before the dawn, as we used to say in
Brussels, when the days seemed interminably awful just before vacation.
Two carriages we must have for so many women. Ah, I am so glad my house
is quite, quite empty.'

Beckoning to the drivers of two rather rickety old carriages, somewhat
resembling in form the old English chaise, she put all the girls in one,
and seated herself beside Mrs. Fordyce in the other.

'Now we can talk. The children will be happier without us. How good, how
very good, it is to see you again, Isabel, and how my heart warms to you
even yet.'

'It was your own fault, Henrietta, that we did not meet oftener. You
have always refused my invitations--sometimes without much ceremony,'
said Mrs. Fordyce rather reproachfully.

'Pride, my dear--Scotch pride; that is what kept me vegetating in this
awful place when my heart was in the Highlands. Tell me about Gairloch
and Helensburgh, and dear old Glasgow. I have never forgotten it,
though I was too proud to parade my poverty in its streets.'

'I will tell you nothing, Henrietta, till I hear what all this means.
Have you really been worse off lately?'

'My dear, for twelve months I have not had a creature in my house,' said
Madame Bonnemain, and her face grew graver and older in its
outline,--'positively not a creature. Bruges has gone down as a place
for English residents, and I don't wonder at it.'

'It is very beautiful, Henrietta,' said Mrs. Fordyce quickly,--'so
quaint; everything about it a picture.'

'People can't live on quaintness, my love, and the narrowness and
tyranny of it is intolerable. I hate it. When I go away from Bruges I
never want to set eyes on it again as long as I live.'

Her eyes shone, her cheeks grew red, her little mouth set itself in
quite a determined curve. Mrs. Fordyce perceived that she had some
serious umbrage against the old Flemish town--a grudge which would never
be wiped away. And yet it _was_ very picturesque, with its grey old
houses, its quaint spires, its flat fields spreading away from the
canal, its rows of stately poplar trees.

'There is nothing really more terrible, Isabel, than the English life in
a foreign town. It is so narrow, so petty--I had almost said so
degraded. I should not have taken your pretty ward into my house here
suppose you had prayed me to do it. Nothing could possibly be worse for
a young girl; she could not escape its influence. No, I should never
have taken her here.'

'Why have you s