the fancy. Nevertheless, the
architectural beauties of the palace-bordered street, looking as if
mountains of marble must have been levelled to supply the materials
for constructing it, detained him there two days: or rather a feat
of resolution, by which he set himself to withstand the drag-chain of
Paula's influence, was operative for that space of time.

At the end of it he moved onward. There was no difficulty in discovering
their track northwards; and feeling that he might as well return to
England by the Rhine route as by any other, he followed in the course
they had chosen, getting scent of them in Strassburg, missing them at
Baden by a day, and finally overtaking them at Carlsruhe, which town he
reached on the morning after the Power and De Stancy party had taken
up their quarters at the ancient inn above mentioned. When Somerset
was about to get out of the train at this place, little dreaming what
a meaning the word Carlsruhe would have for him in subsequent years, he
was disagreeably surprised to see no other than Dare stepping out of the
adjoining carriage. A new brown leather valise in one of his hands, a
new umbrella in the other, and a new suit of fashionable clothes on
his back, seemed to denote considerable improvement in the young man's
fortunes. Somerset was so struck by the circumstance of his being on
this spot that he almost missed his opportunity for alighting.

Dare meanwhile had moved on without seeing his former employer, and
Somerset resolved to take the chance that offered, and let him go. There
was something so mysterious in their common presence simultaneously
at one place, five hundred miles from where they had last met, that
he exhausted conjecture on whether Dare's errand this way could have
anything to do with his own, or whether their juxtaposition a second
time was the result of pure accident. Greatly as he would have liked
to get this answered by a direct question to Dare himself, he did not
counteract his first instinct, and remained unseen.

They went out in different directions, when Somerset for the first time
remembered that, in learning at Baden that the party had flitted towards
Carlsruhe, he had taken no care to ascertain the name of the hotel
they were bound for. Carlsruhe was not a large place and the point was
immaterial, but the omission would necessitate a little inquiry. To
follow Dare on the chance of his having fixed upon the same quarters
was a course which did not