But he felt,
nevertheless, an insurmountable reluctance to remaining in the hotel.
He decided on leaving Venice. To ask for another room would be,
as he could plainly see, an offence in the eyes of the manager.
To remove to another hotel, would be to openly abandon an
establishment in the success of which he had a pecuniary interest.
Leaving a note for Arthur Barville, on his arrival in Venice,
in which he merely mentioned that he had gone to look at the
Italian lakes, and that a line addressed to his hotel at Milan
would bring him back again, he took the afternoon train to Padua--
and dined with his usual appetite, and slept as well as ever
that night.
The next day, a gentleman and his wife (perfect strangers
to the Montbarry family), returning to England by way of Venice,
arrived at the hotel and occupied Number Fourteen.
Still mindful of the slur that had been cast on one of his
best bedchambers, the manager took occasion to ask the travellers
the next morning how they liked their room. They left him to judge
for himself how well they were satisfied, by remaining a day longer
in Venice than they had originally planned to do, solely for
the purpose of enjoying the excellent accommodation offered to them
by the new hotel.
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