City of rest!--as it seems to our modern senses--how is it possible that so busy, so pitiless, and covetous a life as history shows us should have gone to the making and the fashioning of Venice! The easy passage of the gondola through the soft, imprisoned wave; the silence of wheel and hoof, of all that hurries and clatters; the tide that comes and goes, noiseless, indispensable, bringing in the freshness of the sea, carrying away the defilements of the land; the narrow winding ways, now firm earth, now shifting sea, that bind the city into one social whole, where the industrial and the noble alike are housed in palaces, equal often in beauty as in decay; the marvellous quiet of the nights, save when the northeast wind, Hadria's stormy leader, drives the furious waves against the palace fronts in the darkness, with the clamor of an attacking host; the languor of the hot afternoons, when life is a dream of light and green water, when the play of mirage drowns the foundations of the _lidi_ in the lagoon, so that trees and buildings rise out of the sea as though some strong Amphion-music were but that moment calling them from the deep; and when day departs, that magic of the swiftly falling dusk, and that white foam and flower of St. Mark's upon the purple intensity of the sky!--through each phase of the hours and the seasons, _rest_ is still the message of Venice, rest enriched with endless images, impressions, sensations, that cost no trouble and breed no pain. It was this spell of rest that descended for a while on Kitty as they glided downward to the Piazzetta. The terror of the day relaxed. Her telegram would be in time; or, if not, she would throw herself into William's arms, and he _must_ forgive her!--because she was so foolish and weak, so tired and sad. She slipped her hand into Margaret's; they talked in low voices of the child, and Kitty was all appealing melancholy and charm. At the Piazzetta there was already a crowd of gondolas, and at their head the _barca_, which carried the musicians. "You are late, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrées, waving to them. "Shall we draw out and come to you?--or will you just join on where you are?" For the Vercelli gondola was already wedged into a serried line of boats in the wake of the _barca_. "Never mind us," said Kitty. "We'll tack on somehow." And inwardly she was delighted to be thus separated from her mother and the chattering crowd by which Madame d'Estrées seemed to be surrounded. Kitty and Margaret bade their men fall in, and they presently found themselves on the Salute side of the floating audience, their prow pointing to the canal.