A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

BY

W. D. HOWELLS

_Fifteenth Edition._




A FOREGONE CONCLUSION




I.


As Don Ippolito passed down the long narrow _calle_ or footway
leading from the Campo San Stefano to the Grand Canal in Venice, he
peered anxiously about him: now turning for a backward look up the
calle, where there was no living thing in sight but a cat on a garden
gate; now running a quick eye along the palace walls that rose vast on
either hand and notched the slender strip of blue sky visible overhead
with the lines of their jutting balconies, chimneys, and cornices; and
now glancing toward the canal, where he could see the noiseless black
boats meeting and passing. There was no sound in the calle save his own
footfalls and the harsh scream of a parrot that hung in the sunshine in
one of the loftiest windows; but the note of a peasant crying pots of