She stopped at the mocking light which she caught in his look, and
perceived that he had been amusing himself with her perennial enthusiasm
for all sorts of love-affairs. But she averred that she did not care;
what he had said was true, and she should always hold him to it.

They were again in the wedding-journey sentiment in which they had left
Carlsbad, when they found themselves alone together after their escape
from the pressure of others' interests. The tide of travel was towards
Frankfort, where the grand parade was to take place some days later. They
were going to Weimar, which was so few hours out of their way that they
simply must not miss it; and all the way to the old literary capital they
were alone in their compartment, with not even a stranger, much less a
friend to molest them. The flying landscape without was of their own
early autumnal mood, and when the vineyards of Wurzburg ceased to purple
it, the heavy after-math of hay and clover, which men, women, and
children were loading on heavy wains, and driving from the meadows
everywhere, offered a pastoral and pleasing change. It was always the
German landscape; sometimes flat and fertile, sometimes hilly and poor;
often clothed with dense woods, but always charming, with castled tops in
ruin or repair, and with levels where Gothic villages drowsed within
their walls, and dreamed of the mediaeval past, silent, without apparent
life, except for some little goose-girl driving her flock before her as
she sallied out into the nineteenth century in search of fresh pasturage.

As their train mounted among the Thuringian uplands they were aware of a
finer, cooler air through their open window. The torrents foamed white
out of the black forests of fir and pine, and brawled along the valleys,
where the hamlets roused themselves in momentary curiosity as the train
roared into them from the many tunnels. The afternoon sunshine had the