of the lost courier which was of a nature to disturb a respectable woman.
'Nothing that Mr. Ferrari could do would surprise me,' she replied

in her deepest bass tones.
'You speak rather harshly of him,' said Agnes.

Mrs. Rolland suddenly opened her eyes again. 'I speak harshly
of nobody without reason,' she said. 'Mr. Ferrari behaved to me,

Miss Lockwood, as no man living has ever behaved--before or since.'
'What did he do?'

Mrs. Rolland answered, with a stony stare of horror:--
'He took liberties with me.'

Young Lady Montbarry suddenly turned aside, and put her handkerchief
over her mouth in convulsions of suppressed laughter.

Mrs. Rolland went on, with a grim enjoyment of the bewilderment
which her reply had produced in Agnes: 'And when I insisted

on an apology, Miss, he had the audacity to say that the life
at the palace was dull, and he didn't know how else to amuse himself!'

'I am afraid I have hardly made myself understood,' said Agnes.
'I am not speaking to you out of any interest in Ferrari.

Are you aware that he is married?'
'I pity his wife,' said Mrs. Rolland.

'She is naturally in great grief about him,' Agnes proceeded.
'She ought to thank God she is rid of him,' Mrs. Rolland interposed.

Agnes still persisted. 'I have known Mrs. Ferrari from her childhood,
and I am sincerelyanxious to help her in this matter. Did you

notice anything, while you were at Venice, that would account for
her husband's extraordinarydisappearance? On what sort of terms,

for instance, did he live with his master and mistress?'
'On terms of familiarity with his mistress,' said Mrs. Rolland,

'which were simply sickening to a respectable English servant.
She used to encourage him to talk to her about all his affairs--

how he got on with his wife, and how pressed he was for money,
and such like--just as if they were equals. Contemptible--that's what I

call it.'
'And his master?' Agnes continued. 'How did Ferrari get

on with Lord Montbarry?'
'My lord used to live shut up with his studies and his sorrows,'

Mrs. Rolland answered, with a hard solemnityexpressive of respect
for his lordship's memory. Mr. Ferrari got his money when it was due;

and he cared for nothing else. "If I could afford it, I would
leave the place too; but I can't afford it." Those were the last

words he said to me, on the morning when I left the palace.
I made no reply. After what had happened (on that other occasion)

I was naturally not on speaking terms with Mr. Ferrari.'
'Can you really tell me nothing which will throw any light

on this matter?'
'Nothing,' said Mrs. Rolland, with an undisguised relish

of the disappointment that she was inflicting.
'There was another member of the family at Venice,' Agnes resumed,

determined to sift the question to the bottom while she had the chance.
'There was Baron Rivar.'

Mrs. Rolland lifted her large hands, covered with rusty black gloves,
in mute protest against the introduction of Baron Rivar as a subject

of inquiry. 'Are you aware, Miss,' she began, 'that I left my place
in consequence of what I observed--?'

Agnes stopped her there. 'I only wanted to ask,' she explained,
'if anything was said or done by Baron Rivar which might account

for Ferrari's strange conduct.'
'Nothing that I know of,' said Mrs. Rolland. 'The Baron and Mr. Ferrari

(if I may use such an expression) were "birds of a feather,"
so far as I could see--I mean, one was as unprincipled as the other.

I am a just woman; and I will give you an example. Only the day
before I left, I heard the Baron say (through the open door of his

room while I was passing along the corridor), "Ferrari, I want a
thousand pounds. What would you do for a thousand pounds?" And I heard

Mr. Ferrari answer, "Anything, sir, as long as I was not found out."
And then they both burst out laughing. I heard no more than that.

Judge for yourself, Miss.'
Agnes reflected for a moment. A thousand pounds was the sum

that had been sent to Mrs. Ferrari in the anonymous letter.
Was that enclosure in any way connected, as a result, with the

conversation between the Baron and Ferrari? It was useless to press
any more inquiries on Mrs. Rolland. She could give no further

information which was of the slightest importance to the object
in view. There was no alternative but to grant her dismissal.

One more effort had been made to find a trace of the lost man,
and once again the effort had failed.

They were a family party at the dinner-table that day. The only
guest left in the house was a nephew of the new Lord Montbarry--

the eldest son of his sister, Lady Barrville. Lady Montbarry could
not resist telling the story of the first (and last) attack made

on the virtue of Mrs. Rolland, with a comically-exact imitation
of Mrs. Rolland's deep and dismal voice. Being asked by her husband

what was the object which had brought that formidable person to the house,
she naturally mentioned the expected visit of Miss Haldane.

Arthur Barville, unusually silent and pre-occupied so far,
suddenly struck into the conversation with a burst of enthusiasm.

'Miss Haldane is the most charming girl in all Ireland!' he said.
'I caught sight of her yesterday, over the wall of her garden,

as I was riding by. What time is she coming to-morrow? Before two?
I'll look into the drawing-room by accident--I am dying to be introduced

to her!'
Agnes was amused by his enthusiasm. 'Are you in love with Miss

Haldane already?' she asked.
Arthur answered gravely, 'It's no joking matter. I have been all day

at the garden wall, waiting to see her again! It depends on Miss
Haldane to make me the happiest or the wretchedest man living.'

'You foolish boy! How can you talk such nonsense?'
He was talking nonsenseundoubtedly. But, if Agnes had only known it,

he was doing something more than that. He was innocently leading
her another stage nearer on the way to Venice.

CHAPTER XIV
As the summer months advanced, the transformation of the Venetian

palace into the modern hotel proceeded rapidly towards completion.
The outside of the building, with its fine Palladian front looking

on the canal, was wisely left unaltered. Inside, as a matter
of necessity, the rooms were almost rebuilt--so far at least

as the size and the arrangement of them were concerned.
The vast saloons were partitioned off into 'apartments' containing

three or four rooms each. The broad corridors in the upper regions
afforded spare space enough for rows of little bedchambers,

devoted to servants and to travellers with limited means.
Nothing was spared but the solid floors and the finely-carved ceilings.

These last, in excellent preservation as to workmanship,
merely required cleaning, and regilding here and there, to add

greatly to the beauty and importance of the best rooms in the hotel.
The only exception to the complete re-organization of the interior

was at one extremity of the edifice, on the first and second floors.
Here there happened, in each case, to be rooms of such comparatively

moderate size, and so attractively" target="_blank" title="ad.有吸引力地，诱人地">attractively decorated, that the architect
suggested leaving them as they were. It was afterwards discovered

that these were no other than the apartments formerly occupied
by Lord Montbarry (on the first floor), and by Baron Rivar

(on the second). The room in which Montbarry had died was still fitted
up as a bedroom, and was now distinguished as Number Fourteen.

The room above it, in which the Baron had slept, took its place
on the hotel-register as Number Thirty-Eight. With the ornaments on

the walls and ceilings cleaned and brightened up, and with the heavy
old-fashioned beds, chairs, and tables replaced by bright, pretty,