and there, with the picture before her, would turn round with wonder in her eyes, as if it were a revelation.

"Because," said Bell, turning seriously to the young Uhlan, and addressing him as though she had talked familiarly to him for years, "you mustn't suppose that our Tita is anything but an impostor. All her coldness and affectation of grandeur are only a pretence; and sometimes, if you watch her eyes-and she is not looking at you-you will see something come up to the surface of them as if it were her real heart and soul there, looking out in wonder and softness and delight at some beautiful thing-just like a dabchick, you know, when you are watching among bushes by a river, and are quite still; and then, if you make the least remark, if you rustle your dress, snap! down goes the dabchick, and you see nothing, and my Lady turns to you quite proudly and coldly-though there may be tears in her eyes and dares you to think that she has shown any emotion."

"That is when she is listening to you singing?" said the Lieutenant, gravely and politely; and at this moment Bell seemed to become conscious that we were all amused by her vehemence, blushed prodigiously, and was barely civil to our Uhlan for half-an-hour after.

Nevertheless, she had every reason to be in a good humour; for we had resolved to limit our travels that day to Twickenham, where, in the evening, Tita was to see her two boys who were at school there. And as the young gentleman of the Temple, who has already been briefly mentioned in this narrative, is a son of the schoolmaster with whom the boys were then living; and as he was to be of the farewell party assembled in Twickenham at night, Bell had no unpleasant prospect before her for that day at least. And of one thing she was probably by that time thoroughly assured: no fires of jealousy were in danger of being kindled in any sensitive breast by the manner of Count von Rosen towards her. Of course he was very courteous and obliging to a pretty young woman; but he

talked almost exclusively to my Lady; while, to state the plain truth, he seemed to pay more attention to his luncheon than to both of them together.

Behold, then, our phaeton ready to start! The pair of pretty bays are pawing the hard stones and pricking their ears at the unaccustomed sounds of Holborn; Sandy is at their head, regarding them rather dolefully, as if he feared to let them slip from his care to undertake so long and perilous a voyage; Queen Titania has arranged that she shall sit behind, to show the young Prussian all the remarkable things on our route; and Bell, as she gets up in front, begs to have the reins given her so soon as we get away from the crowded thoroughfares. There are still a few loiterers on the pavement who had assembled to see the Wendover omnibus leave; and these regard with a languid sort of curiosity the setting-out of the party in the big dark-green phaeton.

A little tossing of heads and prancing, a little adjustment of the reins, and a final look round, and then we glide into the wild and roaring stream of vehicles -that mighty current of rolling vans, and heavy waggons, and crowded Bayswater omnibuses, of dexterous hansoms and indolent four-wheelers, of brewers' drays and post-office carts and costermongers' barrows. Over the great thoroughfare, with its quaint and huddled houses, and its innumerable shops, in which silver watches, and stockings, and sausages form prominent features, there dwell a fine blue sky and white clouds that seem oddly discoloured. The sky, seen through a curious pall of mist and smoke, is only gray, and the clouds are distant and dusky and yellow, like those of an old landscape that has lain for years in a broker's shop. Then there is a faint glow of sunlight shining along the houses on the northern side of the street; and here and there the window of some lobster-shop or tavern glints back the light. As we get farther westward, the sky overhead gets clearer, and the character of the thoroughfare alters. Here we are at

the street leading up to the British Museum-a Mudie and a Moses on each hand-and it would almost seem as if the Museum had sent out rays of influence to create around it a series of smaller collections. In place of the humble fishmonger and the familiar hosier, we have owners of large windows filled with curious treasures of art old-fashioned jewellery, knickknacks of furniture, silver spoons and kettles, and stately portraits of the time of Charles II., in which the women have all beaded black eyes, yellow curls, and a false complexion, while the men are fat, pompous, and wigged. Westward still, and we approach the huge shops and warehouses of Oxford. Street, where the last waves of fashionable life, seeking millinery, beat on the eastern barriers that shut out the rest of London. Regent Street is busy on this quiet afternoon; and Bell asks in a whisper whether the countryman of Blücher, now sitting behind us, does not betray in his eyes what he thinks of this vast show of wealth. Listening for a moment, we hear that Queen Titania, instead of talking to him about the shops, is trying to tell him what London was in the last century, and how Colonel Jack and his associates, before that enterprising youth started to walk from London to Edinburgh to avoid the law, used to waylay travellers in the fields between Gray's Inn and St. Pancras, and how, having robbed a coach between Hyde Park Gate and Knightsbridge, they "went over the fields to Chelsea." This display of erudition on the part of my Lady has evidently been prepared beforehand; for she even goes the length of quoting dates and furnishing a few statistics-a thing which no woman does inadvertently. However, when we get into Pall Mall, her ignorance of the names of the clubs reveals the superficial nature of her acquirements; for even Bell is able to recognize the Reform, assisted, doubtless, by the polished pillars of the Carlton. The women are, of course, eager to know which is the Prince of Wales's

Club; and then look with quite a peculiar interest on the brick wall of Marlborough House.

"Now," says our bonny Bell, as we get into the quiet of St. James's Park, where the trees of the long avenue and the shrubbery around the ponds look quite pleasant and fresh even under the misty London sunlight, "now you must let me have the reins. I am wearying to get away from the houses, and be really on the road to Scotland. Indeed, I shall not feel that we have actually set out until we leave Twickenham, and are fairly on the old coach-road at Hounslow."

I looked at Bell. She did not blush ; but calmly waited to take the reins. I had then to point out to the young hypocrite that her wiles were of no avail. She was not anxious to be beyond Twickenham; she was chiefly anxious to get down thither. Notwithstanding that she knew we had chosen a capricious and roundabout road to reach this first stage on our journey, merely to show Von Rosen something of London and its suburban beauties, she was looking with impatience to the long circuit by Clapham Common, Wimbledon, and Richmond Park. Therefore she was not in a condition to be entrusted with the safety of so valuable a freight.

"I am not impatient," said Bell, with her colour a trifle heightened: "I do not care whether we ever get to Twickenham. I would as soon go to Henley to-night; and to-morrow to Oxford. But it is just like a man to make a great fuss, and go in prodigious circles to reach a trifling distance. You go circling and circling like the minutehand of a clock; but the small hand, that takes it easy, and makes no clatter of ticking, finds at twelve o'clock that it has got quite as far as its big companion."

"This, Bell," I remarked, "is impertinence."

"Will you give me the reins?"
"No."

Bell turned half round, and leaned her arm on the lowered hood.

"My dear," she said to Queen Titania

-who had been telling the Count something about Buckingham Palace"we have forgotten one thing. What are we to do when our companions are sulky during the day? In the evening, we can read, or sing, or walk about by ourselves. But during the day, Tita? When we are imprisoned, how are we to escape ?"

"We shall put you in the imperial, if you are not a good girl," said my Lady with a gracious sweetness; and then she turned to the Count.

It would have been cruel to laugh at Bell. For a minute or two after meeting with this rebuff, she turned rather away from us, and stared with a fine assumption of proud indifference down the Vauxhall Bridge Road. But presently a lurking smile began to appear about the corners of her mouth; and at last she cried out

"Well, there is no use quarrelling with a married man, for he never pets you. He is familiar with the trick of it, I suppose, and looks on like an old juggler watching the efforts of an amateur. See how lovely the river is up there by Chelsea-the long reach of rippling gray, the green of the trees, and the curious silvery light that almost hides the heights beyond. We shall see the Thames often, shall we not? and then the Severn, and then the Solway, and then the great Frith of the Forth? When I think of it, I feel like a bird -a lark fluttering up in happiness --and seeing farther and farther every minute. To see the Solway, you know, you have to be up almost in the blue; and then all around you there rises the wide plains of England, with fields, and woods, and streams. Fancy being able to see as far as a vulture, and to go swooping on for leagues and leagues -now up amid white peaks of snowor down through some great valley-or across the sea in the sunset. And only fancy that some evening you might find the spectral ship beginning to appear in pale fire in the mist of the horizoncoming on towards you without a sound -do you know, that is the most terrible legend ever thought of?"

"What has a vulture to do with the Flying Dutchman?" said my Lady Tita suddenly; and Bell turned with a start to find her friend's head close to her own. "You are becoming incoherent, Bell, and your eyes are as wild as if you were really looking at the phantom ship. Why are you not driving?"

"Because I am not allowed," said Bell. However, when we got into the Clapham Road, Bell had her wish. She took her place with the air of a practised whip; and did not even betray any nervousness when a sudden whistle behind us warned her that she was in the way of a tramway-car. Moreover she managed to subdue so successfully her impatience to get to Twickenham, that she was able to take us in the gentlest manner possible up and across Clapham Common, down through Wandsworth, and up again towards Wimbledon. When, at length, we got to the brow of the hill that overlooks the long and undulating stretches of furze, the admiration of our Prussian friend, which had been called forth by the various parks and open spaces in and around London, almost rose to the pitch of enthusiasm.

"Is it the sea down there ?" he asked, looking towards the distant tent-poles, which certainly resembled a small forest of masts in the haze of the sunshine. "It is not the sea? I almost expect to reach the shore always in England. Yet why have you so beautiful places like this around London-so much more beautiful than the sandy country around our Berlin-and no one to come to it? You have more than three millions of people-here is a playground-why do they not come? And Clapham Common too, it is not used for people to walk in, as we should use it in Germany, and have a pleasant seat in a garden, and the women sewing until their husbands and friends come in the evening, and music to make it pleasant, afterwards. It is nothing-a waste-a landscapevery beautiful-but not used. have children on donkeys, and boys playing their games-that is very good -but it is not enough. And here, this

You

beautiful park, all thrown away—no one here at all. Why does not your burgomaster see the the requirement-of drawing away large numbers of people from so big a town for fresh air; and make here some amusements?"

"Consider the people who live all around," said my Lady, "and what they would have to suffer."

"Suffer?" said the young Prussian, with his blue eyes staring. "I do not understand you. For people to walk through gardens, and smoke, and drink a glass or two of beer, or sit under the trees and sew or read-surely that is not offensive to any person. And here the houses are miles away-you cannot see them down beyond the windmill there."

"Did you ever hear of such things as manorial rights, and freeholders, and copy holders, and the Statute of Merton?" he is asked.

"All that is nothing-a fiction," he retorted. "You have a Government in this country representing the people; why not take all these commons and use them for the people? And if the Government has not courage to do that, why do not your municipalities, which are rich, buy up the land, and provide amusements, and draw the people into the open air ?"

My Lady Tita could scarce believe her ears in hearing a Prussian aristocrat talk thus coolly of confiscation, and exhibit no more reverence for the traditional rights of property than if he were a Parisian socialist. But then these boys of twenty-four will dance over the world's edge in pursuit of a theory.

Here, too, as Bell gently urged our horses forward towards the crest of the slope leading down to Baveley Bridge, Von Rosen got his first introduction to an English landscape. All around him. lay the brown stretches of sand and the blue-green clumps of furze of the common; on either side of the wide and well-made road, the tall banks were laden with a tangled luxuriance of brushwood and bramble and wildflowers; down in the hollow beneath us there were red-tiled farm-buildings half

hid in a green maze of elms and poplars; then the scattered and irregular fields and meadows, scored with hedges and dotted with houses, led up to a series of heights that were wooded with every variety of forest tree; while over all these undulations and plains there lay that faint presence of mist which only served to soften the glow of the afternoon sunshine, and show us the strong colours of the picture through a veil of tender, etherial grey.

As we got down the hill and rolled along the valley, however, he was not much struck with the appearance of our first wayside public-"The DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE, by S. LUCAS." There was a good deal of squalor about the rude little building and its ramshackle outhouses; while the open window showed us a small and stuffy parlour filled with men who, having nothing to do but sit and drink, might just as well have been outside on this warm afternoon. Nevertheless, there was something picturesque about even the dirt of the place; while the ducks and hens about, a brown goat, and two or three splendid dray-horses being watered at the wooden trough, gave the place the look of a farm-yard. Bell drove on to "The ROBIN HOOD, by E. CLARK," a much cleaner-looking inn, where Queen Titania pointed out a sort of garden with bowers round it as our bestimitation of the German beer-garden; and here, having given the horses a little water, we turned back a few yards, and entered Richmond Park by the Robin Hood gate.

Richmond Park, in the stillness of a fine sunset, was worth bringing a foreigner to see. The ruddy light from the west was striking here and there among the glades under the oaks; across the bars of radiance and shadow the handsome little bucks and long-necked does were lightly passing and repassing; while there were rabbits in thousands trotting in and about the brackens, with an occasional covey of young partridges alternately regarding us with upstretched necks and then running off a few yards further. But after we had bowled along the smooth

and level road, up and through the avenues of stately oaks, past the small lakes (one of them, beyond the shadow of a dark wood, gleamed like a line of gold) and up to the summit of Richmond Hill, Queen Titania had not a word to say further in pointing out the beauties of the place. She had been officiating as conductor, but it was with the air of a proprietress. Now, as we stopped the phaeton on the crest of the hill, she was silent.

Far away behind us lay the cold green of the eastern sky, and under it the smoke of London lay red and brown, while in the extreme distance we could see dim traces of houses, and down in the south a faint rosy mist. Some glittering yellow rays showed us where the Crystal Palace, high over the purple shadows of Sydenham, caught the sunlight; and up by Notting Hill, too, there were one or two less distinct glimmerings of glass. But when we turned to the west, no such range of vision was permitted to us. All over the bed of the river there lay across the western sky a confused glare of pale gold-not a distinct sunset, with sharp lines of orange and blood-red fire, but a bewildering haze that blinded the eyes and was rather ominous for the morrow. Along the horizon,

"where, enthroned in adamantine state, Proud of her bards, imperial Windsor sits,"

there was no trace of the grey towers to be made out, but a confused and level

mass of silver streaks and lines of blue. Nearer at hand, the spacious and wooded landscape seemed almost dark under the glare of the sky; and the broad windings of the Thames lay white and clear between the soft green of the Twickenham shores and the leafy masses of "umbrageous Ham."

"Doesn't it seem as though the strange light away up there in the north and out in the west lay over some unknown country," said Bell, with her eyes filled with the glamour of the sunset, "and that to-morrow we were to begin our journey into a great prairie, and leave houses and people for ever

behind us? You can see no more villages, but only miles and miles of woods and plains, until you come to a sort of silver mist, and that might be the sea."

"And Bell stands on the edge of this wild and golden desert, and a melancholy look comes into her eyes. For she is fond of houses and her fellowcreatures, and here, just close at handdown there, in Twickenham, in factthere is a comfortable dining-room and some pleasant friends, and one attentive person in particular, who is perhaps a little sorry to bid her good-bye. Yet she does not falter. To-morrow morning she will hold out her hand-a tender and wistful smile will only half convey her sadness

Here Bell made a cut at Pollux, both the horses sprang forward with a jerk that had nearly thrown the Lieutenant into the road (for he was standing up and holding on by the hood), and then, without another word, she rattled us down into Richmond. Getting sharply round the corner, she pretty nearly took a wheel off the omnibus that was standing in front of the King's Head, and just escaped knocking down a youth in white costume and boating shoes, who jumped back on the pavement with an admirable dexterity. Nor would she stop to give us a look at the Thames from the bridge-we only caught a glimpse of the broad bend of the water, the various boats and their white-clad crews, the pleasant river-paths, and the green and wooded heights all around. She swept us on along the road leading into Twickenham, past the abodes of the Orleanist Princes, and into the narrow streets of the village itself, until, with a proud and defiant air, she pulled the horses up in front of Dr. Ashburton's house.

There was a young man at the window. She pretended not to see him.

When the servants had partly got our luggage out, the young man made his appearance, and came forward, in rather a frightened way, as I thought, to pay his respects to my Lady Tita and Bell. Then he glanced at the Uhlan, who was carefully examining the horses'