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that selfish disregard of decency, save in a certain class of our people? Look, she nearly pushed that fat man down, the hatchway; and see, she will not show the steward her tickets, and she will have her change. Poor girls! what misery and exposure all this is for you!”

      “But the steamer is beginning to move on. They will be carried off! See, they are hauling at the gangway already.”

      “She’s on it; she doesn’t care; she’s over now. Well done, old lady! That back-hander was neatly given; and see, she has marshalled her forces cleverly: sent the light division in front, and brings up the rear herself with the luggage and the maids. Now, I call that as clever a landing on an enemy’s shore as ever was done.”

      “I must say I pity the girls, and they look as if they felt all the mortification of their position. And yet, they’ll come to the same sort of thing themselves one of these days, as naturally as one of us will to wearing very easy boots and loose-fitting waistcoats.”

      As he said this, the new arrivals had passed up from the landing-place, and entered the hotel.

      “Let us at least be merciful in our criticisms on foreigners, while we exhibit to their eyes such national specimens as these!” said Calvert “For my own-part, I believe, that from no one source have we as a people derived so much of sneer and shame, as from that which includes within it what is called the unprotected female.”

      “What if we were to find out that they were Belgians, or Dutch, or Americans? or better still, what if they should chance to be remarkably good sort of English? I conclude we shall meet them at supper.”

      “Yes, and there goes the bell for that gathering, which on the present occasion will be a thin one. They’re all gone off to that fair at Lahnech.” And so saying, Calvert drew nigh a glass, and made one of those extempore toilets which young men with smart moustaches are accustomed to perform before presenting themselves to strangers. Loyd merely took his hat and walked to the door.

      “There! that ought to be enough, surely, for all reasonable captivation!” said he, laughingly.

      “Perhaps you are right; besides, I suspect in the present case it is a mere waste of ammunition;” and, with a self-approving smile, he nodded to his image in the glass, and followed his friend.

      One line at this place will serve to record that Calvert was very good looking; blue-eyed, blond-whiskered, Saxon-looking withal; erect carriage and stately air, which are always taken as favourable types of our English blood. Perhaps a certain over-consciousness of these personal advantages, perhaps a certain conviction of the success that had attended these gifts, gave him what in slang phrase, is called a “tigerish” air: but it was plain to see that he had acquired his ease of manner in good company, and that his pretension was rather the stamp of a class than of an individual.

      Loyd was a pale, delicate-looking youth, with dark eyes set in the deepest of orbits, that imparted sadness to features in themselves sufficiently grave. He seemed what he was, an overworked student, a man who had sacrificed health to toil, and was only aware of the bad bargain when he felt unequal to continue the contest. His doctors had sent him abroad for rest, for that “distraction” which as often sustain its English as its French acceptance, and is only a source of worry and anxiety where rest and peace are required. His means were of the smallest – he was the only son of a country vicar, who was sorely pinched to afford him a very narrow support – and who had to raise by a loan the hundred pounds that were to give him this last chance of regaining strength and vigour. If travel therefore had its pleasures, it had also its pains for him. He felt, and very bitterly, the heavy load that his present enjoyment was laying upon those he loved best in the world, and this it was that, at his happiest moments, threw a gloom over an already moody and depressed temperament.

      The sad thought of those at home, whose privations were the price of his pleasures, tracked him at every step; and pictures of that humble fireside where sat his father and his mother, rose before him as he gazed at the noble cathedral, or stood amazed before the greatest triumphs of art. This sensitive feeling, preying upon one naturally susceptible, certainly tended little to his recovery, and even at times so overbore every other sentiment, that he regretted he had ever come abroad. Scarcely a day passed that he did not hesitate whether he should not turn his steps homeward to England.

      CHAPTER II. THE PASSENGERS ON THE STEAMBOAT

      THE table d’hôte room was empty as the two Englishmen entered it at supper-time, and they took their places, moodily enough, at one end of a table laid for nigh thirty guests. “All gone to Lahnech, Franz?” asked Calvert of the waiter.

      “Yes, Sir, but they’ll be sorry for it, for there’s thunder in the air, and we are sure to have a deluge before nightfall.”

      “And the new arrivals, are they gone too?”

      “No, Sir. They are up stairs. The old lady would seem to have forgotten a box, or a desk, on board the steamer, and she has been in such a state about it that she couldn’t think of supping; and the young ones appear to sympathise in her anxieties, for they, too, said, ‘Oh, we can’t think of eating just now.’”

      “But of course, she needn’t fuss herself. It will be detained at Mayence, and given up to her when she demands it.”

      A very expressive shrug of the shoulders was the only answer Franz made, and Calvert added, “You don’t quite agree with me, perhaps?”

      “It is an almost daily event, the loss of luggage on those Rhine steamers; so much so, that one is tempted to believe that stealing luggage is a regular livelihood here.”

      Just at this moment the Englishwoman in question entered the room, and in French of a very home manufacture asked the waiter how she could manage, by means of the telegraph, to reclaim her missing property.

      A most involved and intricate game of cross purposes ensued; for the waiter’s knowledge of French was scarcely more extensive, and embarrassed, besides, by some specialities in accent, so that though she questioned and he replied, the discussion gave little hope of an intelligible solution.

      “May I venture to offer my services, Madam?” said Calvert, rising and bowing politely. “If I can be of the least use on this occasion – ”

      “None whatever, Sir. I am perfectly competent to express my own wishes, and have no need of an interpreter;” and then turning to the waiter, added: “Montrez moi le telegraph, garçon.”

      The semi-tragic air in which she spoke, not to add the strange accent of her very peculiar French, was almost too much for Calvert’s gravity, while Loyd, half pained by the ridicule thus attached to a countrywoman, held down his head and never uttered a word. Meanwhile the old lady had retired with a haughty toss of her towering bonnet, followed by Franz.

      “The old party is fierce,” said Calvert, as he began his supper, “and would not have me at any price.”

      “I suspect that this mistrust of each other is very common with us English: not so much from any doubt of our integrity, as from a fear lest we should not be equal in social rank.”

      “Well; but really, don’t you think that our externals might have satisfied that old lady she had nothing to apprehend on that score?”

      “I can’t say how she may have regarded that point,” was the cautious answer.

      Calvert pushed his glass impatiently from him, and said, petulantly, “The woman is evidently a governess, or a companion, or a housekeeper. She writes her name in the book Miss Grainger, and the others are called Walter. Now, after all, a Miss Grainger might, without derogating too far, condescend to know a Fusilier, eh? Oh, here she comes again.”

      The lady thus criticised had now re-entered the room, and was busily engaged in studying the announcement of steamboat departures and arrivals, over the chimney.

      “It is too absurd,” said she, pettishly, in French, “to close the telegraph-office at eight, that the clerks may go to a ball.”

      “Not to a ball, Madam, to the fair at Lahnech,” interposed Franz.

      “I don’t care, Sir, whether it be a

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