ne which so frightened the simple
widow, only amused the worldly old veteran, and made him young again!
He could breathe the air cheerfully which stifled her. Her right was not
his right: his food was her poison. Human creatures are constituted thus
differently, and with this variety the marvellous world is peopled. To
the credit of Mr. Pen, let it be said, that he kept honestly the promise
made to his mother, and stoutly told his uncle of his intention to abide
by it.

When the Major arrived, his presence somehow cast a damp upon at least
three of the persons of our little party--upon Laura who had anything
but respect for him; upon Warrington, whose manner towards him showed
an involuntary haughtiness and contempt; and upon the timid and alarmed
widow, who dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though
almost desperate, projects for her boy. And, indeed, the Major, unknown
to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring about a
catastrophe in the affairs of all our friends.

Pen with his two ladies had apartments in the town of Rosenbad; honest
Warrington had lodgings hard by; the Major, on arrival at Rosenbad, had,
as befitted his dignity, taken his quarters at one of the great hotels,
at the Roman Emperor or the Four Seasons, where two or three hundred
gamblers, pleasure-seekers, or invalids, sate down and over-ate
themselves daily at the enormous table-d'hote. To this hotel Pen went on
the morning after the Major's arrival, dutifully to pay his respects
to his uncle, and found the latter's sitting-room duly prepared and
arranged by Mr. Morgan, with the Major's hats brushed, and his coats
laid out: his despatch-boxes and umbrella-cases, his guidebooks,
passports, maps, and other elaborate necessaries of the English
traveller, all as trim and ready as they could be in their master's own
room in Jermyn Street. Everything was ready, from the medicine-bottle
fresh filled from the pharmacien's, down to the old fellow's
prayer-book, without which he never travelled, for he made a point of
appearing at the English church at every place which he honoured with a
stay "Everybody did it," he said; "every English gentleman did it,"
and this pious man would as soon have thought of not calling upon the
English ambassador in a Continental town, as of not showing himself at
the national place of worship.

The old gentleman had been to take one of the baths for which Rosenbad
is famous, and which everybody ta