Next to the Renaissance palace was a smaller one, narrow and high, of mediaeval Gothic, ancient and weather-stained; it had lancet-windows, adorned above with trefoil, and a little carved balcony like old Venetian lace cut in marble. Here Mr. and Mrs. Lenox occupied the floor above that occupied by the ladies in the larger palace. Communication was direct, however, owing to a hallway, like a little covered bridge, that crossed the canal which flowed between--a canal narrow, dark, and still, that worked away silently all day and all night at its life-long task of undermining the ponderous walls on each side; gaining perhaps a half-inch in a century, together with the lighter achievement of eating out the painted wooden columns which, like lances set upright in the sand at a tent's door, the old Venetians were accustomed to plant in the tide round their water-washed entrances. At four o'clock the little company started, the three from the Gothic palace having come across the hall bridge to join the others. Two gondolas were in waiting; as the afternoon was warm, they had light awnings instead of the antique black tops, with the sombre drapery sweeping out behind. "I like the black tops better," observed Claudia. "Any one can have an awning, but the black tops are Venetian." "They can easily be changed," said Lenox. "Oh no; not in this heat," objected Mrs. Marcy. "We should stifle. Mr. Blake, shall you and I, as the selfish elders, take this one, and let the younger people go together in that?" "I want to go in the one with the red awning--the _bright_ red," said Theocritus. This was the one Mrs. Marcy had selected. "No, no, my boy; the other will do quite as well for you," said Lenox. "It won't," replied the child, in a decided little voice. "It is not of the slightest consequence," graciously interposed Mrs. Marcy, signalling to the other gondola, and, with Blake's assistance, taking her place within it. Mr. Lenox glanced at his wife. She was occupied in folding a shawl closely over the boy's little overcoat. "Come, then," he said, giving his hand first to Miss Marcy, then to his wife and the child. The gondolas floated out on the broad stream. Claudia talked; she talked well, and took the Venetian tone. "The only thing that jars upon me," she said, after a while, "is that these Venetians of to-day--those men and women we are passing on the riva now, for instance--do not appreciate in the least their wonderful water-city--scarcely know what it is." "They don't study 'Venice' because they are Venice--isn't that it?" said Mrs. Lenox. She had soothed the little boy into placidity, and he sat beside her quietly, with one gloved hand in hers, a small muffled figure, with a pale face whose delicate skin was lined like that of an old man. His eyes were narrow, deep-set, and dark under his faintly outlined fair eyebrows; his thin hair so light in hue and cut so closely to his head that it could scarcely be distinguished.