“I hope I’m not a person who has to have all the t’s crossed and all the i’s dotted. Arsenio has—or had—a ‘palazzo’ at Venice?” “Yes. We stayed there.” CHAPTER VI VENICE THE instructions for which I was waiting did not reach me for three days: I found reason to suspect, later on, that bribery had been at work; they had almost certainly been delayed, copied, and communicated to enemy quarters. The bulk of these enforcedly idle hours I spent with Lucinda—at the restaurant, on the sea-front, once or twice at my hotel, but never in the little house where she had a room: I often escorted her to the door, but she never asked me in. But we grew intimate; she told, I think, all, or almost all, the story, though often still with the air of examining herself, or of rendering an account to herself, rather than of being anxious to tell me: sometimes she would seem even to forget my presence. At other points, however, she would appeal directly to me, even urgently, as though she hung on my verdict. These changes gave variety and life to her story; one saw her living again through all her moods and experiences: on the other hand, it cannot be denied that they lengthened the narrative. In the spring of 1913—the spring after their visit to Cragsfoot—her mother and Lucinda went to stay on the top floor but one in Arsenio Valdez’s palazzo at Venice, Valdez himself inhabiting the attics immediately above them. Poverty, the satirist remarked long ago, has no harsher incident than that of making people ridiculous; it may have worse moral effects. Mrs. Knyvett had not so much accepted Valdez’s invitation as intrigued and cadged for it; and they stayed rent free, though even then Valdez was by no means a well-to-do man. And Mrs. Knyvett could not receive favors in the grand manner. She took, but she took cringingly; she over-acknowledged, constantly by manner and even by word, reminding the donor and herself of the gift, reminding her daughter also. She did not, it is true, know about the kiss in the garden at Cragsfoot; Lucinda kept that to herself; her view was that in her mother’s hands it would have been another lever. “Arsenio lodged us free as it was; if mother had known that, she’d have made him board us too!” Even as it was, he seemed to have entertained them a good deal (as was only natural) while he played _cicerone_, showing them the sights and pleasures of the place.