"It seems an age since I have seen you," said Geof, neglecting to reply to her last observation, which, truth to tell, he had scarcely heard.
"It does seem a good while," she admitted. "Not since Quattro Fontane;" and then she laughed. "That was only yesterday morning, but one doesn't reckon time by clocks and calendars in Venice."
"If the clocks and calendars would only pay the old gentleman as little attention as we do," Geof rejoined, "how lucky we should be!"
"I wonder whether we should really want time to stand still,—even in Venice," said Pauline, as they passed up the steps into the room where May had last been seen.
"That would depend," Geoffry answered, and there was that indescribable something in his voice which she had heard more than once of late, and which she always found extremely discomposing. The passing of that breath of feeling was still troubling the waters of her consciousness when, a moment later, they were met by the other three.
Mrs. Daymond came forward and took both Pauline's hands, and, straightway it seemed to Pauline as if a bountiful beneficent power had encompassed her round about.
"Geof," said his mother, turning to him, with the unfailing grace of tone and gesture which was a source of perennial delight to the Colonel; "I find that Colonel Steele's Venetian education is only half accomplished. He does not know San Simeone. Supposing we all go and see the old hero. It has stopped raining and the men must be longing to have us come out again."
"I'm always ready for St. Simon," Geof declared.
"I don't see how we ever overlooked him in the books," said May. "He sounds perfectly tremendous, with his hollow cheeks and his solemn dead face."
"Then we are all going?" and Mrs. Daymond looked questioningly at Pauline who had not spoken. It was as if the elder woman had divined something of the unwonted reluctance that had possessed itself of the young girl.