“He would think he had, if he thought you were alone,” said Mrs. Erwin, plaintively. “I don't see how we could resent it. It was simply a mistake on his part. And now you see, Lydia--” “Oh, I see how my coming the way I have will seem to all these people!” cried Lydia, with passionate despair. “I know how it will seem to that married woman who lets a man be in love with her, and that old woman who can't live with her husband because he's too good and kind, and that girl who swears and doesn't know who her father is, and that impudent painter, and that officer who thinks he has the right to insult women if he finds them alone! I wonder the sea doesn't swallow up a place where even Americans go to the theatre on the Sabbath!” “Lydia, Lydia! It isn't so bad as it seems to you,” pleaded her aunt, thrown upon the defensive by the girl's outburst. “There are ever so many good and nice people in Venice, and I know them, too,--Italians as well as foreigners. And even amongst those you saw, Miss Landini is one of the kindest girls in the world, and she had just been to see her old teacher when we met her,--she half takes care of him; and Lady Fenleigh's a perfect mother to the poor; and I never was at the Countess Tatocka's except in the most distant way, at a ball where everybody went; and is it better to let your uncle go to the opera alone, or to go with him? You told me to go with him yourself; and they consider Sunday over, on the Continent, after morning service, any way!” “Oh, it makes no difference!” retorted Lydia, wildly. “I am going away. I am going home. I have money enough to get to Trieste, and the ship is there, and Captain Jenness will take me back with him. Oh!” she moaned. “_He_ has been in Europe, too, and I suppose he's like the rest of you; and he thought because I was alone and helpless he had the right to--Oh, I see it, I see now that he never meant anything, and--Oh, oh, oh!” She fell on her knees beside the bed, as if crushed to them by the cruel doubt that suddenly overwhelmed her, and flung out her arms on Mrs. Erwin's coverlet--it was of Venetian lace sewed upon silk, a choice bit from the palace of one of the ducal families--and buried her face in it. Her aunt rose from her pillow, and looked in wonder and trouble at the beautiful fallen head, and the fair young figure shaken with sobs. “He--who--what are you talking about, Lydia? Whom do you mean? Did Captain Jenness--” “No, no!” wailed the girl, “the one that gave me the book.” “The one that gave you the book? The book you were looking at last night?” “Yes,” sobbed Lydia, with her voice muffled in the coverlet.