Page:A Venetian June (1896).pdf/231

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their class. Old Pietro kisses mine and makes me feel like an ancient doge."

He could see that she was relieved.

"I wonder where the others are," she said. "Let us go and look them up. I didn't feel like anything so fine as a doge," she added, lightly, as they came out into the square again. "I felt like a very interfering and foolish kind of person. I don't think I shall do anything so silly again."

"There is nothing silly about a generous action," Geof protested, looking with great kindness at the young girl, to whom the garment of humility was not unbecoming. "I rather think, though, that the man is better off than you imagine. At any rate, I'm very sure he is better off for the goodwill you have shown him."

Then, with a return of his previous solicitude, somewhat stimulated by a new realization of the unusual beauty of this experimenter in mysteries, he added: "These Italians are impressionable fellows. They sometimes feel things more