some of the discourses to which she
listened so patiently. She would confess this to you at luncheon, and
then start for the same church in the afternoon, with an edifying but
rather comic expression of resignation. I am sure she would not
deliberately have vexed the smallest child; and yet the number of
athletic men who ascribed the loss of their peace of mind to her, was,
as the Yankees have it, "a caution." Some of the "regulars," wary
adventuresses of three seasons' standing, had brought off several pretty
good things by following her, and picking up the victims fluttering
about helpless in their first despair, just as the keepers after a
battue go round the covers with the retrievers.

If there were any more antitheses in her character, they had better
speak for themselves hereafter; nor is there much that need be told
about her companions.

Mrs. Danvers, or "Bessie," as she liked to be called, had been Cecil's
last governess, and was retired on full-pay, which, she flattered
herself, she earned in the capacity of traveling chaperone and censor;
but, inasmuch as when she really held some tutelar authority, her pupil
had never taken the slightest notice of her prohibitions, she could
hardly be expected now to exercise any very salutary influence or
control.

Dick Tresilyan was absurdly proud and fond of his sister, and performed
all her behests with a blind obedience; but when he heard that he was to
attend her during a whole winter's residence abroad, he did think that
it was stretching her prerogative to the verge of tyranny. No wonder. A
dragoon who has lost his horse, a goose on a turnpike-road, or any other
popular type of helplessness, does not present so lamentable a picture
as a Briton in a foreign land, without resources in himself, and with a
rooted aversion to the use of any language except his own. In this
case, the victim actually attempted some feeble remonstrance and
argument on the subject. Cecil was almost as much astonished as the
Prophet was under similar circumstances; but she considered that habits
of discussion in beasts of burden and the lower order of animals
generally were inconvenient, and rather to be discouraged; so she cut it
short, now, somewhat imperiously. Thereupon, Dick Tresilyan slid into a
slough of despond, in which he had been wallowing ever since. A faint
gleam of sunshine broke in when one of his intimates, hearing he was
going to France, suggested "that's where the brandy