Pompeo, seeing Kitty's gesture and not understanding her words, swung the gondola diagonally across the canal.
"No, no, Pompeo!" La Signorina spoke in Italian. "I have told you never to go near that house without express orders. Straight ahead."
The gondola at once resumed its former course. Never did Pompeo take a tourist down the Grand Canal that he did not exalt in his best Italian and French the beauties of yonder empty palace. Had he not spent his youth in the service of the family? It was only of late years that Pompeo had become a public gondolier, with his posts in the stand fronting the Hotel de l'Europe.
"A-oel! Look out!" he called suddenly. Another gondola scraped alongside and passed on.
"Who lives there?" asked Kitty.
"Nobody," answered La Signorina. "Though once it was the palace of a great warrior. How picturesque the gondolas look, with their dancing double lights! Those without numbers are private."
"The old palace interests me more than the gondolas," declared Kitty.
But La Signorina was not to be trapped.
Presently they passed the row of great hotels, with their balconies hanging over the water and their steps running down into it. Kitty eyed them all regretfully. She saw men and women in evening dress, and she was sure that they had dined well and were happy. Without doubt there were persons who knew her by name and had seen her act. From the Grand Canal they came out into the great Canal of San Marco, the beginning of the lagoon. Here Kitty forgot for the moment her troubles; her dream-Venice had returned. There were private yachts, Adriatic liners, all brilliant with illumination, and hundreds of gondolas, bobbing, bobbing, like captive leviathans, bunched round the gaily-lanterned barges of the serenaders. There was only one flaw to this perfect dream: the shrill whistle of the ferry-boats. They had no place here, and their presence was an affront.
"How I hate them!" said La Signorina. "The American influence! Some day they will be filling up the canals and running trams over them. What is beauty and silence if there be profit in ugliness and noise?"