“Ah, poor little thing! Then you must drink your coffee at once. It refreshes.” “Yes, yes,” said Florida, closing the door, and pointing to a table in the next room, “put it down here. I will serve myself, Nina. Go call the gondola, please. I am going out, at once, and I want you to go with me. Tell Checa to come here and stay with my mother till I come back.” She poured out a cup of coffee with a trembling hand, and hastily drank it; then bathing her eyes, she went to the glass and bestowed a touch or two upon yesterday’s toilet, studied the effect a moment, and turned away. She ran back for another look, and the next moment she was walking down to the water-gate, where she found Nina waiting her in the gondola. A rapid course brought them to Ferris’s landing. “Ring,” she said to the gondolier, “and say that one of the American ladies wishes to see the consul.” Ferris was standing on the balcony over her, where he had been watching her approach in mute wonder. “Why, Miss Vervain,” he called down, “what in the world is the matter?” “I don’t know. I want to see you,” said Florida, looking up with a wistful face. “I’ll come down.” “Yes, please. Or no, I had better come up. Yes, Nina and I will come up.” Ferris met them at the lower door and led them to his apartment. Nina sat down in the outer room, and Florida followed the painter into his studio. Though her face was so wan, it seemed to him that he had never seen it lovelier, and he had a strange pride in her being there, though the disorder of the place ought to have humbled him. She looked over it with a certain childlike, timid curiosity, and something of that lofty compassion with which young ladies regard the haunts of men when they come into them by chance; in doing this she had a haughty, slow turn of the head that fascinated him. “I hope,” he said, “you don’t mind the smell,” which was a mingled one of oil-colors and tobacco-smoke. “The woman’s putting my office to rights, and it’s all in a cloud of dust. So I have to bring you in here.”