As the summer months advanced, the transformation of the Venetianpalace into the modern hotel proceeded rapidly towards completion.

The outside of the building, with its fine Palladian front lookingon the canal, was wisely left unaltered. Inside, as a matterof necessity, the rooms were almost rebuilt--so far at leastas the size and the arrangement of them were concerned.The vast saloons were partitioned off into 'apartments' containingthree or four rooms each. The broad corridors in the upper regionsafforded spare space enough for rows of little bedchambers,devoted to servants and to travellers with limited means.Nothing was spared but the solid floors and the finely-carved ceilings.These last, in excellent preservation as to workmanship,merely required cleaning, and regilding here and there, to addgreatly to the beauty and importance of the best rooms in the hotel.The only exception to the complete re-organization of the interiorwas at one extremity of the edifice, on the first and second floors.Here there happened, in each case, to be rooms of such comparativelymoderate size, and so attractively decorated, that the architectsuggested leaving them as they were. It was afterwards discoveredthat these were no other than the apartments formerly occupiedby Lord Montbarry (on the first floor), and by Baron Rivar(on the second). The room in which Montbarry had died was still fittedup as a bedroom, and was now distinguished as Number Fourteen.The room above it, in which the Baron had slept, took its placeon the hotel-register as Number Thirty-Eight. With the ornaments onthe walls and ceilings cleaned and brightened up, and with the heavyold-fashioned beds, chairs, and tables replaced by bright, pretty,and luxurious modern furniture, these two promised to be at oncethe most attractive and the most comfortable bedchambers in the hotel.As for the once-desolate and disused ground floor of the building,it was now transformed, by means of splendid dining-rooms, reception-rooms,billiard-rooms, and smoking-rooms, into a palace by itself.Even the dungeon-like vaults beneath, now lighted and ventilatedon the most approved modern plan, had been turned as if by magicinto kitchens, servants' offices, ice-rooms, and wine cellars,worthy of the splendour of the grandest hotel in Italy, in the nowbygone period of seventeen years since.

Passing from the lapse of the summer months at Venice, to the lapse ofthe summer months in Ireland, it is next to be recorded that Mrs. Rollandobtained the situation of attendant on the invalid Mrs. Carbury;and that the fair Miss Haldane, like a female Caesar, came, saw,and conquered, on her first day's visit to the new Lord Montbarry's house.

The ladies were as loud in her praises as Arthur Barville himself.Lord Montbarry declared that she was the only perfectly pretty womanhe had ever seen, who was really unconscious of her own attractions.The old nurse said she looked as if she had just stepped out of a picture,and wanted nothing but a gilt frame round her to make her complete.Miss Haldane, on her side, returned from her first visit to theMontbarrys charmed with her new acquaintances. Later on the same day,Arthur called with an offering of fruit and flowers for Mrs. Carbury,and with instructions to ask if she was well enough to receiveLord and Lady Montbarry and Miss Lockwood on the morrow.In a week's time, the two households were on the friendliest terms.Mrs. Carbury, confined to the sofa by a spinal malady, had beenhitherto dependent on her niece for one of the few pleasures shecould enjoy, the pleasure of having the best new novels readto her as they came out. Discovering this, Arthur volunteeredto relieve Miss Haldane, at intervals, in the office of reader.He was clever at mechanical contrivances of all sorts,and he introduced improvements in Mrs. Carbury's couch, and inthe means of conveying her from the bedchamber to the drawing-room,which alleviated the poor lady's sufferings and brightened hergloomy life. With these claims on the gratitude of the aunt,aided by the personal advantages which he unquestionably possessed,Arthur advanced rapidly in the favour of the charming niece.She was, it is needless to say, perfectly well aware that he was in lovewith her, while he was himself modestly reticent on the subject--so far as words went. But she was not equally quick in penetratingthe nature of her own feelings towards Arthur. Watching the two youngpeople with keen powers of observation, necessarily concentratedon them by the complete seclusion of her life, the invalid ladydiscovered signs of roused sensibility in Miss Haldane, when Arthurwas present, which had never yet shown themselves in her socialrelations with other admirers eager to pay their addresses to her.Having drawn her own conclusions in private, Mrs. Carbury took the firstfavourable opportunity (in Arthur's interests) of putting them tothe test.

'I don't know what I shall do,' she said one day, 'when Arthurgoes away.'

Miss Haldane looked up quickly from her work. 'Surely he is notgoing to leave us!' she exclaimed.

'My dear! he has already stayed at his uncle's house a month longerthan he intended. His father and mother naturally expect to seehim at home again.'

Miss Haldane met this difficulty with a suggestion, which couldonly have proceeded from a judgment already disturbed by the ravagesof the tender passion. 'Why can't his father and mother go and seehim at Lord Montbarry's?' she asked. 'Sir Theodore's place is onlythirty miles away, and Lady Barville is Lord Montbarry's sister.They needn't stand on ceremony.'

'They may have other engagements,' Mrs. Carbury remarked.

'My dear aunt, we don't know that! Suppose you ask Arthur?'

'Suppose you ask him?'

Miss Haldane bent her head again over her work. Suddenly as itwas done, her aunt had seen her face--and her face betrayed her.

When Arthur came the next day, Mrs. Carbury said a word to himin private, while her niece was in the garden. The last newnovel lay neglected on the table. Arthur followed Miss Haldaneinto the garden. The next day he wrote home, enclosing in hisletter a photograph of Miss Haldane. Before the end of the week,Sir Theodore and Lady Barville arrived at Lord Montbarry's,and formed their own judgment of the fidelity of the portrait.They had themselves married early in life--and, strange to say,they did not object on principle to the early marriagesof other people. The question of age being thus disposed of,the course of true love had no other obstacles to encounter.Miss Haldane was an only child, and was possessed of an ample fortune.Arthur's career at the university had been creditable, but certainly notbrilliant enough to present his withdrawal in the light of a disaster.As Sir Theodore's eldest son, his position was already made for him.He was two-and-twenty years of age; and the young lady was eighteen.There was really no producible reason for keeping the lovers waiting,and no excuse for deferring the wedding-day beyond the first weekin September. In the interval, while the bride and bridegroomwould be necessarily absent on the inevitable tour abroad,a sister of Mrs. Carbury volunteered to stay with her duringthe temporary separation from her niece. On the conclusionof the honeymoon, the young couple were to return to Ireland,and were to establish themselves in Mrs. Carbury's spacious andcomfortable house.

These arrangements were decided upon early in the month of August.About the same date, the last alterations in the old palace at Venicewere completed. The rooms were dried by steam; the cellars were stocked;the manager collected round him his army of skilled servants;and the new hotel was advertised all over Europe to openin October.