who live in them--no, until you have explored Venice socially as much
as I have you can form no idea of their domestic desolation.

They live on nothing, for they have nothing to live on."
The other idea that had come into my head was connected

with a high blank wall which appeared to confine an expanse
of ground on one side of the house. Blank I call it,

but it was figured over with the patches that please a painter,
repaired breaches, crumblings of plaster, extrusions of brick

that had turned pink with time; and a few thin trees, with the poles
of certain rickety trellises, were visible over the top.

The place was a garden, and apparently it belonged to the house.
It suddenly occurred to me that if it did belong to the house

I had my pretext.
I sat looking out on all this with Mrs. Prest (it was covered with the golden

glow of Venice) from the shade of our felze, and she asked me if I
would go in then, while she waited for me, or come back another time.

At first I could not decide--it was doubtless very weak of me.
I wanted still to think I MIGHT get a footing, and I was afraid

to meet failure, for it would leave me, as I remarked to my companion,
without another arrow for my bow. "Why not another?" she inquired

as I sat there hesitating and thinking it over; and she wished to know
why even now and before taking the trouble of becoming an inmate

(which might be wretchedly uncomfortable after all, even if it succeeded),
I had not the resource of simply offering them a sum of money down.

In that way I might obtain the documents without bad nights.
"Dearest lady," I exclaimed, "excuse the impatience of my tone when I

suggest that you must have forgotten the very fact (surely I communicated
it to you) which pushed me to throw myself upon your ingenuity.

The old woman won't have the documents spoken of; they are personal,
delicate, intimate, and she hasn't modern notions, God bless her!

If I should sound that note first I should certainly spoil the game.
I can arrive at the papers only by putting her off her guard,

and I can put her off her guard only by ingratiating
diplomatic practices. Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance.

I am sorry for it, but for Jeffrey Aspern's sake I would do worse still.
First I must take tea with her; then tackle the main job."

And I told over what had happened to John Cumnor when he wrote to her.
No notice whatever had been taken of his first letter, and the second

had been answered very sharply, in six lines, by the niece.
"Miss Bordereau requested her to say that she could not imagine what

he meant by troubling them. They had none of Mr. Aspern's papers,
and if they had should never think of showing them to anyone

on any accountwhatever. She didn't know what he was talking
about and begged he would let her alone." I certainly did not want

to be met that way.
"Well," said Mrs. Prest after a moment, provokingly, "perhaps after all they

haven't any of his things. If they deny it flat how are you sure?"
"John Cumnor is sure, and it would take me long to tell

you how his conviction, or his very strong presumption--
strong enough to stand against the old lady's not unnatural fib--

has built itself up. Besides, he makes much of the internal
evidence of the niece's letter."

"The internal evidence?"
"Her calling him 'Mr. Aspern.'"

"I don't see what that proves."
"It proves familiarity, and familiarity implies the possession

of mementoes, or relics. I can't tell you how that 'Mr.' touches me--
how it bridges over the gulf of time and brings our hero near

to me--nor what an edge it gives to my desire to see Juliana.
You don't say, 'Mr.' Shakespeare."

"Would I, any more, if I had a box full of his letters?"
"Yes, if he had been your lover and someone wanted them!"

And I added that John Cumnor was so convinced, and so all the more
convinced by Miss Bordereau's tone, that he would have come

himself to Venice on the business were it not that for him there
was the obstacle that it would be difficult to disprove his

identity with the person who had written to them, which the old
ladies would be sure to suspect in spite of dissimulation

and a change of name. If they were to ask him point-blank
if he were not their correspondent it would be too awkward

for him to lie; whereas I was fortunately not tied in that way.
I was a fresh hand and could say no without lying.

"But you will have to change your name," said Mrs. Prest.
"Juliana lives out of the world as much as it is possible to live,

but none the less she has probably heard of Mr. Aspern's editors;
she perhaps possesses what you have published."

"I have thought of that," I returned; and I drew out of my pocketbook
a visiting card, neatly engraved with a name that was not my own.

"You are very extravagant; you might have written it,"
said my companion.

"This looks more genuine."
"Certainly, you are prepared to go far! But it will be awkward

about your letters; they won't come to you in that mask."
"My banker will take them in, and I will go every day to fetch them.

It will give me a little walk."
"Shall you only depend upon that?" asked Mrs. Prest.

"Aren't you coming to see me?"
"Oh, you will have left Venice, for the hot months, long before

there are any results. I am prepared to roast all summer--
as well as hereafter, perhaps you'll say! Meanwhile, John Cumnor

will bombard me with letters addressed, in my feigned name,
to the care of the padrona."

"She will recognize his hand," my companion suggested.
"On the envelope he can disguise it."

"Well, you're a precious pair! Doesn't it occur to you that even if you
are able to say you are not Mr. Cumnor in person they may still suspect

you of being his emissary?"
"Certainly, and I see only one way to parry that."

"And what may that be?"
I hesitated a moment. "To make love to the niece."

"Ah," cried Mrs. Prest, "wait till you see her!"
II

"I must work the garden--I must work the garden," I said to myself,
five minutes later, as I waited, upstairs, in the long,

dusky sala, where the bare scagliola floor gleamed vaguely
in a chink of the closed shutters. The place was impressive

but it looked cold and cautious. Mrs. Prest had floated away,
giving me a rendezvous at the end of half an hour by some

neighboring water steps; and I had been let into the house,
after pulling the rusty bell wire, by a little red-headed,

white-faced maidservant, who was very young and not ugly and
wore clicking pattens and a shawl in the fashion of a hood.

She had not contented herself with opening the door from above
by the usual arrangement of a creaking pulley, though she

had looked down at me first from an upper window, dropping the
inevitable challenge which in Italy precedes the hospitable act.

As a general thing I was irritated by this survival of
medieval manners, though as I liked the old I suppose I ought

to have liked it; but I was so determined to be genial that I
took my false card out of my pocket and held it up to her,

smiling as if it were a magic token. It had the effect of
one indeed, for it brought her, as I say, all the way down.

I begged her to hand it to her mistress, having first written on
it in Italian the words, "Could you very kindly see a gentleman,

an American, for a moment?" The little maid was not hostile,
and I reflected that even that was perhaps something gained.

She colored, she smiled and looked both frightened and pleased.