red more than once
this long expanse, looking down on the floral figures of the rest of the
affair and on the stoutly-woven tapestry of creeping plants that muffle
the foundations of the huge red pile. I thought of the various images of
old-world gentility which, early and late, must have strolled in front
of it and felt the protection and security of the place. We peeped
through an antique grating into one of the mossy cages and saw an old
lady with a black mantilla on her head, a decanter of water in one hand
and a crutch in the other, come forth, followed by three little dogs and
a cat, to sprinkle a plant. She would probably have had an opinion on
the virtue of Queen Caroline. Feeling these things together made us
quickly, made us extraordinarily, intimate. My companion seemed to ache
with his impression; he scowled, all gently, as if it gave him pain. I
proposed at last that we should dine somewhere on the spot and take
a late train to town. We made our way out of the gardens into the
adjoining village, where we entered an inn which I pronounced, very
sincerely, exactly what we wanted. Mr. Searle had approached our board
as shyly as if it had been a cold bath; but, gradually warming to his
work, he declared at the end of half an hour that for the first time in
a month he enjoyed his victuals.

"I'm afraid you're rather out of health," I risked.

"Yes, sir--I'm an incurable."

The little village of Hampton Court stands clustered about the entrance
of Bushey Park, and after we had dined we lounged along into the
celebrated avenue of horse-chestnuts. There is a rare emotion, familiar
to every intelligent traveller, in which the mind seems to swallow the
sum total of its impressions at a gulp. You take in the whole place,
whatever it be. You feel England, you feel Italy, and the sensation
involves for the moment a kind of thrill. I had known it from time to
time in Italy and had opened my soul to it as to the spirit of the
Lord. Since my landing in England I had been waiting for it to arrive. A
bottle of tolerable Burgundy, at dinner, had perhaps unlocked to it the
gates of sense; it arrived now with irresistible force. Just the scene
around me was the England of one's early reveries. Over against us, amid
the ripeness of its gardens, the dark red residence, with its formal
facings and its vacant windows, seemed to make the past definite and
massive; the little village, nestling between park and palace, around
a pat