Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/264

258 sipidity, or would have been but for the well-defined eyebrows and eyelashes which gave distinction and definition to the face. Around her hat a quantity of dark grey gauze had been twisted, which, meeting under the chin, brought out the wonderful tints of the face with marvellous distinctness. One hand was bare, and the lace of the sleeve hung back a little way from the wrist and arm. If there was any thing condescending in the lady's position, there was certainly nothing at all so in her air and attitude. A Cleopatra or Semiramis, in presence of one of the least of her vassals, could hardly have carried a prouder port. The image of some very large white swan contemptuously breasting the waves rose to Lady Frances's mind, as she looked at the gondola and its beautiful occupant. Who in the world could she be? she wondered, with not a little curiosity. Venice is a small place, and though no very great frequenter of its entertainments, she knew most of its inmates by sight, and felt sure that this magnificent blonde had never come under her observation before. Suddenly she remembered her brother's panegyrics of the preceding evening. Evidently this was she – the all-accomplished Russian, over whose perfections he had waxed so eloquent, and whom she herself stood solemnly pledged to call upon. It must be, seeing that there was no one else whom it could by any possibility be.

It was not until the two gondolas had passed that the Colonel caught sight of his sister: then he half started up from his seat, pulling aside the striped curtains, and nourishing in the air with two or three outstretched fingers, as if to convey an embrace – not directly to her, but upwards to something poised in mid-air above her head, Lady Frances on her side nodded and smiled her own peculiarly shy, constrained smile – which was shy and constrained even towards her own brother, when by chance they met in public. She saw the lady beside him glance languidly in her direction, and turn to the Colonel evidently with an inquiry upon her lips, and was witness to the air of polite but unmistakable astonishment with which the answer was received. Then the two gondolas passed on, and not many minutes later Lady Frances was set down at the steps of their own palazzo.

She waited luncheon half an hour for her brother, then, as he did not appear, went on without him. She had nearly finished when a hasty line was brought in, telling her that he had been caught and detained by friends at the Hotel Britannia; they were going out to the Lido that afternoon, he said, and she was not to expect to see him, therefore, until dinnertime.

She was still in the act of reading this when a visitor was announced, and she hastened accordingly into the other room to receive her.

Signora, or, as she much preferred being called, Madame Facchino, was one of those striking little social phenomena of whose antecedents no human being knows anything, or apparently troubles him or her self to know. A Belgian, it was said, by birth, married to a Neapolitan, speaking English with hardly an accent, though with a good many variations of her own, she was to be met everywhere ; she knew everybody. She lived up two flights of stairs in a dingy little furnished lodging, permeated by the noises of a café which was held below. She was reported excessively poor, and in fact made little or no secret of being so.