me well, and had known me before ever her mistress
had seen me. Aennchen was the eldest of the two children Temple and I
had eaten breakfast with in the forester's hut. I felt myself as if in
the forest again, merely wondering at the growth of the trees, and the
narrowness of my vision in those days.

At parting, the princess said,

'Is my English improved? You smiled at it once. I will ask you when I
meet you next.'

'It is my question,' I whispered to my own ears.

She caught the words.

'Why do you say--"It is my question"?'

I was constrained to remind her of her old forms of English speech.

'You remember that? Adieu,' she said.

My father considerately left me to carry on my promenade alone. I
crossed the ground she had traversed, noting every feature surrounding
it, the curving wheel-track, the thin prickly sand-herbage, the
wave-mounds, the sparse wet shells and pebbles, the gleaming flatness
of the water, and the vast horizon-boundary of pale flat land level with
shore, looking like a dead sister of the sea. By a careful examination
of my watch and the sun's altitude, I was able to calculate what would,
in all likelihood, have been his height above yonder waves when her
chair was turned toward the city, at a point I reached in the track. But
of the matter then simultaneously occupying my mind, to recover which
was the second supreme task I proposed to myself-of what. I also was
thinking upon the stroke of five o'clock, I could recollect nothing.
I could not even recollect whether I happened to be looking on sun and
waves when she must have had them full and glorious in her face.

CHAPTER XXV. ON BOARD A YACHT

With the heartiest consent I could give, and a blank cheque, my father
returned to England to hire forthwith a commodious yacht, fitted and
manned. Before going he discoursed of prudence in our expenditure;
though not for the sake of the mere money in hand, which was a trifle,
barely more than the half of my future income; but that the squire,
should he by and by bethink him of inspecting our affairs, might
perceive we were not spendthrifts.

'I promised you a surprise, Richie,' said he, 'and you have had it;
whether at all equal to your expectations is for you to determine. I
was aware of the margravine's intention to bring the princess to these
sea-sands; they are famous on the Continent. It was bruited last Winter
and Spring that she would be here in the season for bathing; so I hel