“She was always a dreadful flirt!” said Lydia, shaking her head with an air of virtuous reprobation. “I fancy Mr. Meredith does not know a quarter of her escapades.”
“Are we not always informed that, where ignorance is bliss, only folly would desire to be wise?” replied Kyrle, impatiently. “But shall we not return to your party? I think I see some one waving to us.”
Some one was indeed waving energetically and when they reached the group they found them in readiness to embark on the return voyage. In fact, the Merediths, Aimée, and Percy Joscelyn already filled one gondola. Fanny met Kyrle’s crestfallen look with a mocking gleam in her eye.
“All things do not come to him who waits too long,” she said, oracularly. “Had you been a little earlier, I might have offered you a place with us; but now you will have to return as you came, alone, unless Lydia allows you to recline at her feet.”
“We shall be very happy if Mr. Kyrle will come with us,” said the major, blandly.
But Mr. Kyrle declined, more emphatically than was necessary. His own gondola was waiting, he said, and (this the merest and vaguest politeness), since he was alone, could he not offer a seat to any one?
Miss Joscelyn and her brother exchanged glances, and then the young lady sweetly spoke: “Since you are so kind, Mr. Kyrle—it really is too bad for you to have to return alone—and as there are only two comfortable seats in a gondola, I will give mine to papa and come with you.”
She held out her hand to be assisted into the boat, and Kyrle, mentally anathematizing his own politeness, muttered that he was “delighted,” Fanny Meredith laughed rather irrelevantly, and they all pushed off.
What a picture it was when they were floating on the wide lagoon, with Venice rising before them out of the shining waters, its domes and towers enveloped in the golden haze of sunset, like some dream of fancy, too magically fair for reality! In such an hour and scene, who does not long for sympathetic companionship? Poor Kyrle at least did, as instinctively he glanced toward the gondola that held Aimée, and thought how different all this glory of earth and sky, all the enchanted loveliness of the most poetical spot on earth, would have appeared to him had he been able to see it reflected in her eyes.