rself and Sophie; and all Freshwater, and all Yarmouth,
and all that end of the Island were alive to the fact that the rich
widowed countess respecting whom such strange tales were told, had come
on a visit to these parts. Innkeepers like such visitors. The more
venomous are the stories told against them, the more money are they apt
to spend, and the less likely are they to examine their hills. A rich
woman altogether without a character is a mine of wealth to an
innkeeper. In the present case no such godsend had come in the way--but
there was supposed to be a something a little odd, and the visitor was
on that account the more welcome.

Sophie was not the most delightful companion in the world for such a
place. London was her sphere, as she herself had understood when
declaiming against those husbands who keep their wives in the country.
And she had no love for the sea specially, regarding all winds as
nuisances excepting such as had been raised by her own efforts, and
thinking that salt from a saltcellar was more convenient than that
brought to her on the breezes. It was now near the end of May, but she
had not been half an hour at the inn before she was loud in demanding a
fire--and when the fire came she was unwilling to leave it. Her gesture
was magnificent when Lady Ongar proposed to her that she should bathe.
What--put her own dear little dry body, by her own will, into the cold
sea! She shrugged herself, and shook herself, and without speaking a
word declined with so much eloquence that it was impossible not to
admire her. Nor would she walk. On the first day, during the warmest
part of the day, she allowed herself to be taken out in a carriage
belonging to the inn; but after her drive she clung to the fire, and
consumed her time with a French novel.

Nor was Lady Ongar much more comfortable in the Isle of Wight than she
had been in London. The old poet told us how Black Care sits behind the
horseman, and some modern poet will some day describe to us that
terrible goddess as she takes her place with the stoker close to the
fire of the locomotive engine. Sitting with Sophie opposite to her, Lady
Ongar was not happy, even though her eye rested on the lines of that
magnificent coast. Once indeed, on the evening of their first day,
Sophie left her, and she was alone for nearly an hour. Ah, how happy
could she have been if Harry Clavering might have been there with her.
Perhaps a day might come in which Harry might