'
'You foolish boy! How can you talk such nonsense?'
He was talking nonsense undoubtedly. But, if Agnes had only known it,
he was doing something more than that. He was innocently leading
her another stage nearer on the way to Venice.
CHAPTER XIV
As the summer months advanced, the transformation of the Venetian
palace into the modern hotel proceeded rapidly towards completion.
The outside of the building, with its fine Palladian front looking
on the canal, was wisely left unaltered. Inside, as a matter
of necessity, the rooms were almost rebuilt--so far at least
as the size and the arrangement of them were concerned.
The vast saloons were partitioned off into 'apartments' containing
three or four rooms each. The broad corridors in the upper regions
afforded 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 add
greatly to the beauty and importance of the best rooms in the hotel.
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