"Why, the silly child has everything she wants! William is devoted to her—and it can't be long before he succeeds."
"No need to go trifling with poets," said Harman, smiling. "By-the-way, do you know that Geoffrey Cliffe is in Venice?"
Madame d'Estrées opened her eyes. "Est-il possible? Oh! but Kitty has forgotten all about him."
"Of course," said Harman. "I am told he has been seen with the Ricci."
Madame d'Estrées raised her shoulders this time in addition to her eyes. Then her face clouded.
"I believe," she said, slowly, "that woman may come here this afternoon."
"Is she a friend of yours?" Harman's tone expressed his surprise.
"I knew her in Paris," said Madame d'Estrées, with some hesitation, "when she was a student at the Conservatoire. She and I had some common acquaintance. And now—frankly, I daren't offend her. She has the most appalling temper!—and she sticks at nothing."
Harman wondered what the exact truth of this might be, but did not inquire. And as guests—including Colonel Warington—began to arrive, and Donna Laura appeared and began to dispense tea, the tête-à-tête was interrupted.
Donna Laura's salon was soon well filled, and Harman watched the gathering with curiosity. As far as it concerned Madame d'Estrées—and she was clearly the main attraction which had brought it together—it represented, he saw, a phase of social recovery. A few prominent Englishmen, passing through Venice, came in without their wives, making perfunctory excuse for the absence of these ladies. But the cosmopolitans of all kinds, who crowded in—Anglo-Italians, foreign diplomats, travellers of many sorts, and a few restless Venetians, bearing the great names of old, to whom their own Venice was little more than a place of occasional sojourn—made satisfactory amends for these persons of too long memories. In all these travellers' towns, Venice, Rome, and Florence, there is indeed a society, and a very agreeable society, which is wholly irresponsible, and asks few or no questions. The elements of it meet as strangers, and as strangers they mostly part. But between the meeting and the parting there lies a moment, all the gayer, perhaps, because of its social uncertainty and freedom.