In the spring of 1861, Miss Marryat announced her intention of going abroad, and asked my dear mother to let me accompany her.  A little nephew whom she had adopted was suffering from cataract, and she desired to place him under the care of the famous Duesseldorf oculist.  Amy Marryat had been recalled home soon after the death of her mother, who had died in giving birth to the child adopted by Miss Marryat, and named at her desire after her favorite brother Frederick (Captain Marryat).  Her place had been taken by a girl a few months older than myself, Emma Mann, one of the daughters of a clergyman who had married a Miss Stanley, closely related, indeed if I remember rightly, a sister of the Miss Mary Stanley who did such noble work in nursing in the Crimea.

For some months we had been diligently studying German, for Miss Marryat thought it wise that we should know a language fairly well before we visited the country of which it was the native tongue.  We had been trained also to talk French daily during dinner, so we were not quite “helpless foreigners” when we steamed away from St. Catherine’s Docks, and found ourselves on the following day in Antwerp, amid what seemed to us a very Babel of conflicting tongues.  Alas for our carefully spoken French, articulated laboriously.  We were lost in that swirl of disputing luggage-porters, and could not understand a word!  But Miss Marryat was quite equal to the occasion, being by no means new to travelling, and her French stood the test triumphantly, and steered us safely to a hotel.  On the morrow we started again through Aix-la-Chapelle to Bonn, the town which lies on the borders of the exquisite scenery of which the Siebengebirge and Rolandseck serve as the magic portal.  Our experiences in Bonn were not wholly satisfactory.  Dear Auntie was a maiden lady, looking on all young men as wolves to be kept far from her growing lambs.  Bonn was a university town, and there was a mania just then prevailing there for all things English.  Emma was a plump, rosy, fair-haired typical English maiden, full of frolic and harmless fun; I a very slight, pale, black-haired girl, alternating between wild fun and extreme pensiveness.  In the boarding-house to which we went at first—­the “Chateau du Rhin”, a beautiful place overhanging the broad blue Rhine—­there chanced to be staying the two sons of the late Duke of Hamilton, the Marquis of Douglas and Lord Charles, with their tutor.  They had the whole drawing-room floor:  we a sitting-room on the ground floor and bedrooms above.  The lads discovered that Miss Marryat did not like her “children” to be on speaking terms with any of the “male sect”.  Here was a fine source of amusement.  They would make their horses caracole on the gravel in front of our window; they would be just starting for their ride as we went for walk or drive, and would salute us with doffed hat and low bow; they would waylay us on our way downstairs with demure “Good morning”; they would go to church and post themselves so that