner — for your behavior last night.
Who will keep you straight when Pm gone ? You 9ve
been very, very kind. Florida joins me in a thou-
sand thanks, regrets, and good-byes"

" There, I have n't said anything, after all," she
fretted, 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.

" If Don Ippolito should n't be in," said Mrs.
Vervain, as the boat moved on again, " I don't
know what I shall do with this money. It will be
jiwkward beyond anything."

The gondola slipped fr">m the Canalazzo into the
network of the smaller canals, where the dense
tfcadows were as old as the palacea that cast them,

224 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

and stopped at the landing of a narrow quay. Tht
gondolier dismounted and rang at Don Ippolito'a
door. There was no response ; he rang again and
again. At last from a window of the uppermost
Btory the head of the priest himself peered out.
rhe gondolier touched his hat and said, "It is the
ladies who ask for you, Don Ippolito."

It was a minute before the door opened, and the
priest, bare-headed and blinking in the strong light,
came with a stupefied air across the quay to the
landing-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 project of yours so
suddenly?"

She sat down again, that she might talk more at
her ease, and seemed thoroughly happy to have
Don Ippolito before her again.

"It finally appeared best, madama," he said
quietly, after a quick, keen glance at Florida, who
did not lift her veil.

** Well, perhaps you 're partly right. But 1

l't ^relp thinking that you with your talent would

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 226

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 hun-
dred. Are you well to-day, Don Ippolito ? "

" Quite well, madama."

" I thought you looked rather pale. But I be-
lieve you Tre always a little pale. You must n't
work too hard. We shall miss you a great deal,
Don Ippolito."

" Thanks, madama."

" Yes, we shall be quite lost without you. And
1 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. Ver-
vain, 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
kave known of their change ol plan. Don Ippolito
15

226 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

{ooked imploringly into her face, and made a touch-
ing 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. Ver-
vain ; " 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 taking a little rouleau from her
pocket, " that you '11 leave these inventions of yours
for a while, and give yourself a vacation. You
need rest of mind. Go into the country, some-
where, do. That's what's preying upon you.
But we must really be off, now. Shake hands with
Florida — I 'm 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 the folds of the veil which she had not lifted
from her face.

Mrs. Vervain 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 artfully to press into his palm. " Good-by,
good-by," she said, " don't drop it," and attempted
to close his fingers over it.

But he let it lie carelessly in his open hand, as
Ihe gondola moved off, and there it still lay as he
itood watching the boat slip under a bridge at the
next corner, and disappear. While he stood thert

A FOREGONE CONCLTTSION. 227

gazing at the empty arch, a man of a wild and sav-
age aspect approached. 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 revolu-
tion of '48, by his wife's confessor. He advanced
with swift strides, and at the moment he reached
Don Ippolito's side he suddenly 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 his 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.

The young beggar who had held Mrs. Vervain's
gondola fco the shore while she talked, looked up
and down the deserted quay, and at the doors and
windows. Then he began to take off his clothes
for a bath.

xvn.

FERRIS returned at nightfall to his house, where
he had not been since daybreak, and flung himself
exhausted 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 Mala-
mocco, whither he had gone that morning in a sort
of craze, with some fishermen, 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 candlft
took up the card and read it once more. He could
not tell whether to be glad or sorry that he had
failed to see the Vervains again. He took it for
granted that Don Ippolito was to follow ; he would
not ask himself what motive had hastened their go-
ing. The reasons were all that he should never
more look upon the woman so hatefully lost to him,

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 229

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 lam-
entations and adieux, and explaining that the
priest had relinquished his purpose, and would not
go to America at all. The deeper mystery 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 fell upon him when
he woke lay heavy on his heart till night, and op-
pressed him far into his sleep. He could not give
bis trouble certain 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 him-
self what the end was to be. He kept indoors by
iay, trying to work, trying to read, marveling
lomewhat that he did not fall sick and die. At
light he set out on long walks, which took him he
ared not where, and often detained him till the
gray lights of morning began to tremble through
the nocturnal blue. But even by night he shunned

280 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

fche neighborhood in which the Vervains had lived,
Their landlord sent him a package of trifles they
had left behind, but he refused to receive them,
Bending back word that he did not know where the
ladies were. He had half expected that Mrs. Ver-
vain, 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 hia
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 the priest came
up to him, it was not Don Ippolito.

In these days Ferris received a dispatch from the
Department of State, informing him that his suc-
cessor had been appointed, and directing him to
deliver up the consular flags, seals, archives, and
other property of the United States. No reason
for his removal was given ; but as there had never
been any reason for his appointment, he had no
right to complain ; the balance was exactly dressed
by this simple device of our civil service. He de-
termined not to wait for the coming of his succes-
ior before giving up the consular effects, and he
placed them at once in the keeping of the worthy
ihip-chandler who had so often transferred them
from departing to arriving consuls. Then being

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 231

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 tell 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-fa-
vored 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,
out he had not the strength ; so he bade me bring
vou this word: That he had something to say
which it greatly concerned you to hear, and that
tte prayed you to forgive his not coming to revere
you, for it was impossible, and that you should have

282 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

the goodness to do him this favor, to come to find
him the quickest you could."

The old woman wiped her eyes with the corner
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, " Tel]
him I '11 come."

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 conjecture, 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 think it over ; he
would go to-morrow, when he had got some grasp
of the matter.

The old woman lingered.

" Tell him I '11 come," repeated Ferris impa-
tiently.

" 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

Bhock, a little disappointment Is the signore

srery, very 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 I "

" 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-sleeve instead. " That you tvill return with
me," she besought him.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 233

" Oh, I '11 go ! " groaned the painter. " I might
RB well go first as last," he added in English.
" There, stop that ! Enough, enough, I tell you .
Did n't I say I was going with you ?" he cried to
the old woman.

" God bless you ! " she mumbled, and set off be-
fore 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
Bee Veneranda arrive in such state, and a passion-
ate excitement arose at the caffS, 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 im-
pressed upon him, that he had a certain familiarity
with the grape-arbor of the anteroom, the paintings
of the parlor, 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
ii« breast, and a faint smile on his lips, so peaceful,
§j serene, that the painter stopped with a sudden
awe, as if he had unawares come into the presence
rf death.

41 Advance, advance," whispered the old woman

234 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

Near the head of the bed sat a white-haired
priest wearing the red stockings of a canonico ; hia
face was fanatically stern ; 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 ex-
cuse 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 wit-
tingly done him no wrong ; he could not have logi-
cally 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 sacredest
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
Bort of remorse. He recalled again the simple loy-
alty with which Don Ippolito had first spoken to
him of Miss Vervain and tried to learn his own
feeling toward her; he thought how trustfully at

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 285

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 ; and Ferris could not.
That pity for himself as the prey of fantastically
cruel chances, which he had already vaguely felt,
began now also to include the priest ; ignoring all
but that compassion, he went up to the bed and
took 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
affectionate intelligence with the sick man.

" I might have waited a little while," said Don
Ippolito 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," continued Don Ippolito, fix-
ing his eyes upon the painter's face, " I spoke to
her that night after I had parted from you."

The priest's voice was now firm; the painter
turned his face away.

" I spoke without hope," proceeded Don Ippo-
dto, " and because I must. I spoke in vain ; all
Was lost, all was past in a moment."

The coil of suspicions and misgivings and fears in

286 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

which Ferris had lived was suddenly without a
clew ; he could not look upon the pallid visage of
the priest lest he should now at last find there that
Bubtle expression of deceit ; the whirl of his thoughts
kept him silent ; Don Ippolito went on.

41 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 ! " 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 hia
spectral grasp, and pressed it to his lips. " Many
merciful things have befallen me on this bed of
sickness. My uncle, 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 cares and vigils.
Yes, I have had many and signal marks of the di«
vine pity to be grateful for.*' He paused, breath-
lug quickly, and then added, u 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."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 237

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 un-
derstand 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 recon-
ciling myself to it. Tell her that but for her pity
and fear for me, I believe 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 this
affected 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 miracles. As to Miss Ver-
vain, I am sorry that I cannot promise to give her
your message. I shall never see her again. Ex-
case me," he continued, "but your servant said
there was something you wished to say that con-
cerned me ? "

" You will never see her again ! " cried the priest,

288 A FOBEGC/E CONCLUSION.

itruggkng to lift himself upon his elboT* and fall
ing back upon the pillow. " Oh, bereft ! Oh^ deal
and blind ! It was you that she loved ! She con-
fessed it to me that night."

44 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 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
wavering hopes, the wavering doubts alike died in
his heart. He had fallen below the dignity of his
own trouble.

44 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,
4 And 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 be-
lieve this of her ? "

44 Yes," answered the painter doggedly, <4 it i&

44 And yet it is the very truth. Oh, you do

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 289

frncw her, you never knew her ! In the same
moment tkat she denied me her love, she divined
the anguish of my soul, and with that embrace she
sought to console 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 ? "

44 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 Ippolito, for we have only done each other
harm. But I never meant you harm. And now I
ask you to forgive 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. I 'm afraid
you don't know. I 'm afraid that the same deceit
has tricked us both. I must come to you to-mor-
row. Can I ? "

He rose and stood beside the couch.

" Surely, surely," answered the priest, looking
into Ferris's troubled eyes with calm meekness.
14 You will do me the greatest pleasure. Yes, come
Igain to-morrow. You know," he said with a sad
imile, referring to his purpose of taking vows,
*that my time in the world is short. Adieu, fcc
lieet again I "

240 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

He took Ferris'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, among 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 invio-
lable by his speech. He scarcely cared now for the
woman about whom these miseries grouped them-
selves ; he realized that a fantastic remorse may be
stronger than a jealous love.

He longed for the morrow 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 Ippolito had said took a character of lu-
dicrous, of insolent 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 house of Doir
(ppolito, and at last he stopped there, leaning

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 241

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 haggard
in the moonlight, the soldier commanding the Aus-
trian 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 sutfer him to rest.
He meant to go to Don Ippolito and tell him that
his story had failed of its effect, that he was not to
be fooled so easily, and, without demanding any-
thing further, to leave him in his lie.

At the earliest hour when he might hope to be
admitted, he went, and rang the bell furiously.
The door opened, and he confronted the priest's
servant. " I want to see Don Ippolito," said Fer-
ris abruptly.

" It cannot be," she began.

" I tell you I must," cried Ferris, raising his voice.
* I tell you." ....

44 Madman * " fiercely whispered the old woman,
shaking both her open hands in his face, "
lead He died last night I '

16

xvm.

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 sor-
row 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 Florida,
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 over-
take the Vervains before they sailed for America,
but he remembered that they had left Venice six
weeks before. It seemed impossible that he could
wait, but when he landed in New York, he was tor-
mented in his impatience by a strange reluctance
and hesitation. A fantastic light fell upon hif
plans ; a sense of its wildness enfeebled his purpose
What was he going to do? Had he come foui

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 248

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
misgivings as he might, and without allowing him-
self 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 invitations against the time when he should re-
turn to America. 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.

" Does n't Mrs. Vervain live in this house ? "
WKed Ferris, finding a husky voice in his throat
that sounded to him like some other's voice lost
there.

** She used to, but she is n't at hrme. Family s
to Europe."

244 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

They had not come back yet.

M Thanks," said Ferris mechanically, and he wen!
away. He laughed to himself at this keen irony of
fortune ; he was prepared for the confirmation 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
were 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
recruiter. 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 army — 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, now" ....

« Oh no ; don't ! " pleaded Ferris. « Make m«
A corporal — or a cook. I shall not be so mischiev.
ous to our own side, then, and when the other fel
lows shoot me, I shall not be so much of a loss."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 24d

" Oh, they won't shoot you," expostulated hia
friend, high-heartedly. He got Ferris a commission
as second lieutenant, and lent him money to buy a
uniform.

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 al-
ternately 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 mortification 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 man-
aged 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 Florida 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 an-
swer. He asked of a Providence man among the
artists in New York, if he knew the Vervains ; the
Providence man said that he did know them a little
when he was much younger ; they had been abroad
a great deal ; he believed in a dim way that they
trere still in Europe. The young one, he added
to have a temper of her own.

" Indeed ! " said Ferris stiffly.

£46 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

The one fast friend whom he found in New York
tfas the governor's dashing aide. The enthusiasm
of this recruiter of regiments had not ceased with
Ferris's departure for the front ; the number of dis-
abled officers forbade him to lionize any one of
them, but he befriended 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 Ferris, " it looks like a
hopeless case, to me."

" Oh no it is n't," retorted his friend, as cheer-
fully and confidently as he had promised him that
he should not be shot. "Didn't 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 polite pleasure
in handing them over to Ferris rather than to hia
aeirs and assigns.

" Well, I 'm not sure that I share your satisfac-
tion, old fellow," said the painter ruefully ; but he
inpacked the sketches.

Their inspection certainly revealed a dishearten
mg condition of half-work. " And I can't do any

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 247

thing to help the matter for the present," groaned
' Ferris, stopping midway in the business, and mak-
ing as if to shut the case again.

"Hold on," said his friend. "What's this?
Why, this is n't so bad." It was the studj 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.
Come ! "

"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 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 hii
in this fashion, and as it were offer to succor

248 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

him in his extremity. He perceived the shameftL.
ness of suffering such help ; it would be much bettor
to starve ; but he felt cowed, and he had not cour-
age to take arms against this sarcastic destiny,
which had pursued him with a mocking smile from
one lower level to another. He rubbed his fore-
head 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 friend had his way about framing it, and it
was got into the exhibition. The hanging-com-
mittee offered it the hospitalities of an obscure cor-
ner ; but it was there, and it stood its chance. No-
body 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 pic-
tures sold 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 creatureship, like
t, poem in which a poet celebrates his love or la-
ments his dead, and sells for a price. His pride aa
well as his poverty was set on having the picture
sold ; he had nothing to do, and he used to lurk
about, 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 tq
frequent the exhibition, and only chance visitors
from the country straggled in by twos and threes.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 219

One warm, dusty afternoon, when he turned into
fche 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 Ve-
netian subject which Ferris abhorred, and the very
name of which he spat out of his mouth with loath-
ing for its unreality. He passed them with a som-
bre 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
ner head, her whole attitude, expressed a quiet de-
jection ; without seeing her face one could know its
air of pensive wistfulness. Ferris resolved to in-
dulge himself 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 molded 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 years older.

As though she were listening to the sound of hia
steps in the dark instead of having him there visi-
oly before her, she kept her eyes upon him with a
Iieamy unrecognition.

" Yos, it is I," said Ferris, as if she had spoken.

She recovered herself, and with a subdued, soi

£50 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

rowful quiet in her old directness, she answur-ed*
" I supposed you must be in New York," and sh«
indicated that she had supposed so from seeing this
picture.

Ferris felt the blood mounting to his head. " Do
rou think it is like ? " he asked.

" No," she said, " it is n't just to him ; it attrib-
utes things that did n'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 dilate 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 reconcile himself to his calling and his
religion ; he was going to enter a Carmelite con-
vent."

Florida made no answer, but she seemed to ex
pect him to go on, and he was constrained to do no.

" He never carried out his purpose," Ferris said,
with a keen glance at her ; "he died the night
after I saw him."

" Died ? " The fan and the parasol and the two
« 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, buf
lid not ask him anything more.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 251

Ferris did not offer to gather up her tilings ; he
itood irresolute ; presently he continued with a
downcast 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 toward 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 consolation, Mr. Ferris. But you," she
added, "you seem to make yourself my judge.
Well, and what do you 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 con-
fronted her and flung it out upon her in one sting-
'ng phrase. But he was now suddenly at a loss
the words would not come ; his torment fell dumb

262 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

before her ; in her presence the cause was unspeak-*
able. Her lips had quivered a little in making thai
demand, and there had been a corresponding break
in her voice.

" Florida ! Florida ! " Ferris heard himself say-
ing, " I loved you all the time I "

" 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 re-
fused 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. " Perhaps you knew, too,
what that poor priest was thinking 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 ! "

" 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
inch a quibble ! But I wonder that you can tell
me — any woman of it ! "

"By Heavens, this is atrocious!" cried Ferris.
u Do you think .... Look here ! " he went on
rudely. " I '11 put the case to you, and you shaL
lodge it. Remember that I was such a fo/l as t«

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 258

be in love with you. Suppose Don Ippolito had
told me that he was going to risk everything — go-
ing to give up home, religion, 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 night longing to betray him.
And then suppose your mother sent me into th«
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 I"

"What do I mean? You don't understand7
Are 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 ". . . .

" Oh ! " 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 blas-
pheme.

254 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 is n't
much of a hurt ; but then, I was n't much of a
soldier.

The girl's eyes looked reverently at the conven-
tional arm ; 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 — I hope she is well ? "

" 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
Vo grieve her."

Her unjust reproach went to his heart, so long
preoccupied with its own troubles ; he recalled with
ft tender remorse the old Venetian days and th«
kindliness of the gracious, silly woman who had

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 265

teemed to like him so much ; he remembered the
charm of her perfect ladylikeness, and of her win-
ning, weak-headed desire to make every 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 aesthetic life. He humbled himself before hei
memory, and as keenly reproached himself as if he
could have made her hear from him at any time
during the past two years. He could only say, " I
am sorry 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
sometimes to feel troubled about her before we came
to Venice ; but I was very young. I never was
really alarmed till that day I went to you."

44 1 remember," said Ferris contritely.

44 She had fainted, and I thought we ought to see
a doctor 5 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
Bhe seemed so mucn better, for a while ; and then,
everything seemed to happen at once. When we
did start home, she coi\Ad not go any farther than
Switzerland, and in the fall we went back to Italy,
We went to Sorrento, where the climate seemed t#

256 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

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 be-
tween 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 at-
mosphere, inaccessible to his resentment or his re-
gret, as she spoke of her loss. The simple tale of
sickness and death inexpressibly belittled his pas-
sionate 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-door; the
people before the other Venetian picture had ap-
parently 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
tus face, and then moved on.

44 Then I went into the army. I wrote once i*
fan."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 267

" I never got your 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-by ! "

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 Fer
ris.

" You thought I could be such a false and cruel
girl as that I "

" Yes, yes : I thought it all, God help me I "

" When I was only sorry for him, when it was
you that I " —

" Oh, I know it," answered Ferris in a heartsick,
hopeless voice. " He knew it, too. He told me so
the day before he died."

" And did n't you believe him ? "

Ferris could not answer.

" Do you believe him now ? "

" I believe anything you tell me. When I look
It you, I can't believe I ever doubted you."

"Why?"

" Because — because — I love you."

« Oh 1 That 's no reason."

"I know it; but I'm used to being without m
reason,"

£58 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

Florida looked gravely at his penitent face, and a
brave red color mantled her own, while she ad-
vanced an unanswerable argument : " Then what
are you going away for ? '

The world seemed to melt and float away from
between 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
stopping with those friends of ours at the Fifth
Avenue Hotel. We were going on to Providence
to-morrow. We landed yesterday ; and we stayed
to do some shopping " —

" And may I ask why you happened to give your
first moments in America to the fine arts ? "

" The fine arts ? Oh ! I thought I might fad
something of yours, there ! "

At the hotel she presented him to her party as a
iriend 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 city on the Guli
Stream bathing the Rhode Island shores. Tb*

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 259

matron of the party had, before Florida came back,
an outline history of their acquaintance, which she
evolved from him with so much tact that he was
not conscious of parting with information ; and she
divined indefinitely more when she saw them to-
gether again. She was charming ; but to Ferris'i
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 close
against his face, when they parted, ". that I '11 have
a bad temper ? "

" I hope you will — or I shall be killed with
kindness," he replied.

She stood a moment, nervously buttoning hig
coat across his breast. " You must n't let that pic-
ture 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 you 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 espe-
cially could not keep himself at what he called the
operatic pitch of their brief betrothal and the eaily
Aays of their marriage. With his help, or even his
•ncouragement, his wife might have been able to

260 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

maintain it. She had a gift for idealizing him, at
least, and aia his hurt healed but slowly, and it
was a good while before he could paint with hia
WDunded arm, it was an easy matter for her to be-
lieve in the meanwhile that he would have been
the greatest painter of his time, but for his honor-
able disability ; to hear her, you would suppose no
one else had ever been shot in the service of his
country.

It was fortunate 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, and in the end he silenced his scruples.
It might be said that in many other ways he was
not her equal ; but one ought to reflect how very
few men are worthy of their wives in any sense.
After his fashion he certainly loved her always, —
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 impe-
riousness 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-devotion
fco her mother left her without a full motive ; she
Apparently found it impossible to give herself witk

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 261

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
nerving them with the same tigerish tenderness, the
same haughty humility, as that with which she
used to care for poor Mrs. Vervain; and he per-
ceived that this was merely the direction away from
herself of that intense arrogance of nature which,
but for her power and need of loving, would have
made her intolerable. What she chiefly exacted
from them in return for her fierce devotedness was
the truth in everything ; she was content 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 tragedy 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
. ove has to swallow and assimilate ; 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 formed a sombre back-
ground, against which their wedded happiness re-
lieved itself. They talked much of the past, with

262 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

free minds, unashamed and unafraid. If it is a li
ihocking, it is nevertheless true, and true 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 sim-
plicity of her girlish ideas, motives, and designs,
which both confounded and delighted him.

" It 's amazing, Florida," he would say, " it *s
perfectly amazing that you should have been will-
ing to undertake the job of importing into America
that poor fellow with his whole stock of helpless-
ness, dreamery, and unpractically. What were
you about ? "

" Why, I 've often told you, Henry. I thought
he ought n't to continue a priest."

" Yes, yes ; I know." Then he would remain
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 posi-
tion?"

" 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 ; did n't it strike yc a at
the time like ratner a made-up, melodramatic his-
lory?"

44 No, no ! How can y< * say such th't*gs, Henry
[t was too simple not to ) tiue."

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 268

M Well, well. Perhaps so. But he haffles me.
He always did, for that matter."

Then came another pause, while Ferris lay back
upon the gondola cushions, getting the level of tho
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, Henry, 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 the bosom of mother church pretty suddenly.
Don't you think he was a person of rather light
feelings ? "

" 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
largely imagined. I mean that he was such a
dreamer that once having fancied himself afflicted
txt being what he was, he could go on and suffer
as keenly as if he really were troubled by it. Why
might n't it be that all his doubts came from anger
and resentment towards those who made him a
priest, rather than from any examination of his own
Jiind ? I don't say it was so. But I don't believe
ft* knew quite what he wanted. He must hart

264 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

felt that his failure as an inventor went deeper than
the failure of his particular attempts. I onc«
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 — cer-
tainly, as a priest he had leisure to prove it. But
when that sort of sub-consciousness of his own in-
adequacy 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. " I don't
know how to answer you, Henry ; but I think that
you 're judging him narrowly and harshly."

" Not harshly. I feel very compassionate to-
wards him. But now, even as to what one might
consider the most real thing in his life, — his car-
ing 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 did n't die of a dream," said the wife.

44 No, he died of a fever*"

u He had got well of the fever."

44 That 's very true, my dear. And whatever hia
head was, he had an affectionate and faithful heart.
I wish I had been gentler with him. I must often
have bruised that sensitive soul. God knows I 'm
•orry for it. But he 's a puzzle, he 's a puzzle 1 "

Thus lapsing more and more into a mere problem
M the years have passed, Don Ippolito has at last

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 265

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
happiness of which the poor priest vainly dreamed
is not the least tragic phase Df the tragedy of Don
Ippolito.

THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ

This book is due on the last DATE stamped below.

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