"Well, really, Mr. Kennedy," exclaimed the Roumanian Princess, "you are ingenious and ingenuous! Do you suppose that our dear Tal is putting by money in order to marry some starving genius, to do love in a cottage with? Why, if she's not married yet, it's merely because she's not met a sufficient parti. She wants something very grand—a Pezzo Grosso, as they say here."
"She couldn't marry as long as she had Gerald to look after," said Miss Vanderwerf, fanning herself in the moonlight. "She was too fond of Gerald."
"She was afraid of Gerald, that's my belief, too," corrected the niece. "Those big creatures are always cowards. And Gerald hated the notion of her making another money marriage, though he seems to have arranged pretty well to live on old Walkenshaw's thousands."
"Of course Gerald wanted to keep her all for himself; that was quite natural," said Miss Vanderwerf; "but I think that as long as he was alive she did not want anyone else. She thought only of him, poor creature——;"
"And of a score of ball and dinner-parties and a few hundred acquaintances," put in Ted, making rings with the smoke of his cigarette.
"And now," said the Princess, "she's waiting to find her Pezzo Grosso. And she wants money because she knows that a Pezzo Grosso will marry a penniless girl of eighteen, but won't marry a penniless woman of thirty; she must make up for being a little passée by loving him for his own sake, and for that, she must have money."
"For all that, poor Tal's very simple," wheezed the old peeress, apparently awakening from a narcotic slumber. "She always reminds me of an anecdote poor dear Palmerston used to tell——;"
"Anyhow," said Kennedy, "Lady Tal's a riddle, and I pity the man who tries to guess it. Good-night, dear Miss Vanderwerf—good-night, Miss Bessy. It's all settled about dining at the Lido, I hope. And you'll come, too, I hope, Mr. Marion."
"I'll come with pleasure, particularly if you ask the enigmatic Lady Tal."
"Much good it is to live in Venice," thought Jervase Marion, looking out of his window on to the canal, "if one spends two hours discussing a young woman six foot high looking out for a duke."