reading her constraint with this comical object before her. It was the
admiral's hotel they stopped at.

'Be so good as to step down and tell the admiral he is to bring Madame
Clemence in his carriage to-morrow; and on your way, you will dismiss Mr.
Woodseer's fly,' Livia mildly addressed her squire. He stared: again he
had to go, muttering: 'That nondescript's footman!' and his mischance in
being checked and crossed and humiliated perpetually by a dirty-fisted
vagabond impostor astounded him. He sent the flyman to the carriage for
orders.

Admiral Fakenham and Carinthia descended. Sir Meeson heard her cry out:
'Is it you!' and up stood the pretentious lout in the German sack,
affecting the graces of a born gentleman fresh from Paris,--bowing,
smirking, excusing himself for something; and he jumped down to the young
lady, he talked intimately with her, with a joker's air; he roused the
admiral to an exchange of jokes, and the countess and Miss Fakenham more
than smiled; evidently at his remarks, unobservant of the preposterous
figure he cut. Sir Meeson Corby had intimations of the disintegration of
his country if a patent tramp burlesquing in those clothes could be
permitted to amuse English ladies of high station, quite at home with
them. Among the signs of England's downfall, this was decidedly one.
What to think of the admiral's favourite when, having his arm paternally
on her shoulder, she gave the tramp her hand at parting, and then
blushed! All that the ladies had to say about it was, that a spread of
colour rather went to change the character of her face.

Carinthia had given Woodseer her hand and reddened under the recollection
of Chillon's words to her as they mounted the rise of the narrow vale,
after leaving the lame gentleman to his tobacco on the grass below the