They were interested in the details of our tour, especially when they heard that, after a week in Venice, we were going into Dalmatia.
"Why, I'm going down to Ragusa to paint," said he. "I've been before, but this time I take my sister Beatrice. She paints too. We go by the Austrian Lloyd to-morrow. Perhaps we see you there?"
"Have you ever been down as far as Cattaro?" asked Aunt Kathryn, from whose tongue the names of Dalmatian towns fall trippingly, since she "acquired" a castle and a title there.
"Oh, yes, and to Montenegro," replied the artist.
"And do you remember the houses of the neighbourhood?" went on Aunt Kathryn.
"It is already but two years I was there, so a house would have to be young for me not to remember," replied the young man, unconscious of the funny little twist of his English.
"I am thinking of a very old house; Slosh—er—the Castle of Hrvoya. Have you seen it?"
"Ah, that old ruin!" exclaimed the artist. "I seen it, yes. But there is not more much Schloss Hrvoya to see, only the rock for it to stand."
Poor Aunt Kathryn! I was sorry for her. But she bore the blow well, and, after all, it's the title, not the castle for which she cares most—that, and the right to smear everything with crowns.
"Perhaps I'll ask you to paint Hrvoya for me some day," she said. But afterwards, when we had bidden the handsome brother and sister au revoir, she remarked that she was afraid Mr. Bari hadn't an artistic eye.