About the Book
Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Lord FiTzHucii,s yacht lay at Venice in the Lagoon, almost abreast of Danieli,s Hotel, but nearer San Giorgio, and away from the fleet of gondolas and market-boats that crowd round the stairs in front of the Bridge of Sighs. The season was the early autumn, the time evening. A mild, balmy evening, soft and tender as first love or the memory of a mother,s lullaby ; the light glowing and iridescent from a sky tinged by the bright rays of the setting sun; streaks of rosy, feathery clouds stretched from the west, half across the zenith; from them the surface of the wide waters, gently heaving like rippling oil, took a thousand reflections, opalescent, rainbow-hued. One or two flashes of sunlight lingered to touch with flame each point VOL. I. D and pinnacle, till the marvellous outline of this fairy-like floating Venetian architecture seemed encrusted with rare jewels and adorned with glittering gold. The air was still; the bragozzi under full sail crept up, wing and wing, to their moorings like quiet white-robed ghosts ; no sound was abroad to break the charmed silence of this lovely landscape, but the plashing oar of a passing gondolier, or the distant hum of voices on the Riva dei Schiavoni, or in the square beyond. On the deck of the ' Zorayda, sat a lady sketching. This was Lady Clementina For- syth. Had success in that difficult branch of art called water-colour painting depended merely upon apparatus, Lady Clementina might reasonably have expected considerable renown. She was worth a small fortune to the artists, colourmen. She could talk learnedly by the hour of the various materials and appliances in vogue. She knew all about processes, and papers, and pigments. ' Oh ! have you tried deep gingerine, or pale aluminium blue ? , she would enquire...