fered vacant place. But he had to speak of his fly waiting for him
at the steps of a certain hotel.

'Best hotel in the town!' Sir Beeson exclaimed pointedly to Henrietta,
reading her constraint with this comical object before her. It was the
admiral's hotel they stopped at.

'Be so good as to step down and tell the admiral he is to bring Madame
Clemence in his carriage to-morrow; and on your way, you will dismiss
Mr. Woodseer's fly,' Livia mildly addressed her squire. He stared: again
he had to go, muttering: 'That nondescript's footman!' and his
mischance in being checked and crossed and humiliated perpetually by a
dirty-fisted vagabond impostor astounded him. He sent the flyman to the
carriage for orders.

Admiral Fakenham and Carinthia descended. Sir Meeson heard her cry
out: 'Is it you!' and up stood the pretentious lout in the German sack,
affecting the graces of a born gentleman fresh from Paris,--bowing,
smirking, excusing himself for something; and he jumped down to the
young lady, he talked intimately with her, with a joker's air; he roused
the admiral to an exchange of jokes, and the countess and Miss
Fakenham more than smiled; evidently at his remarks, unobservant of
the preposterous figure he cut. Sir Meeson Corby had intimations of the
disintegration of his country if a patent tramp burlesquing in those
clothes could be permitted to amuse English ladies of high station,
quite at home with them. Among the signs of England's downfall, this was
decidedly one. What to think of the admiral's favourite when, having his
arm paternally on her shoulder, she gave the tramp her hand at parting,
and then blushed! All that the ladies had to say about it was, that a
spread of colour rather went to change the character of her face.

Carinthia had given Woodseer her hand and reddened under the
recollection of Chillon's words to her as they mounted the rise of the
narrow vale, after leaving the lame gentleman to his tobacco on the
grass below the rocks. Her brother might have counselled her wisely and
was to be obeyed. Only, the great pleasure in seeing the gentleman again
inspired gratitude: he brought the scene to her; and it was alive, it
chatted and it beckoned; it neighboured her home; she had passed it on
her walk away from her home; the gentleman was her link to the mountain
paths; he was just outside an association with her father and mother.
At least, her thinking of them led to him, he to them. Now that she
h