“I don’t know how you stand it, Miss Claxon,” he complained to Clementina, as soon as he learned that she was not a blood relation of Mrs. Lander’s, and divined that she had her own reservations concerning her.  “But that woman will be the death of me if she keeps this up.  What does she think I’m here for?  If this goes on much longer I’ll resign.  The salary won’t begin to pay for it.  What am I going to do?  I don’t want to hurt her feelings, or not to help her; but I know ten times as much about Mrs. Lander’s liver as I do about my own, now.”

He treated Clementina as a person of mature judgment and a sage discretion, and he accepted what comfort she could offer him when she explained that it was everything for Mrs. Lander to have him to talk with.  “She gets tied of talking to me,” she urged, “and there’s nobody else, now.”

“Why don’t she hire a valet de place, and talk to him?  I’d hire one myself for her.  It would be a good deal cheaper for me.  It’s as much as I can do to stand this weather as it is.”

The vice-consul laughed forlornly in his exasperation, but he agreed with Clementina when she said, in further excuse, that Mrs. Lander was really very sick.  He pushed back his hat, and scratched his head with a grimace.

“Of course, we’ve got to remember she’s sick, and I shall need a little sympathy myself if she keeps on at me this way.  I believe I’ll tell her about my liver next time, and see how she likes it.  Look here, Miss Claxon!  Couldn’t we get her off to some of those German watering places that are good for her complaints?  I believe it would be the best thing for her—­not to mention me.”

Mrs. Lander was moved by the suggestion which he made in person afterwards; it appealed to her old nomadic instinct; but when the consul was gone she gave it up.  “We couldn’t git the’e, Clementina.  I got to stay he’e till I git up my stren’th.  I suppose you’d be glad enough to have me sta’t, now the’e’s nobody he’e but me,” she added, suspiciously.  “You git this scheme up, or him?”

Clementina did not defend herself, and Mrs. Lander presently came to her defence.  “I don’t believe but what he meant it fo’ the best—­or you, whichever it was, and I appreciate it; but all is I couldn’t git off.  I guess this aia will do me as much good as anything, come to have it a little coola.”

They went every afternoon to the Lido, where a wheeled chair met them, and Mrs. Lander was trundled across the narrow island to the beach.  In the evenings they went to the Piazza, where their faces and figures had become known, and the Venetians gossipped them down to the last fact of their relation with an accuracy creditable to their ingenuity in the affairs of others.  To them Mrs. Lander was the sick American, very rich, and Clementina was her adoptive daughter, who would have her millions after her.  Neither knew the character they bore to the amiable and inquisitive public of the Piazza, or cared for the fine eyes that aimed their steadfast gaze at them along the tubes of straw-barreled Virginia cigars, or across little cups of coffee.  Mrs. Lander merely remarked that the Venetians seemed great for gaping, and Clementina was for the most part innocent of their stare.