when she did not understand it; and this is a kind of flattery not easy
to resist. Besides, there was very little ladies' society in Venice in
those times, and Ferris, after trying the little he could get at, had
gladly denied himself its pleasures, and consorted with the young men
he met at the caffe's, or in the Piazza. But when the Vervains came,
they recalled to him the younger days in which he had delighted in the
companionship of women. After so long disuse, it was charming to be
with a beautiful girl who neither regarded him with distrust nor
expected him to ask her in marriage because he sat alone with her, rode
out with her in a gondola, walked with her, read with her. All young
men like a house in which no ado is made about their coming and going,
and Mrs. Vervain perfectly understood the art of letting him make
himself at home. He perceived with amusement that this amiable lady,
who never did an ungraceful thing nor wittingly said an ungracious one,
was very much of a Bohemian at heart,--the gentlest and most blameless
of the tribe, but still lawless,--whether from her campaigning married
life, or the rovings of her widowhood, or by natural disposition; and
that Miss Vervain was inclined to be conventionally strict, but with
her irregular training was at a loss for rules by which to check her
mother's little waywardnesses. Her anxious perplexity, at times,
together with her heroic obedience and unswerving loyalty to her mother
had something pathetic as well as amusing in it. He saw her tried
almost to tears by her mother's helpless frankness,--for Mrs. Vervain
was apparently one of those ladies whom the intolerable surprise of
having anything come into their heads causes instantly to say or do
it,--and he observed that she never tried to pass off her endurance
with any feminine arts; but seemed to defy him to think what he would
of it. Perhaps she was not able to do otherwise: he thought of her at
times as a person wholly abandoned to the truth. Her pride was on the
alert against him; she may have imagined that he was covertly smiling