She rested in the choice she had made in a content which was qualified by no misgiving.  She was sorry for Gregory, when she remembered him; but her thought was filled with some one else, and she waited in faith and patience for the answer which should come to the letter she had written.  She did not know where her letter would find him, or when she should hear from him; she believed that she should hear, and that was enough.  She said to herself that she would not lose hope if no answer came for months; but in her heart she fixed a date for the answer by letter, and an earlier date for some word by cable; but she feigned that she did not depend upon this; and when no word came she convinced herself that she had not expected any.

It was nearing the end of the term which she had tacitly given her lover to make the first sign by letter, when one morning Mrs. Lander woke her.  She wished to say that she had got the strength to leave Venice at last, and she was going as soon as their trunks could be packed.  She had dressed herself, and she moved about restless and excited.  Clementina tried to reason her out of her haste; but she irritated her, and fixed her in her determination.  “I want to get away, I tell you; I want to get away,” she answered all persuasion, and there seemed something in her like the wish to escape from more than the oppressive environment, though she spoke of nothing but the heat and the smell of the canal.  “I believe it’s that, moa than any one thing, that’s kept me sick he’e,” she said.  “I tell you it’s the malariar, and you’ll be down, too, if you stay.”

She made Clementina go to the banker’s, and get money to pay their landlord’s bill, and she gave him notice that they were going that afternoon.  Clementina wished to delay till they had seen the vice-consul and the doctor; but Mrs. Lander broke out, “I don’t want to see ’em, either of ’em.  The docta wants to keep me he’e and make money out of me; I undastand him; and I don’t believe that consul’s a bit too good to take a pussentage.  Now, don’t you say a wo’d to either of ’em.  If you don’t do exactly what I tell you I’ll go away and leave you he’e.  Now, will you?”

Clementina promised, and broke her word.  She went to the vice-consul and told him she had broken it, and she agreed with him that he had better not come unless Mrs. Lander sent for him.  The doctor promptly imagined the situation and said he would come in casually during the morning, so as not to alarm the invalid’s suspicions.  He owned that Mrs. Lander was getting no good from remaining in Venice, and if it were possible for her to go, he said she had better go somewhere into cooler and higher air.