The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice by Wilkie Collins

Author:Wilkie Collins
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Detective and mystery stories, Hotels -- Fiction, Venice (Italy) -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2026-01-06T20:20:27+00:00

The Fourth Part

XVI

It was only the twen­ti­eth of Septem­ber, when Ag­nes and the chil­dren reached Par­is. Mrs. Nor­bury and her broth­er Fran­cis had then already star­ted on their jour­ney to Italy—at least three weeks be­fore the date at which the new hotel was to open for the re­cep­tion of trav­el­lers.

The per­son an­swer­able for this pre­ma­ture de­par­ture was Fran­cis West­wick.

Like his young­er broth­er Henry, he had in­creased his pe­cu­ni­ary re­sources by his own en­ter­prise and in­genu­ity; with this dif­fer­ence, that his spec­u­la­tions were con­nec­ted with the Arts. He had made money, in the first in­stance, by a weekly news­pa­per; and he had then in­ves­ted his profits in a Lon­don theatre. This lat­ter en­ter­prise, ad­mir­ably con­duc­ted, had been re­war­ded by the pub­lic with steady and lib­er­al en­cour­age­ment. Pon­der­ing over a new form of the­at­ric­al at­trac­tion for the com­ing winter sea­son, Fran­cis had de­term­ined to re­vive the lan­guid pub­lic taste for the bal­let by means of an en­ter­tain­ment of his own in­ven­tion, com­bin­ing dra­mat­ic in­terest with dan­cing. He was now, ac­cord­ingly, in search of the best dan­cer (pos­sessed of the in­dis­pens­able per­son­al at­trac­tions) who was to be found in the theatres of the Con­tin­ent. Hear­ing from his for­eign cor­res­pond­ents of two wo­men who had made suc­cess­ful first ap­pear­ances, one at Mil­an and one at Florence, he had ar­ranged to vis­it those cit­ies, and to judge of the mer­its of the dan­cers for him­self, be­fore he joined the bride and bride­groom. His wid­owed sis­ter, hav­ing friends at Florence whom she was anxious to see, read­ily ac­com­pan­ied him. The Mont­barrys re­mained at Par­is, un­til it was time to present them­selves at the fam­ily meet­ing in Venice. Henry found them still in the French cap­it­al, when he ar­rived from Lon­don on his way to the open­ing of the new hotel.

Against Lady Mont­barry’s ad­vice, he took the op­por­tun­ity of re­new­ing his ad­dresses to Ag­nes. He could hardly have chosen a more un­pro­pi­tious time for plead­ing his cause with her. The gaiet­ies of Par­is (quite in­com­pre­hens­ibly to her­self as well as to every­one about her) had a de­press­ing ef­fect on her spir­its. She had no ill­ness to com­plain of; she shared will­ingly in the ever-vary­ing suc­ces­sion of amuse­ments offered to strangers by the in­genu­ity of the live­li­est people in the world—but noth­ing roused her: she re­mained per­sist­ently dull and weary through it all. In this frame of mind and body, she was in no hu­mour to re­ceive Henry’s ill-timed ad­dresses with fa­vour, or even with pa­tience: she plainly and pos­it­ively re­fused to listen to him. “Why do you re­mind me of what I have suffered?” she asked petu­lantly. “Don’t you see that it has left its mark on me for life?”

“I thought I knew some­thing of wo­men by this time,” Henry said, ap­peal­ing privately to Lady Mont­barry for con­sol­a­tion. “But Ag­nes com­pletely puzzles me. It is a year since Mont­barry’s death; and she re­mains as de­voted to his memory as if he had died faith­ful to her—she still feels the loss of him, as none of us feel

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