well, it was all I could do to keep from laughing at his earnestness; which would have been dangerous for, Mr. Ware, it is always dangerous to laugh at those who are in earnest, no matter what silly form their earnestness may take. So, I read them and praised them—with some slight mental reservations. I'm afraid he has read his Tasso so reverently that he has unconsciously imitated the Tasso style. But Pietro is a wonderful boy. Yes, just a boy. He is so respectful—almost reverential. And he does so enthuse over his Venice and her traditions.”
“I have observed that,” Jimmy admitted, with a sense of justice and truth. “Also that he appears to be your most willing slave.”
“We—Pietro and I—have a quest together.” She laughed, and then as if it were after all no jesting matter became suddenly grave and frowned absently through the open windows. “He wished me to achieve something that my heart is set on doing,” she said and then, much to Jimmy's amazement, slapped her open palm on the writing table with a feminine air of determination and declared, “And I'll achieve it, too! You can bet on that, as we say down home when we're really in earnest.”
Then suddenly she laughed and said: “But all this means nothing to you, and to tell the truth I felt that I had to promise to accompany you to-morrow night just to show him that I was, after all, somewhat independent of this quest of ours that seems to have become a mutual one.”
“I'm glad of that, for I benefit thereby,” he asserted.
“You are complimentary,” she said, smiling, as she arose and gave him her hand and wished him good night.
CHAPTER IV.
WHEN Captain Jimmy arose in the morning at his customary early hour, following the habit of the sea, and strolled out into the scarcely awakened Riva in front of the hotel, he walked as usual to the edge of the stone escarpment and stared reflectively out toward the Giudecco. He observed that the Adventure still lay there, floating light and with her bow turned toward him as if eying him with reproach for such base desertion. He grinned at the thought and mentally saluted her with, “That's all right, old girl. I understand, and I'm not certain that you haven't some right to be jealous. Affections do have a way of getting divided, sooner or later!”
The gilded God of Fortune on the Dogna di Mare, resting on its globe of gilded copper and upheld by its two bronze kneeling athletes, still held a steady motionless sail and stared seaward, the morning sun reflecting from its surface and making it shine like polished gold. The huge old Church of the Salute, majestic and imposing, was reflected in the waters at the mouth of the Grand Canal and the early gondola ferries were plying busily across carrying men, women and children to the larger island for their day's tasks. Captain Jimmy lazily stared at and admired the picture presented to him, and was turning back to the hotel for his breakfast when he discovered another lounging man, whose gaze was fixed calmly on the same hotel entrance. It suddenly occurred to Jimmy that he had seen that man several times within the last few days and he recalled that each time there had been something familiar about him. And now, in one of these peculiar flashes of memory that so strangely identifies, aided perhaps by a shift of the light on a profile, he mentally exclaimed, “Oh! Now I've got him! That was the guide to whom Pietro was talking on the first night I ever saw that young scalawag. That's the man he called Giuseppe. Suppose he's hanging around either in hope of an engagement, or waiting for some appointment. Looks a bit of a rascal, too.”
And then, consulting his watch, and finding time advancing, he speedily dismissed the lounging Giuseppe from his mind and went for breakfast with a well-developed sailor's appetite. But that was not the last he was to see of Giuseppe that day; for when after a cruise rendered marvelous by the company of Miss Tommie Cardell he landed at the Lido and strolled around with her while listening to the instructive comments of Pietro, he saw Giuseppe for the second time, engrossed in conversation with an old dame who had curios for sale. He saw him again, an hour later, when, having escaped Pietro for a while, he strolled through the long, shaded gardens leading to the terrace of a great hotel and returning that way discovered Pietro and Giuseppe in vehement conversation. Their arms waved and shook, their slender hands gesticulated
