Chapter I

“Oh! my necklace!” cried a fair woman as she leaned over the side of her gondola.

A string of opals, linked and set in gold, had been loosened from her throat, and had slid down into the water of the lagoon, midway between the Lido and the city of Venice. But the gondola was moving swiftly under the impulsion of a rower fore and aft, and, though they stopped a few moments after at her cry, the spot where it had fallen was already passed and left behind. She was vexed and provoked. She had many jewels, but the opal necklace was an heirloom, and of fine and curious workmanship. The gondoliers did their best to find it, but in vain. They were in the deeper water of the sailing roads, which were marked out by the lines of poles, and the necklace, a slight thing, had been borne away by the current setting in from the open sea.

It was a pale afternoon in late summer; the heat was still great; the skies and the waters were of the same soft, dreamy, silvery hue, and the same transparency and ethereality were on the distant horizons of the hills, west and east. The only colour there was came from the ruddy painted sails of some fruit-laden market boats which were passing to leeward.

Neither of the men could swim; many Venetians cannot; but they got over the side, and waded up to their waists in the water, and with their oars struck and sounded the sandy bottom, whilst she encouraged them with praise and extravagant promise of reward. Their efforts were of no avail. The lagoon, which has been the grave of so many, kept the drowned opals.

“We will go back and send divers,” she said to her men who, wet to their waists, were well content to turn the head of the gondola back to the city.

They wore white clothes with red sashes and red ribbons round their straw hats; they were in her private service; they steered quickly home again over the calm water-way, and in and out the crowded craft by the Schiavone past the Customs House, and S. Giorgio, and the Salvatore, until they reached a palace on the Grand Canal, which was their mistress’s residence, with poles painted red and white, with coronets on their tops, marking the landing stairs in the old Venetian fashion.

“I have lost my opals in the water!” she cried to a friend who was on one of the balconies of the first floor.

“I am glad you have lost them,” replied her friend. “They are stones of misfortune.”

“Nonsense! They were beautiful, and they were Ninetta Zaranegra’s, poor Carlo’s great-great-grandmother; they were one of her nuptial presents a hundred and twenty years ago. I must have the men dive and dredge till they are found. The water is so shallow. I cannot think how the collar can have vanished so completely in such a moment of time.”

She ascended her palace steps, and dismissed her gondoliers with a gesture, as she paused in the entrance-hall to tell her major-domo of her loss, and consult him as to the best means to recover the necklace. The hall was painted in fresco, with beautiful Moorish windows, and a groined and gilded ceiling, and a wide staircase of white marble, uncarpeted. Opposite the entrance was a latticed door through which was seen the bright green of acacias, cratægus, and laurel growing in a garden.

On the morrow, when it was known through Venice that the rich and generous Countess Zaranegra had lost her jewels, all the best divers hurried to the place where the opals had dropped, and worked sedulously from daybreak to find it, sailors and fishermen and boatmen all joining in the search, in hope to merit the reward she promised. But no one of them succeeded. Their efforts were useless. The tenacious water would not yield up its prey. The opals were gone, like spindrift.