travel, she closed her eyes.
And then her enamoured companion more widely opened his, and traced the
beautiful features opposite him. The arch of the brows--like a slur in
music--the droop of the lashes, the meeting of the lips, and the sweet
rotundity of the chin--one by one, and all together, they were adored,
till his heart was like a retort full of spirits of wine.

It was a warm evening, and when they arrived at their journey's end
distant thunder rolled behind heavy and opaque clouds. Ethelberta bade
adieu to her attentive satellite, called to Cornelia, and entered a cab;
but before they reached the inn the thunder had increased. Then a cloud
cracked into flame behind the iron spire of the cathedral, showing in
relief its black ribs and stanchions, as if they were the bars of a
blazing cresset held on high.

'Ah, we will clamber up there to-morrow,' said Ethelberta.

A wondrous stillness pervaded the streets of the city after this, though
it was not late; and their arrival at M. Moulin's door was quite an event
for the quay. No rain came, as they had expected, and by the time they
halted the western sky had cleared, so that the newly-lit lamps on the
quay, and the evening glow shining over the river, inwove their
harmonious rays as the warp and woof of one lustrous tissue. Before they
had alighted there appeared from the archway Madame Moulin in person,
followed by the servants of the hotel in a manner signifying that they
did not receive a visitor once a fortnight, though at that moment the
clatter of sixty knives, forks, and tongues was audible through an open
window from the adjoining dining-room, to the great interest of a group
of idlers outside. Ethelberta had not seen her aunt since she last
passed through the town with Lady Petherwin, who then told her that this
landlady was the only respectable relative she seemed to have in the
world.

Aunt Charlotte's face was an English outline filled in with French shades
under the eyes, on the brows, and round the mouth, by the natural effect
of years; she resembled the British hostess as little as well could be,
no point in her causing the slightest suggestion of drops taken for the
stomach's sake. Telling the two young women she would gladly have met
them at the station had she known the hour of their arrival, she kissed
them both without much apparent notice of a difference in their
conditions; indeed, seeming rather to incline to Cornelia, whose country