“Oh, all dogs are vain,” said Lucilla; “that is what establishes the fellow-feeling between them and us.”
To such modicum of truth as this proposition may not have been without, Bertram's quiet laugh seemed a tribute.
“I thought he was a collie,” Lucilla continued, in a key of doubt. “But isn't he rather big for a collie? Is he an Italian breed?”
“He's a most unlikely hybrid,” Bertram answered. “He's half a collie, and half a Siberian wolf-hound.”
“A wolf-hound?” cried Lucilla, a little alarmed perhaps at the way in which she'd been making free with him; and she fell back, to put him at arm's length. “Mercy, how savage that sounds!”
“Yes,” acknowledged Bertram; “but he's a living paradox. The wolf-hound blood has turned to ethereal mildness in his veins. And he's a very perfect coward. I've seen him run from a goose, and in the house my cat holds him under a reign of terror.”
Lucilla's alarm was stilled.
“Poor darling, did they abuse you? No, they shouldn't,” she said, in a voice of deep commiseration, pressing Balzatore's head to her breast.
But the gondola, impelled by its two stalwart oarsmen, was making excellent speed. They had passed the sombre mass of San Servolo, the boscage, silver and sable in moonlight and shadow, of the Public Gardens; and now, with San Giorgio looming at their left, were threading an anchored fleet of steamers and fishing-smacks, towards the entrance of the Grand Canal: whence, already, they could hear the squalid caterwauling of those rival boatloads of beggars, who, on the vain theory of their being musicians, are suffered nightly, before the congeries of hotels, to render the hours hideous and hateful.
And then, in no time, they had reached the water-steps of the Britannia, and a gold-laced Swiss was aiding mesdames to alight.