Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/338

332 sions; no kindly delusions, born of old days and become a sort of family tradition, would ever blind her to the true standing of her husband's sister. She would see the thing in its natural light, and would take care to put her in her proper place! Poor Lady Frances! Her heart, too large for its present setting, stinted of all fresher outgrowths, driven perforce into one channel, and threatened with assault there, was fast becoming her bane. She was growing morose, bitter, wellnigh misanthropical, and all from pure sisterly love!

The party to the islands met at the Piazzetta, where its straggling ingredients were gradually got together and eventually packed into a couple of gondolas. Their destination, after a good deal of discussion, had been finally fixed for San Francesco in Deserto, where, should the day prove unfavourable, they could lunch at the monastery. The morning had been lovely, but the clouds began to gather before they were well out of Venice, and by the time they were nearing Murano the world of domes and campaniles behind were set in pale relief against a steel-grey background of cloud, darker, denser, more smoke-like masses rolling in from the west, and gathering recruits by the way, until they filled the entire hollow of the sky, down to the furthest most ghostly and worn-away ridge of the Euganeans.

A sail had been hoisted in one gondola, and the two boats were therefore fastened together in order that both might have the benefit of it. The amount of progress, however, was ridiculously small. Slowly they drifted past the point of Murano, whose brown roofs and chimneys seemed to prolong themselves indefinitely. The two awnings were a serious impediment to progress, and now that the sun had gone in, were merely useless encumbrances, their curtains flapping a foolish rhythm against the poles, as the boats swayed from side to side. Lady Frances and Mrs Markham occupied the places of dignity in one gondola, Madame Facchino and the pretty Miss Fennel in the other. There was thus an ugly and a pretty woman in each boat: the men, too, were evenly distributed – three to each. The liquid waste around, fretted with myriads of black points, large and small, flecked, too, with flower-like sails – a yellow one, a crimson one, a brown with tawny points, a white one glowing steadily upwards into roseate, like an angel's wing; the mountains, which began to show stray peaks above their shroud; the infinite suggestions of the scene; the stillness, the small bubbling conversational noises of the water, the leisurely flap-flap-flop of the sails, the picturesque attitudes of the boatmen as they lay about or stretched an indolent hand to adjust a rope, – all the elements of enjoyment, of intelligent satisfaction, were surely there; yet none of the party seemed to be very industriously employed in enjoying themselves. Mrs Markham was nearly absolutely silent, contenting herself with an occasional half-murmured observation to the man nearest to her, with leaning one elbow upon the arm-rests, and looking between her finely chiselled eyelids across the waste of waters. Her rôle was certainly not to be amusing, and no one apparently ever thought of requiring her to be so. Even the Colonel – a social sheet-anchor generally to his friends – was not in his usual spirits. Although in the right boat, he had, unfortunately, been placed, probably from a mistaken regard to his years, in one of the two-armed chairs at the side of the