But I only glanced from the carriage window at the lovely scene, and we were soon across the intervening water and inside the railway station.

When we got to the front steps the row of black gondolas and the shouts of the gondoliers so bewildered my father that he was understood to require two gondolas instead of one with two oars, and so I found him in one and myself in another.

We got this righted after a while, and were rowed at once to the hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni where M.de la Feste had been staying when we last heard from him, the way being down the Grand Canal for some distance, under the Rialto, and then by narrow canals which eventually brought us under the Bridge of Sighs--harmonious to our moods!--and out again into open water.

The scene was purity itself as to colour, but it was cruel that I should behold it for the first time under such circumstances.
As soon as I entered the hotel, which is an old-fashioned place, like most places here, where people are taken en pension as well as the ordinary way, I rushed to the framed list of visitors hanging in the hall, and in a moment I saw Charles's name upon it among the rest.

But she was our chief thought.