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to?”
    “Frankly, not very much. But that isn’t your business. Now let us find a trattoria where we can have an ice before we go any further.”
    “The doctors say I’m to be humored,” Flora burst out.
    “And as far as I can see, you make sure that you are. What am I doing at this moment but humoring you? I didn’t plan to spend my last day in Venice pushing you about. But here I am.”
    “Papa will be upset.”
    Lavinia’s heart jumped. “What can it possibly mean to him?”
    “He likes me to be kept happy and amused.”
    Lavinia stopped dead. “Really, Flora, you are the most presumptuous child. Why should I, a stranger, be ordered to keep you happy and amused? You’re behaving like a duchess, and a very spoiled one, at that.”
    Flora gave only the ghost of her usual uninhibited giggle. She had become very pale. Lavinia was a little alarmed.
    “I think all you need is some refreshment. We’ll have our ice at that little place ahead, see? We can sit at the edge of the canal and watch the gondolas going by. The next time you come to Venice you’ll no doubt be old enough to be serenaded in a gondola.”
    Flora shrugged her narrow shoulders. She had sunk into a gloomy silence, and when it came, merely toyed with her ice. She remained entirely silent during the somewhat nerve-racking business of lifting her chair into a gondola, and only spoke once all the way down the Grand Canal. That was to point out a small elegant palazzo in terra cotta stone, with a very handsome wrought-iron gate at the top of its water steps.
    “That’s where Great-aunt Tameson lives,” she said. “They carried the coffin down those steps. It’s a good thing they didn’t slip and let it fall in the water.”
    “You’re very morbid about that funeral,” Lavinia said.
    “I found it interesting,” Flora said with dignity. “But Great-aunt Tameson doesn’t want a funeral like that. She wants to be buried with her little boy Tom. His grave is in our churchyard at home. Great-aunt Tameson used to live at Croft House, not far from Winterwood. That’s when she was married to her first husband. He died on the field of Waterloo. Then little Tom died of diphtheria, so her heart was broken and she came to Italy and married an Italian count. He died, too, and left her all his money. Isn’t life sad?”
    “The poor Contessa seems to have had her share of misfortune. What a curious name, Tameson.”
    “It’s only the female for Thomas. I expect her parents wanted her to be a boy.”
    Lavinia laughed.
    “You’re determined to be gloomy, darling.”
    Flora’s head shot up. Her tragic eyes besought Lavinia. “I hadn’t made a friend for simply ages, until I met you.”
    Lavinia made her voice flippant, touched against her will by Flora’s melancholy.
    “As you say—life is sad.”
    Flora shrugged away the arm Lavinia had laid on her small bony shoulder. “And don’t call me ‘darling’ if you’re going to desert me. That is simply the height of treachery.”
    When they got back to the hotel she refused to say goodbye. Although Lavinia looked about, and lingered longer than necessary, there was no sign of Daniel Meryon. Only Eliza was there to receive the child, and take her away.
    Flora sat with her chin sunk, her shoulders hunched, and ignored both Lavinia’s farewells and Eliza’s scolding about her bad manners. Finally Eliza made a resigned gesture to Lavinia, and wheeled Flora away.
    So that was the end of that strange, diverting and really quite enjoyable encounter. Now one must get down to facing reality.
    Cousin Marion was grimly pleased. She had already found some people who would undertake to see Lavinia safely home in return for some small services from her on the way. They were a Mr. and Mrs. Monk, who had formerly traveled without a maid, but Mrs. Monk had been ill in Italy, and felt she could not set out on such a long arduous journey without some female assistance.
    “Naturally I’ve not told them the