"Just for them. A glass or two, or half a dozen."
"Restaurants, you mean?"
"No, I do not mean restaurants. They are just wine-shops; sell nothing but wine. Odd little places. There's no show; there's no set out; there are just the casks from which the wine is drawn, and the glasses-mugs, I should say; queer things; pints and quarts, and so on. Nothing else is there, but the customers and the people who serve you."
"And people go into such places to drink wine? merely to drink, without eating anything?"
"They can eat, if they like. There are street venders, that watch the custom and come in immediately after any one enters; they bring fruit and confections and trifles."
"You do not mean that gentlemen go to these places, Mr. St. Leger?"
"Certainly. The wine is pure, and sold at a reasonable rate. Gentlemen go, of course—if they know where to go."
Dolly's heart sank. In Venice this!—where she had hoped to have her father with her safe. She had known there was wine enough to be had in hotels; but that, she knew too, costs money, if people will have it good; and Mr. Copley liked no other. But cheap wine-shops, "if you know where to go,"—therefore retired and comparatively private places,—were those to be found in Venice, the goal of her hopes? Dolly's cheeks grew perceptibly pale.
"What is the matter, Miss Dolly?" Lawrence asked, watching her. But Dolly could not answer; and she thought he knew, besides.
"There is no harm in pure wine," he went on.