the elephants coming down in the darkness to drink at pools.  The wind at night blowing over the hills and woods was purer and fresher than the wind by day, and the earth, robbed of detail, more mysterious than the earth coloured and divided by roads and fields.  For six hours this profound beauty existed, and then as the east grew whiter and whiter the ground swam to the surface, the roads were revealed, the smoke rose and the people stirred, and the sun shone upon the windows of the hotel at Santa Marina until they were uncurtained, and the gong blaring all through the house gave notice of breakfast.

Directly breakfast was over, the ladies as usual circled vaguely, picking up papers and putting them down again, about the hall.

“And what are you going to do to-day?” asked Mrs. Elliot drifting up against Miss Warrington.

Mrs. Elliot, the wife of Hughling the Oxford Don, was a short woman, whose expression was habitually plaintive.  Her eyes moved from thing to thing as though they never found anything sufficiently pleasant to rest upon for any length of time.

“I’m going to try to get Aunt Emma out into the town,” said Susan.  “She’s not seen a thing yet.”

“I call it so spirited of her at her age,” said Mrs. Elliot, “coming all this way from her own fireside.”

“Yes, we always tell her she’ll die on board ship,” Susan replied.  “She was born on one,” she added.

“In the old days,” said Mrs. Elliot, “a great many people were.  I always pity the poor women so!  We’ve got a lot to complain of!” She shook her head.  Her eyes wandered about the table, and she remarked irrelevantly, “The poor little Queen of Holland!  Newspaper reporters practically, one may say, at her bedroom door!”

“Were you talking of the Queen of Holland?” said the pleasant voice of Miss Allan, who was searching for the thick pages of The Times among a litter of thin foreign sheets.

“I always envy any one who lives in such an excessively flat country,” she remarked.

“How very strange!” said Mrs. Elliot.  “I find a flat country so depressing.”

“I’m afraid you can’t be very happy here then, Miss Allan,” said Susan.

“On the contrary,” said Miss Allan, “I am exceedingly fond of mountains.”  Perceiving The Times at some distance, she moved off to secure it.

“Well, I must find my husband,” said Mrs. Elliot, fidgeting away.

“And I must go to my aunt,” said Miss Warrington, and taking up the duties of the day they moved away.

Whether the flimsiness of foreign sheets and the coarseness of their type is any proof of frivolity and ignorance, there is no doubt that English people scarce consider news read there as news, any more than a programme bought from a man in the street inspires confidence in what it says.  A very respectable elderly pair, having inspected the long tables of newspapers, did not think it worth their while to read more than the headlines.