We walked to an old worn flat stone in a London street, where under I had
to imagine those features of beautiful humanity lying shut from us.

She had suffered in life miserably.




CHAPTER XXIV

I MEET THE PRINCESS

Hearing that I had not slept at the hotel, the Rev. Ambrose rushed down
to Riversley with melancholy ejaculations, and was made to rebound by the
squire's contemptuous recommendation to him to learn to know something of
the spirit of young bloods, seeing that he had the nominal charge of one,
and to preach his sermon in secret, if he would be sermonizing out of
church. The good gentleman had not exactly understood his duties, or how
to conduct them. Far from objecting to find me in company with my
father, as he would otherwise have done by transmitting information of
that fact to Riversley, he now congratulated himself on it, and after the
two had conversed apart, cordially agreed to our scheme of travelling
together. The squire had sickened him. I believe that by comparison he
saw in my father a better friend of youth.

'We shall not be the worse for a ghostly adviser at hand,' my father said
to me with his quaintest air of gravity and humour mixed, which was not
insincerely grave, for the humour was unconscious. 'An accredited
casuist may frequently be a treasure. And I avow it, I like to travel