nducted with discretion.
There is only one other question I have to ask; and as it purely
concerns myself, you 'll not refuse me a reply. Knowing our station
in life, as I now see you know it, by what presumption did you dare to
trifle with my girlish ignorance, and lead me to fancy that I might yet
move in a sphere which in your heart you knew I was excluded from?"

Overwhelmed with shame and confusion, and stunned by the embarrassment
of a dull man in a difficulty, Beecher stood, unable to utter a word.

"To say the least, sir, there was levity in this," said she, in a tone
of sorrowful meaning; "but, perhaps, you never meant it so."

"Never, upon my oath, never!" cried he, eagerly. "Whatever I said, I
uttered in all frankness and sincerity. I know London town just as well
as any man living, and I 'll stand five hundred to fifty there's not
your equal in it,--and that's giving the whole field against the odds.
All I say is, you shall go to the Queen's Drawing-room--"

"I am not likely to do so, sir," said she, with a haughty gesture, and
left the room.

CHAPTER XXXIV. AIX-LA-CHAPELLE

Three days passed over,--three days varied with all the incidents that
go to make up a longer existence,--and Beecher and his fair charge were
still in Aix. If they forbore to speak to each other of the strange
situation in which they found themselves, they were not the less full of
it. Neither telegraph nor letter came from Davis, and Beecher's anxiety
grew hourly greater. There was scarcely an eventuality his mind had not
pictured. Davis was arrested and carried off to prison in Brussels,--was
waylaid and murdered in the Ardennes,--was ill, dying in some
unheard-of village,--involved in some other row, and obliged to keep
secret,--arrested on some old charge; in fact, every mishap that a
fertile fancy could devise had befallen him, and now only remained the
question what was he himself to do with Lizzy Davis.

Whether it was that her present life was an agreeable change from the
discipline of the Three Fountains, or that the new objects of interest
about her engaged her to the exclusion of much thought, or that some
higher philosophy of resignation supported her, but certain is it
she neither complained of the delay nor exhibited any considerable
impatience at her father's silence. She went about sightseeing, visited
churches and galleries, strolled on the Promenade, before dinner, and
finished with the theatre at night, f