self, Emma Mann, one
of the daughters of a clergyman who had married a Miss Stanley, closely
related, indeed if I remember rightly, a sister of the Miss Mary Stanley
who did such noble work in nursing in the Crimea.

For some months we had been diligently studying German, for Miss Marryat
thought it wise that we should know a language fairly well before we
visited the country of which it was the native tongue. We had been
trained also to talk French daily during dinner, so we were not quite
"helpless foreigners" when we steamed away from St. Catherine's Docks,
and found ourselves on the following day in Antwerp, amid what seemed to
us a very Babel of conflicting tongues. Alas for our carefully spoken
French, articulated laboriously. We were lost in that swirl of disputing
luggage-porters, and could not understand a word! But Miss Marryat was
quite equal to the occasion, being by no means new to travelling, and her
French stood the test triumphantly, and steered us safely to a hotel. On
the morrow we started again through Aix-la-Chapelle to Bonn, the town
which lies on the borders of the exquisite scenery of which the
Siebengebirge and Rolandseck serve as the magic portal. Our experiences
in Bonn were not wholly satisfactory. Dear Auntie was a maiden lady,
looking on all young men as wolves to be kept far from her growing lambs.
Bonn was a university town, and there was a mania just then prevailing
there for all things English. Emma was a plump, rosy, fair-haired typical
English maiden, full of frolic and harmless fun; I a very slight, pale,
black-haired girl, alternating between wild fun and extreme pensiveness.
In the boarding-house to which we went at first--the "Chateau du Rhin", a
beautiful place overhanging the broad blue Rhine--there chanced to be
staying the two sons of the late Duke of Hamilton, the Marquis of Douglas
and Lord Charles, with their tutor. They had the whole drawing-room
floor: we a sitting-room on the ground floor and bedrooms above. The lads
discovered that Miss Marryat did not like her "children" to be on
speaking terms with any of the "male sect". Here was a fine source of
amusement. They would make their horses caracole on the gravel in front
of our window; they would be just starting for their ride as we went for
walk or drive, and would salute us with doffed hat and low bow; they
would waylay us on our way downstairs with demure "Good morning"; they
would go to church and post themselves so t