t spaces.
There was no evasion of any truth--so at least Susan Shepherd hoped--in
one's sitting there while the twilight deepened and feeling still more
finely that the position of this young lady was magnificent. The
evening at that height had naturally turned to cold, and the travellers
had bespoken a fire with their meal; the great Alpine road asserted its
brave presence through the small panes of the low, clean windows, with
incidents at the inn-door, the yellow _diligence,_ the great waggons,
the hurrying, hooded, private conveyances, reminders, for our fanciful
friend, of old stories, old pictures, historic flights, escapes,
pursuits, things that had happened, things indeed that by a sort of
strange congruity helped her to read the meanings of the greatest
interest into the relation in which she was now so deeply involved. It
was natural that this record of the magnificence of her companion's
position should strike her as, after all, the best meaning she could
extract; for she herself was seated in the magnificence as in a
court-carriage--she came back to that, and such a method of
progression, such a view from crimson cushions, would evidently have a
great deal more to give. By the time the candles were lighted for
supper and the short, white curtains were drawn, Milly had reappeared,
and the little scenic room had then all its romance. That charm
moreover was far from broken by the words in which she, without further
loss of time, satisfied her patient mate. "I want to go straight to
London."

It was unexpected, corresponding with no view positively taken at their
departure; when England had appeared, on the contrary, rather relegated
and postponed--seen for the moment, as who should say, at the end of an
avenue of preparations and introductions. London, in short, might have
been supposed to be the crown, and to be achieved like a siege by
gradual approaches. Milly's actual fine stride was therefore the more
exciting, as any simplification almost always was to Mrs. Stringham;
who, besides, was afterwards to recall as the very beginning of a drama
the terms in which, between their smoky candles, the girl had put her
preference and in which still other things had come up, come while the
clank of waggon-chains in the sharp air reached their ears, with the
stamp of hoofs, the rattle of buckets and the foreign questions,
foreign answers, that were all alike a part of the cheery converse of
the road. The girl brought