Miss Mostyn was likewise making a sort of post-graduate tour, but not alone, for her father, a fussy, rather than nervous, invalid, was her companion. His invalidism was of the intermittent type that appeared when his daughter’s plans in any way crossed his own, but was otherwise held in abeyance; and most people readily conceded that he was a charming man, for he could discuss many topics without affectation, and without posing as a pedant, was extremely well read. His regarding his daughter as an absolute possession who should exist for his happiness alone was his chief eccentricity.
One of the strangest things about the acquaintance of the young people was that it began in Venice, when they had been born and brought up practically in the same New England township. The reasons that had militated against their previously having more than a passing glimpse of one another were the aggressively different political affiliations of the fathers, while Madam Hale knew that the Judge had been refused in early life by the girl who afterward became Jane Mostyn’s mother, and so strange was her form of tribal fealty that she regarded this refusal as not only a slight to her husband, but as a species of criticism upon her own choice, though she did not marry the Judge until ten years after. Mrs. Mostyn had died when Jane was about twenty, and at the time when John Hale met her, she was in every possible way trying to draw her father’s mind from his loss.
Usually if Mr. Mostyn stayed indoors, Jane did likewise, but one fateful morning the sea shimmered too alluringly under their window, and being attracted by the singing of a gondolier, she determined to brave conventions and go out, only to find the particular gondola was already occupied, and by a man. Hesitating, but only for a moment, for Jane Mostyn seldom hesitated, and usually compassed her ends (not connected with her father) by cheerfully assuming that there would be no opposition, she said to the man, who was looking at her with an expression half reminiscent, half questioning, and taking it for granted that he was either English or an American: “I do not speak Italian; would you kindly direct your man to return here to the hotel for me when you are through with him? I’ve taken a fancy both to his craft and to his voice;” at the same time writing her name in vigorous characters on one of the cards of the hotel, she held it towards him. A glance at the card, and the puzzled expression turned to one of pleased recognition. John Hale had not spoken to Miss Mostyn more than twice since she tucked up her hair, lengthened her skirts, and went to boarding-school, yet suddenly to talk with her at close range, as she stood there with glints of red setting off her deep blue gown and clear olive skin, seemed the most desirable occupation in the world. Motioning the man to push close to the landing, Hale sprang out of the gondola, and hat in one hand, the other holding the card, he said, “Do you chance to remember Johnny Hale at whom you used to jeer because his mother would not let him coast down the hill that crossed the railroad track at Westover Village?”
Miss Mostyn coloured as red as the cap that topped her black hair, and then extended both hands, the gesture brought about wholly by the impulse to be at once on friendly terms with a home face in a strange land, no matter how slight the previous footing.
“Why not come out at once and enjoy the morning freshness? One can never tell what sort of an afternoon may follow,” Hale said eagerly.
“There is only one obstacle, this country requires a chaperon; where shall we get her? My father is out of the running to-day. Does your mother chance to be with you? No? Can you suggest any compatriot who may be staying at your hotel? We are the only Americans at ours.”
“No,—yes,” corrected Hale, while a mischievous smile flitted over his usually serious face, “Mrs. Atwood from Westover is here, travelling with an assorted party. I presume that she knows us both, and the poor soul is so homesick that she will hail the opportunity as a perfect godsend.”
“What, the wife of ‘B. Atwood, Leading Grocer, We strive to please and suit the taste of each customer’? Of course she will do as a chaperon, but, considered as ballast, I am afraid we shall require an extra gondolier.”
Hale laughed. “She has fallen away, as she expresses it; the change having been wrought by rushed travel, indigestion, and several inadvised cures of mineral waters. Here she comes now in that brown gondola with blue curtains, and holding on for dear life as if she were with an overloaded picnic party and some one was rocking the boat.”
Immediately recognizing the young people, Mrs. Atwood landed after several frantic efforts, during which her Baedecker fell into the water and floated off, looking like a fishing bobber of eccentric design.