Along the walls of a dull, cool grey, big pictures are hung. Many there are, yet so spacious is the room, that they do not appear crowded; there is no suggestion of a well-stocked gallery. And on each side of the room two rich, warm-coloured curtains hang, concealing behind them silent, heavy, doors, deep set within the wall. One of these, if you open it, will give you admittance to a tiny little room--so tiny, so small, that its smallness laughs at you, as for the moment it peers through the open space into the vast chamber beyond. Close the door and the smallness seems natural enough then. For there, sitting perhaps over their afternoon tea, or their cups of coffee in the evening, chatting and gossiping as tho’ they had just met to keep each other company, are two small figures; small because they are old--one, that of an old man, whose eyes are somewhat dimmed behind the high cheek bones and the shaggy eyebrows, the other, crumpled and creased like a silk dress that has lain long-folded in a camphor-scented drawer, the figure of a little old white-haired lady. CHAPTER XXV THE LETTER--VENICE In the daily affairs of those two old people in the Palazzo Capello, there was one undeviating ceremony, performed with the regularity and precision of those mechanical figures that strike the great bell on the clock tower in the square of St. Mark’s. As the bells of the churches rang out the hour of ten at night, Claudina, the old dame who looked after all the wants of this worthy pair, entered the little room, carrying a large box in her hands. Whatever their occupation may have been, whether they were playing at cribbage, or merely writing letters, up went their white heads together and one or the other would say--in Italian--"You don’t mean to say it’s ten o’clock, Claudina?" And Claudina would bend her head, with a sudden jerk, like a nodding mandarin, her big earrings would swing violently in her ears, and she would plant the box down gently upon the table. "Si, signora," she said--always in the same tone of voice, as though she had suddenly realised that her nod of the head was not quite as respectful as it ought to be. One cannot describe this as a ceremony; but it was the prelude to all the serious business that followed. Claudina was the mace bearer. Her entrance with the wooden box was the heralding of the quaint little procession of incidents that followed. It was an evening in July, in that self-same year which has so successfully hidden itself in the crevices of our calendar. The _jalousies_ had not long been closed upon a sky of primrose, in which the stars were set like early drops of dew. Claudina had just brought in a letter by the post. It was half-past nine.