for her own advantage, her preservation, that
you are thinking all this time? Of course it is.
And there now, I think I hear her sob. Yes, she
is crying; the old lady has really come to the
quick, and I believe is not going to stop there.

"Well," thought I, "old ladies are an excellent
invention; none of these cutting severities
could be done but for them. And they have
a patient persistence in this surgery quite
wonderful, for when they have flayed the patient
all over, they sprinkle on salt as carefully
as a pastrycook frosting a plum-cake."

At last, I did begin to wish it was over. She
surely must have addressed herself to every
phase of the question in an hour and a half, and
yet I could hear her still grinding, grinding on,
as though the efficacy of her precepts, like a
homœopathic remedy, were to be increased by
trituration. Fortunately, we had to halt for
fresh horses, and so I got down to chat with
them at the carriage door, and interrupt the
lecture. Little was I prepared for the reddened
eyes and quivering lips of that poor girl, as
she drank off the glass of water she begged
me to fetch her, but still less for the few words
she contrived to whisper in my ear, as I took
the glass from her hands.

"I hope you have made me miserable enough
now."

And with this the window was banged to, and
away we went.

CHAPTER XXV.

I WAS so hurt by the last words of Miss Herbert
to me, that I maintained throughout the
entire day what I meant to be a "dignified reserve,"
but what I half suspect bore stronger
resemblance to a deep sulk. My station had
its privileges, and I resolved to take the benefit
of them. I dined alone. Yes, on that day I
did fall back upon the eminence of my condition,
and proudly intimated that I desired solitude.
I was delighted to see the dismay this
declaration caused. Old Mrs. Keats was speechless
with terror. I was looking at her through
a chink in the door when Miss Herbert gave my
message, and I thought she would have fainted.

"What were his precise words? Give them
to me exactly as he uttered them," said she,
tremulously, "for there are persons whose intimations
are half commands."

"I can scarcely repeat them, madam," said
the other, "but their purport was, that we were
not to expect him at dinner, that he had ordered
it to be served in his own room, and at his own
hour."

"And this is very probably all your doing,"
said the old lady, with indignation. "Unaccustomed
to any levity of behaviour, brought up in
a rank where familiarities are never practised,
he has been shocked by your conduct with that
stranger. Yes, Miss Herbert, I say shocked,
because, however harmless in intention, such
freedoms are utterly unknown in—in certain
circles."

"I am sure, madam," replied she, with a
certain amount of spirit, " that you are labouring
under a very grave misapprehension. There
was no familiarity, no freedom. We talked as
I imagine people usually talk when they sit at
the same table. Mr.——I scarcely know his
name——"

"Nor is it necessary, Miss Herbert," said the
old woman, tartly; "though, if you had, probably
this unfortunate incident might not have occurred.
Sit down there, however, and write a
few lines in my name, hoping that his indisposition
may be very slight, and begging to know
if he desire to remain here to-morrow and take
some repose."

I waited till I saw Miss Herbert open her
writing-desk, and then I hastened off to my
room to reflect over my answer to her note.
Now that the suggestion was made to me, I was
pleased with the notion of passing an entire day
where we were. The place was Schaffhausen—
the famous fall of the Rhine—not very much as
a cataract, but picturesque withal; pleasant
chesnut woods to ramble about, and a nice old
inn in a wild old wilderness of a garden that
sloped down to the very river.

Strange perversity is it not! but how naturally
one likes everything to have some feature
or other out of keeping with its intrinsic purport.
An inn like an old château, a chief justice
that could ride a steeple-chase, a bishop that
sings Moore's melodies, have an immense attraction
for me. They seem all, as it were, to
say, "Don't fancy life is a mere four-roomed
house with a door in the middle. Don't imagine
that all is humdrum, and routine, and regular.
Notwithstanding his wig and stern black eyebrows,
there is a touch of romance in that old
chancellor's heart that you couldn't beat out
of it with his great mace; and his grace the
primate there has not forgotten what made the
poetry of his life in days before he ever dreamed
of charges or triennial visitations."

By these reflections I mean to convey that I
am very fond of an inn that does not look like
an inn, but resembles a faded old country-house,
or a deserted convent, or a disabled mill. This
Schaffhausen Gasthaus looked like all three.
It was the sort of place one might come to in
a long vacation, to live simply and go early to
bed, taking monotony as a tonic, and fancying
unbroken quiet to be better than quinine.

"Ah!" thought I, "if it had not been for
that confounded German, what a paradise might
not this have been to me! Down there in that
garden, with the din of the waterfall around us,
walking under the old cherry-trees, brushing our
way through tangled sweetbriers, and arbutus,
and laburnum, what delicious nonsense might I
not have poured into her ear. Ay! and not unwillingly
had she heard it. That something
within that never deceives, that little crimson
heart within the rose of conscience tells me that
she liked me, that she was attracted by what, if
it were not for shame, I would call the irresistible
attractions of my nature; and now this
creature of braten and beetroot has spoiled all,
jarred the instrument and unstrung the chords
that might have yielded me such sweet music."